Question about OTA Antenna

[FlyingJ]

Thank you in advance for any answers!

When I had my HD D* receiver hooked up the installer told me that the outdoor antenna would not work at my place. So I bought an indoor one. Reception is fine except I can't get audio on the UPN station which is a bit further away. The picture is great but no audio just on that station. I am in Columbus, Ohio by the way. Why would an indoor antenna work and not an outdoor? Any reason why one one station I can pull in the video but not the audio? Any suggestions, come the fall my kids want to get the audio to Smallville etc... Thanks!!

 

[Sean Mota]

FlyingJ,

First let me ask you. Are you receiving analog reception with your indoor antenna or is it digital reception? If it is digital, chances are the you will get better reception with an outdoor antenna. If it is analog reception, there is hope but not 100% sure. Regarding the audio, it could be a problem with the station and not necessarily with your equipment.

 

[FlyingJ]

I assume it is digital...It is the TERK HDtvi Brings in a nice HD pic with the locals.

 

[Sean Mota]

Then you can get better reception with an outside antenna and the sound problems sounds like a problem with the station. You may contact the local station and ask them about the sound problem.

 

[billbillw]

Try deleting all of your channels and rescanning. Audio problems are usually fixed by rescanning. If the signal wasn't strong enough, you wouldn't get anything. Digital is all or nothing when it comes to reception.

 

[FlyingJ]

Sounds worth a try....ummm...errr...how do you delete and rescan??

 

[jpa25]

Can you buy an antenna booster or any product that may increase signal strength? All my HDTV off air locals come in great, except for Fox. Its in and out. I just have a basic outdoor antenna installed by the D* contractors.

 

[billbillw]

Sounds worth a try....ummm...errr...how do you delete and rescan??

It will be somewhere the setup menu. Every box differs slightly, so check your manual. Usually there is an area in the menus to select which OTA channels you want to have active. If there is a box to deselect all, try that. Elsewhere in the setup menu, there should be a place to scan OTA channels.

It may be a slight PITA, but with digital OTA transmission, you need to rescan everytime they make changes to the station PSIP data. The PSIP data tells the tuner how to assign the virtual channel numbers, split the video streams if there are sub-channels, and how to assign the various audio streams to the correct video stream.

 

[Digital Dude]

Send me a PM flying J, I'm in the CMH area also and dealt with OTA for 5 years.

 

[FlyingJ]

Hey Billbill and the rest of you that answered my post. THanks so much. I finally got it to work. A technical guy down at the station WWHO 53 UPN called me and told me to go into the menue and get rid of the zip code. So I set the code to ))))) and sure enough the audio works on that station. Thanks again, now we can all go back to complaining about D*, HD Lite, Lack of channels and all of that good stuff. On a lighter note...it seems that the future of HD looked just a bit better last night, at least for us sports fans. MNF looked great, the baseball game on ESPN actually looked very good, and as usual the YES networks, Yankees game looked fantastic, it was raining there and I actually felt the moisture! 3 games in HD at one time with decent PQ, I feel spoiled! Thanks again!!

 

[billbillw]

MNF looked great, the baseball game on ESPN actually looked very good, and as usual the YES networks, Yankees game looked fantastic, it was raining there and I actually felt the moisture! 3 games in HD at one time with decent PQ, I feel spoiled! Thanks again!!

I only breifly watched MNF and it wasn't in HD on my OTA feed Didn't look good at all. Curious, how are you able to watch YES? I thought that was for NY/NJ subscribers only. Does that come with the MLB package?

 

[FlyingJ]

MNF was definitely in HD OTA here in Columbus. Yes you get the yes games, usually on 95 I think now with the MLB EI package. Also alot of other games too, now usually 4 or 5 a week including the Phillies/Dodgers tonight!

 

[rockaway1836]

If you have Extra Innings you will get most Yankee home games on 94. If they are home games and they are on Yes SD they will be on 94 in HD.

 

[billbillw]

That essplains it. I don't have Extra Innings.