# OTA Baltimore locals



## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Getting my HD installed today and am curious if people in the Harford County area have any problems receiving their locals via the OTA? The installer explained to me that once the OTA is installed that I would be responsible for adjusting the location if needed.  Of course they will set it up with the best possible signal, but does the OTA ever need to be moved to better the signal for different channels?

*edit*
Also, the installer said that I would need to go buy a protective box for the powered 4x8 multiswitch. Does anybody have any suggestions?


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## LlamaLarry (Apr 30, 2003)

I live far from the towers so all of my OTA stations (DC DMA) are roughly the same direction +/- 2 degrees I think. So I don't need to move my antenna to get them all. I would bet that if you're closer and your OTA antenna is very directional that you might have to rotate it. antennaweb will show you which directions the stations are in so you can determine what to do.

My MS is inside so I can't help ya there.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Larry, you stalking me? You're all over my Sony Dream System posts, and now this? The MS didn't need to be replaced afterall. BTW, I ordered the logitech harmony 680.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Ok, from the OTA I am only receiving a signal on 13.1 CBS local. I am receiving a steady 65-68 signal, but I get no signal on any of the other locals. According to antennaweb, I should receive a signal from all the other Baltimore locals from the same direction. Any suggestions?


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## LlamaLarry (Apr 30, 2003)

EMoMoney said:


> Larry, you stalking me? You're all over my Sony Dream System posts, and now this?


Not really, but since my HDTiVo is brand new I have been reading the DirecTV and HDTV forums a little harder than normal. 


> BTW, I ordered the logitech harmony 680.


Cool, do you know what the difference between that and the 880 are? I got the 880 mostly for the rechargeable battery and the color LCD, but only real differences I could determine were the button type and layout. Picking one was kind of tough.


EMoMoney said:


> Ok, from the OTA I am only receiving a signal on 13.1 CBS local. I am receiving a steady 65-68 signal, but I get no signal on any of the other locals. According to antennaweb, I should receive a signal from all the other Baltimore locals from the same direction. Any suggestions?


Since I am not stalking you I can only guess your zip code as 21009 and antennaweb showed:

```
Call    Chan    Net     City                    Dir     Dist    Freq  
WMPT-DT	22.1	PBS	ANNAPOLIS	MD	219°	35.9	42
WJZ-DT	13.1	CBS	BALTIMORE	MD	254°	20.9	38
WBFF-DT	45.1	FOX	BALTIMORE	MD	255°	20.9	46
WBAL-DT	11.1	NBC	BALTIMORE	MD	254°	20.9	59
WMAR-DT	2.1	ABC	BALTIMORE	MD	254°	20.9	52
WNUV-DT	54.1	WB	BALTIMORE	MD	255°	20.9	40
```
Looks like you're correct that you should be able to get 45,11,2 and 54 from the same direction. When you do an OTA signal search on the frequencies above you get 0 on all but 38?

When I set up my OTA the DirecTV setup picked a mess of stations I cannot get so I had to remove them. I can get NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, PAX, UPN, a couple of PBS and a couple of other independant stations.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

LlamaLarry said:


> Cool, do you know what the difference between that and the 880 are?


Yeah, I read a lot of reviews and it seems the 680 is most similar to the peanut remote. Should be an easy transition for my wife.



LlamaLarry said:


> When you do an OTA signal search on the frequencies above you get 0 on all but 38?


I get an unsteady 16-22 on 40 (WB), and 0 on all the others. When my original dish was first installed, they had problems receiving a signal on the 119 sat, so the installer moved the dish up a little higher on my roof, and I get a great signal on everything. So, maybe that's all that needs to be done. I called DTV and they're sending another installer on Wednesday.


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## LlamaLarry (Apr 30, 2003)

Good luck with the installer, hopefully they can knock this out for you. My installer seemed to think I would not be able to get any OTA, which was troubling since I only bought the HDTiVo AFTER I tested OTA with a standalone OTA HD tuner. 

Other threads do seem to indicate that the OTA tuner is flaky, but the weird thing is that some allude that it is not very sensitive and other that is it TOO sensitive. Some folks have had luck with FM traps and/or attenuators to I guess reduce signal strength. Maybe stop by Radio Shack on the way home and give those a try before Wed and see what happens.


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## jaym (Sep 17, 2003)

I live near Annapolis MD and the only station that I cannot get reliably is 11.1 (NBC). I have tried the FM trap and it did not help my particular situation. Good luck. Hopefully we will get our HD locals via satelight soon.


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## Scott R. Scherr (Aug 6, 2003)

I live in Pikesville and I get all Baltimore locals with a Radio Shack indoor double bowtie antenna. I am 5.5 miles from the towers.

If you got your antenna through Directv, it is probably mediocre. There are better antennas out there.

Antennas are very susceptible to placement and finding the best spot requires a lot of trial and error.

Scott


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Ok, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Good: DTV installer showed up bright and early this morning and replaced the OTA with this:








He said that he thought my neighbors trees were obstructing the view and this OTA is omnidirectional. As a result, 13.1 and 54.1 are a solid 90 signal strength. 45.1 comes in around 65-70.

Bad: 2.1, 11.1 are very flaky and are pretty much unwatchable with the amount of pixilation.

Ugly: I paid $600 to upgrade to the HD TiVo and I can't get half of my locals.

Now, I spent about 15 minutes on the phone with DTV and they are giving me the HD package free for 6 months, and they have submitted waivers for me to receive the NY feeds, though I am not crossing my fingers.

My current setup is the line from the OTA goes into a Winegard DS-8000 OTA combiner and out to my basement. Then into a power supply and out to the Ant In on the TiVo. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I can do to improve the signal? I see they have pre-amp or should I still try one of the before mentioned products like the FM trap or an attenuator?

PS for Llama Larry, the 680 remote works like a charm for my Sony as well as everything else. The only quirky thing I've noticed so far is when everything is off and I press the Watch Movie button, it doesn't change my TV to Component 1. If I hit the button again, it does change to C1.


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## djb61230 (Oct 30, 2004)

EMoMoney said:


> Ok, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
> Good: DTV installer showed up bright and early this morning and replaced the OTA with this:
> 
> 
> ...


Seems odd to me to use an omni-directional when all the stations are in the same direction. A directional antenna I would think would be better. But anyway, you are close according to the previous antennaweb posting so maybe you are having multipath problems. Does the 2.1 11.1 numbers jump wildly? Something like 80 then drops to 0 then back up? That's multipath or ghosting in an analog signal. Being that close a pre-amp would probably make things worse.

The AVS forum http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 for you area would probably be a better place to figure out your problem. Lots of expertise over there. Good luck.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

djb61230 said:


> Seems odd to me to use an omni-directional when all the stations are in the same direction. A directional antenna I would think would be better. But anyway, you are close according to the previous antennaweb posting so maybe you are having multipath problems. Does the 2.1 11.1 numbers jump wildly? Something like 80 then drops to 0 then back up? That's multipath or ghosting in an analog signal. Being that close a pre-amp would probably make things worse.
> 
> The AVS forum http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 for you area would probably be a better place to figure out your problem. Lots of expertise over there. Good luck.


With the directional antenna, I was getting about 65-68 signal strength on 38(13.1) and 16-22 on 40(54.1), and 0 on all the others. With the omnidirectional, I am getting much stronger signal strength.

Yes, the numbers jump wildly on 2.1, 11.1 and mildly on 45.1.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Weird. Watching TV tonight and 2.1 has been steady not dropping below 71


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## PBShann (Mar 2, 2002)

I live in PA and get 2, 11, 13, 45, and 54 very well. You should be due South of Lancaster county, did you ever try to get Channel 8 from Lancaster on your omni-directional antenna?


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

PBShann said:


> I live in PA and get 2, 11, 13, 45, and 54 very well. You should be due South of Lancaster county, did you ever try to get Channel 8 from Lancaster on your omni-directional antenna?


It's not in my channel list, I'd have to hook it up directly to the TV to see if I get a signal or not.


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## speedcouch (Oct 23, 2003)

jaym said:


> I live near Annapolis MD and the only station that I cannot get reliably is 11.1 (NBC). I have tried the FM trap and it did not help my particular situation. Good luck. Hopefully we will get our HD locals via satelight soon.


We're near Annapolis and do pretty well with all the Baltimore and Washington channels, though there is a still occasional pixelization on windy days on DC channels. Still not near as bad as when we first got our HD in 2001. We put up a roof antenna about a month after we got the HDTV and added a pre-amp a couple of years ago. 4 used to be awful, but I swear they must've finally boosted their signal as it is pretty stable these days.

Cheryl


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## Scott R. Scherr (Aug 6, 2003)

EMoMoney said:


> It's not in my channel list, I'd have to hook it up directly to the TV to see if I get a signal or not.


Actually, you just need to do a scan and it will pick up additional channels. It will not give you guide information, but you can plug in a York, PA zip code as a secondary zip code and this will pick up guide information and you can check to see if these channels come in.

Scott


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Scott R. Scherr said:


> Actually, you just need to do a scan and it will pick up additional channels. It will not give you guide information, but you can plug in a York, PA zip code as a secondary zip code and this will pick up guide information and you can check to see if these channels come in.
> 
> Scott


Rescan didn't pick anything up. I'll try again at night, where I seem to get a little better signal.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

LlamaLarry said:


> Some folks have had luck with FM traps and/or attenuators to I guess reduce signal strength. Maybe stop by Radio Shack on the way home and give those a try before Wed and see what happens.


Both of those did squat for me. Oh well, I guess I'll hope my waivers are granted before they move to mpeg4. So much for getting to see the Penn State bowl game in HD.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

djb61230 said:


> The AVS forum http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 for you area would probably be a better place to figure out your problem. Lots of expertise over there. Good luck.


Yeah, not getting much help over there. I had two recommendations to drop the omnidirectional for a directional bowtie OTA, which was my first OTA and received a worse signal than the omnidirectional.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

Making some progress. Bought an indoor antenna Terk TV5







and I am able to pickup a very good signal on all my locals. Only downfall is I have to change the position of it for almost every channel. This will become a pain to remember which position to change it to before recording a show.

Basically I am looking for anybody who may have a suggestion for a better indoor antenna to suggest, or should I try a better outdoor than the one D* typically installs and the omnidirectional they also installed?


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## hoyty (Jan 22, 2003)

If you are able to get the locals simply using a TV5 than you should definitely be able to get them all without issue using a good directional antenna. Earlier in the thread you said you had a directional antenna, was it pointed properly and verified? A good (not expensive) antenna such a Channel Master 4221 will easily be able to pickup the stations once pointed properly. If it is mounted well you wouldn't even really need a rotator. I like having one since I don't like going on roof, that way if a storm moves it a bit I just tweak it from inside. I think your installer needs to put back up the directional and make sure it is properly pointed.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

hoyty said:


> If you are able to get the locals simply using a TV5 than you should definitely be able to get them all without issue using a good directional antenna. Earlier in the thread you said you had a directional antenna, was it pointed properly and verified? A good (not expensive) antenna such a Channel Master 4221 will easily be able to pickup the stations once pointed properly. If it is mounted well you wouldn't even really need a rotator. I like having one since I don't like going on roof, that way if a storm moves it a bit I just tweak it from inside. I think your installer needs to put back up the directional and make sure it is properly pointed.


Yeah, I had 2 different installers out and they verified it was pointed in the correct position. The second installer even tried adjusting it several times.


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## NoThru22 (May 6, 2005)

I used to live right at 24 and 95 and I got all the channels perfectly except 54. Now I live at 543 and 22, which is even further from TV hill and yet now I get 54. I am using the Channelmaster 4228 and I got Carroll from AA Installations (410) 515-7187 to install and point it.

I never realized there were so many Maryland members on here. Who wants to come to my book release party??


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

NoThru22 said:


> I used to live right at 24 and 95 and I got all the channels perfectly except 54. Now I live at 543 and 22, which is even further from TV hill and yet now I get 54. I am using the Channelmaster 4228 and I got Carroll from AA Installations (410) 515-7187 to install and point it.
> 
> I never realized there were so many Maryland members on here. Who wants to come to my book release party??


Thanks, I'll give them a call as long as I know they're not the DTV contractors who were already out here. I am leaning to the fact that I need a good midium range outdoor antenna.


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## NoThru22 (May 6, 2005)

Carroll is actually a Dish Network guy but he set up all my stuff perfectly. You can tell him I sent you and that I'm the guy that moved from the townhouse in Abingdon to the townhouse in Bel Air.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

I talked with him today. He said he uses the wingard 8 bay antennas now as they are a little better than the channelmaster. I'm going to try and install a medium range antenna before I make a appointment for him to come out just because I've already spent enough money lately with the holiday season.


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## NoThru22 (May 6, 2005)

Did he recall me as the anal-retentive a-hole?


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

NoThru22 said:


> Did he recall me as the anal-retentive a-hole?


I talked with him before you gave me the details of who you were.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

*Update*
I bought this antenna from radio shack:








http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103091&cp=&kw=hdtv+antenna&parentPage=search
My signal strength for each station is:
CBS - 91-92
WB - 92
NBC - 84-87
ABC - 86-88 (still some rare drops below 50)
FOX - 74-83 (most unsteady signal, but I see no pixilation)

My next question is:
Is there anything that can be done to combat the rain? I only get pixilation on ABC and some on NBC when it is raining. Would a pre-amp hel this or am I just S.O.L when it comes to the weather. And for clarification, I'm talking about normal rain, where my Sat signal is not affected all, and I get no pixilation. Only the OTA is affected.


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