Raleigh HD Locals

[dslate69]

This is a software glitch\bug\oversite or whatever you want to call it. Obviously DISH is not doing this on purpose. It only happens on mine when I have the HD locals map to 5 and 50. If I choose to have the SD map or NO local mappings the data comes thru fine.
As a work around until DISH acknowledges the problem is to turn the mappings OFF and record 11 and 17 HD from DISH in the 6000's.

 

[Reward]

This is even weirder.

I came home today and turned on my ViP 622 and checked to see when the Football game was on tonight. I found it was on WRAZ at 8:15PM, then watched a recorded show.

After I watched Rome (episode uno) and then browsing the guide, I noticed that my WRAZ and WRAL OTA channels said "Digital Service" for all time slots.

Bummer. I was a bit puzzled that it had changed in the hour or so that I'd been watching a recorded show.

Undaunted, I changed the channel to WRAZ since I knew said Football game was on that channel later in the evening. Seinfeld was playing and I watched for about 10 minutes ... but I wanted to know what episode it was so I pressed "Info" on the remote.

Now, my guide data was now suddenly back!?

(BTW, Seinfeld was episode 102 -- Highlights of a Hundred)

 

[dslate69]

Yea, I too might have to revise my previous assumptions. As guide data for 5 and 50 have come back for me as I watched TV.
Are the OTA channels receiving guide data from the OTA signal itself? I believe after an OTA scan some of the fringe channels that don't come in good enough to keep display guide data.
Does anyone see guide data for any OTA channel that DISH does not carry?

 

[Reward]

As I understand there is a channel identifier contained in PSIP information of the ATSC digital television standard and I assume that it is used by the Dish EPG to determine what programming to display for the OTA channels.

Now, there may be an intermittent flaw in the PSIP broadcast from WRAL/Z, a bug with Dish doing the mapping, or some other issue but that's how I understand that it works.

 

[ibleedblue]

Are the OTA channels receiving guide data from the OTA signal itself? I believe after an OTA scan some of the fringe channels that don't come in good enough to keep display guide data.

They can. My TV has a TV Guide built in and when using just the antenna (before the dish was installed) I could get the guide data by hitting the TV guide button on the remote. That had to be coming OTA as there was no other means for it to get to the TV.

Does anyone see guide data for any OTA channel that DISH does not carry?

Yeah. I can see guide data for 4-1, 22-1 and several others. I rarely look at them, they aren't in my favorites list, so I can't remember all the channels that are there. But E* doesn't carry those channels, they are picked up OTA and the guide data is displayed like everything else.

 

[virgilw]

My latest reply from Dish tech support:

"Thank you for your e-mail. I will definitely pass this information along. The ‘official information’ they’ve been passing down the wire for the last few months is that we do not support PSIP data at all. Like you’ve said, we have had several customers stating that they have it on the -1 channels for some markets, but not others.

I will pass this along to engineering and see what comes up. Hopefully we can integrate full multi-cast PSIP data into our receivers at some point."​

 

[dslate69]

They can. My TV has a TV Guide built in and when using just the antenna (before the dish was installed) I could get the guide data by hitting the TV guide button on the remote. That had to be coming OTA as there was no other means for it to get to the TV.
Yeah. I can see guide data for 4-1, 22-1 and several others. I rarely look at them, they aren't in my favorites list, so I can't remember all the channels that are there. But E* doesn't carry those channels, they are picked up OTA and the guide data is displayed like everything else.

TV Guide that is built in to tvs is in a data stream comming from PBS.

DISH carries both 4 and 22 so it could be getting that data from DISH.
Probably what is happening and I think someone may have said this, is that each channel has a identifier (wral,wraz) but not actual data. The identifier is then matched up to guide data carried by DISH.

 

[NetWhiz]

What are others getting for signal strengths on the 118.7 Sat. for the Raleigh, NC HD locals on TP 19 and 22? I am getting:

TP 19 : 65
TP 22 : 47

My 110 and 119 signals seems to be pretty good across the board. What can I do to tweak/peak the 118.7 signal to decrease dropouts/issues?

 

[DISH_NC]

What are others getting for signal strengths on the 118.7 Sat. for the Raleigh, NC HD locals on TP 19 and 22? I am getting:

TP 19 : 65
TP 22 : 47

My 110 and 119 signals seems to be pretty good across the board. What can I do to tweak/peak the 118.7 signal to decrease dropouts/issues?

As I posted earlier in the topic, I am getting upper 70's to lower 80's (TP19: 77, TP22: 81 as of today). It took some adjusting to get that strength.... Also, the quality of ABC has improved ALOT in the last 2 weeks...

 

[NetWhiz]

As I posted earlier in the topic, I am getting upper 70's to lower 80's (TP19: 77, TP22: 81 as of today). It took some adjusting to get that strength.... Also, the quality of ABC has improved ALOT in the last 2 weeks...

Sorry ... just asking for a few other data points.

NBC is on TP22 and the quality stink (never had good quality even with SD on my 3900, 4900, 6000, or 508). Even OTA is hard to get from the at a good quality when the rest are around 100 for OTA.

What did you do to tweak just the 118.7?

 

[DISH_NC]

Once I had 110 and 119 locked in, I just adjusted elevation by small amounts to peak 118... When I first had it installed, NBC was very good but ABC was very pixelated. ABC has since improved a lot and now the quality is very close to the OTA signal on both ABC and NBC.

I will admit that 118 is very finicky compared to 119 or 110 but I expect that's due to the LNB polarizing mode.

 

[virgilw]

As I posted earlier in the topic, I am getting upper 70's to lower 80's (TP19: 77, TP22: 81 as of today). It took some adjusting to get that strength.... Also, the quality of ABC has improved ALOT in the last 2 weeks...

I tried to watch the News Year's programming on the HD feed of ABC from Dish. It was a joke. So I complained to dishquality. Apparently, so did at least two other folks. Here is the reply I got (after a week and a half):

"Thank you for expressing your concerns and interest in DISH Network. Customer input is an important tool in our efforts to continuously improve the quality of the DISH Network service.

We have sent your email to our engineering team. We received two other complaints on your locals as well. Should you see any sign of improvement or degradation let us know.

At DISH Network we appreciate the time customers take to email their audio/video quality concerns. Thank you for your patience and for being a valued customer.

EchoStar Satellite LLC
Quality Assurance Department
dishquality@echostar.com "

 

[DISH_NC]

It's nice to see that DISH is listening at least when we provide feedback... Now, if they could only come to a carriage agreement with CBC so we could get ALL the channels (including the Guide info), then I would be 100% happy.

Unfortunately, I still have to 'babysit' the receiver to ensure that my CBS or FOX shows that I programmed, get recorded. If this continues, I'll have to abandon NBR for those shows and just create manual timers.

 

[NetWhiz]

It would also be nice if Dish could send EPG info for ALL the digital sub channels so we could know what is on them and record programs correctly.

I have complained about the NBC quality for SD on my 508 several times to both DISH and WNCN. Nothing has ever changed. I have also complained about the OTA signal to WNCN and their lead eng. gave a bunch of excuses and saying it was my fault that I could not get a good signal.

 

[NetWhiz]

After getting back on the roof and changing the elevation and angle, I now get:

TP19 : 83
TP22 : 86

I lost a few points on 110 and gained a few points on 119 on avg. I also tweaked my 61.5 Sat. yesterday to gain 20 points avg. The installer did not even screw in the LNB to the arm so when I touched it it fell off the arm (cables were attached)! Lastly I repointed my huge OTA off from the sending towers to gain 10 points avg. on WNCN and the rest are just as good as before. Lets see if the quality of the signal for the sat. HD locals makes a difference in the pixel. and other issues.

Thanks for the help/info!

 

[DISH_NC]

Good to hear things are improved. I was fortunate to be able to put the dishes near ground level now that the lot next door was built on since originally moving into this house - I just have 2 mounts left on the roof now - will wait until the roof has to be re-shingled to remove those...

I still get occasional pixelation on NBC HD but it's very random. Overall, I am pretty satisfied. The only issue I have is FOX HD OTA - signal is just not stable for that station to come in so I am stuck with SD for FOX.

Oh well - only NFL and one show that we watch on FOX.

 

[GoWulfpack]

I e-mailed WRAL about the free OTA antenna. When I got home today, I had a huge antenna designed for roof mount sitting on my porch.

I was expecting a TV top antenna, not this huge thing. Living in Clayton, I can literally look out of my window and see 3/4 of WRAL's tower.

Why did they send me this huge thing? Does anyone think they will send me a smaller one?

 

[DISH_NC]

I received the same antenna. It's still sitting in the box since I am using the 'rabbit' ears right now, even though I can't get WRAZ-HD reliably with them.

And now without a reliable guide for WRAL-HD OTA, my timers are not firing for recordings I set.

The free antenna from WRAL might be mounted in the attic as soon as I can feed some RG-6 cable up there....

 

[GoWulfpack]

How will this thing be plugged into a Dish/DTV receiver?

 

[DISH_NC]

Just like a pair of Rabbit Ears - just run the downfeed from the antenna into the Antenna input on the 622 (or whichever HD Receiver you have). In my case, I split the Antenna downfeed so it feeds the receiver as well as the Television OTA input....