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I'm using a HD Sony 36" crt with a Toshiba HD coverter which I purchased along with the TV
about 4 years ago.
I'm using a directional HD ROOF antenna pointed towards the towers that are about 8 miles away in Portland, OR. I can see them from front of the house.
Reception on certain channels greatly from very strong signal to weak or non existant.
Is my HD converter outdated or to blame, or, do digital broadcast signal vary from day to day ??
TIA Bahr
Follow Ups:
I don't know, but in the early years of HD broadcasting, receiver performance was pretty poor, going by what the guys in "Stereophile's Guide To Home Theater" had to say. The technology has improved a heck of a lot, to the point where you can get a receiver in a tiny USB dongle for under $100. So, performance may have improved some more in 4 years or so.If I had over-the-air HDTV available, I'd get a tuner for my computer, probably a Hauppauge card type, and run some PVR program like BeyondTV. Somewhere like antennaweb or AVSforum may have comparisons of receivers or computer tuners.
Edits: 03/25/09
I'm 40 miles from most transmitting towers and on the wrong side of the hill. Spotty reception when I did receive OTA; now I rely on a satellite feed.
Hi there> I'm using a directional HD ROOF antenna pointed towards the towers that are about 8 miles away
How old is your TV antenna?
Is it securely mounted (i.e. does it sway in the wind)?
If it's a Yagi antenna, are all the elements in place?
Are the downlead (should be coax) connections weatherproofed and not corroded?
How big is the antenna? If it has too much gain, you might be overloading the tuner input.Reception problems specific to a few channels are typically not caused by the tuner, unless those channels are correlated by band, e.g. VHF-low or -high or UHF.
BTW there is no such device as an "HD(TV) antenna". That's just marketing hype for an ordinary TV antenna. There are some new antenna models appearing that are optimized for the post-transition UHF and VHF bands.
Regards
Edits: 03/17/09 03/17/09
then I think it would be reasonable to call it an "HDTV antenna". Unfortunately those so-called are almost 100% not so optimised...yet. Most are still optimised for high UHF channels which will no longer be used.
I know Antennas Direct has a newish model or two that are optimised for post-transition HDTV. Their popular DB2/4/8 are not, nor are the ChannelMaster 4221/8 yet.
As blue-z says, signal overload is very possible (and not uncommon) with HDTV signals and many current HDTV tuners. I don't know why, don't know enough, I'm in a location "just far enough" from U.S. and local Canadian towers that it's not something I run into.
I know around here (central valley of California), there are a number of stations that are working on the system, and they vary from day to day. Once the deadline is reached, they should be settled in by then. Why dont you just call the station and ask if they are doing things that would affect the signal strength? That would at least tell you if it is the station or your equipment. At only 8 miles away, you should be getting a pretty consistant signal, if the station is consistant.
Correction: I'm using a Zenith OTA converter.. Not Toshiba.
Do you know for a fact that your reception is ever "very strong"? Digital can look crystal clear-even when the signal's pretty weak, though when it gets really marginal, it'll appear glitchy.
But yes, it's not uncommon for TV stations to operate their transmitters at reduced power from time to time for various technical reasons.
Yes, I use the signal strength meter.
Some days a station will be strong, otherdays signal goes weak and soetimes non existant.
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