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Thunder7
Last reply · posted in Over the Air Television By RabbitEars.Info
So last week I finally made the decision to go OTA and ditch Satellite after 12 years. To test it out I bought a basic indoor rabbit ears antenna and was surprised at how well they worked. But is very sensitive to weather. So I want to get a more robust antenna (and anything else recommended) to improve the performance. I will use the existing cabling in the house from the satellite and likely will mount it outdoors near the existing splitter. This may have to be replaced. I want to feed signal to 4 TVs. Below is my TVFool data.

I was thinking about the Wingard Freeview. I am 30-35 miles from most of my local stations that I care about. How well would this work? Would it be good to get a signal amplifier? What am I not thinking about?

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id=1dda4a08f54979

Thanks for the info.
18 Replies · 4310 views
Thunder7
Some questions and looking for input/advice.

Today I got the new distribution amp (Channel Master 3418) to hook up the remaining TVs. I have a total of 3 working at the moment and soon will be 4. The antenna (HBU33) is mounted in the attic and pointed at 41 degrees (mag). The direction it is pointing does have trees (mainly pines).

Tonight the weather is poor....very wind when I took the below readings. The pic quality in these conditions is ok but some channels have drops and pixilation. Hopefully tomorrow will be a clearer day so I can take more readings and see how the quality is.

NBC 11.1 ­80 steady great picture
ABC 2.1 ­ 60­-80 constant fluctuation some drops to 40s pixilation
CBS 46.1 ­ 60­-80 constant fluctuation some drops to 0 pixilation
Fox 5.1 ­ 68­-80 constant fluctuation some drops to 0 pixilation
PBS 8.1 ­ 40­-50 constant fluctuation

Is it possible to smooth this out or is the weather/trees just part of the deal?
Bob2011
How is the quality without the amp? Also remember that mounting in the attic is not the ideal situation. A thick roof or any foil backed insulation will really hurt reception.
boba
What are you using for signal distribution, a 4 way splitter?
No Static At All
Is it possible to smooth this out or is the weather/trees just part of the deal?
Is the antenna mounted as high as possible in the attic? You may be able to improve performance by trying different locations in the attic as well.
Thunder7
What are you using for signal distribution, a 4 way splitter?

Channel Master 3418 - 8 port (for future expansion -- I could go to 6 total TVs now if I really wanted to).
Thunder7
How is the quality without the amp? Also remember that mounting in the attic is not the ideal situation. A thick roof or any foil backed insulation will really hurt reception.

Without the amp the numbers are much lower. Yep -- know that being outside would be the best of all worlds....
Thunder7
Is the antenna mounted as high as possible in the attic? You may be able to improve performance by trying different locations in the attic as well.

I can adjust it up/down more if needed. May give that a try.
boba
If your not using the 8 ports on the splitter you are introducing additional signal loss. A 4 way splitter would send twice as much signal to each output as the 8 way. The amplifier may also be adding cochannel interference that without amplification would be too weak to bother. The fluctuating signal strength is frequently an indication of the interference.
truckracer
Outdoors is ideal but definitely only use a splitter with the current amount of tuners you are feeding. Extra ports means weaker signal to each port.
Scott Greczkowski
Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters

CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow

Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio

Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne


Get it?


An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68658 Replies · 2680205 views
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dishstaller
I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith
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Bobby
98.6 - Keith
harshness
I'm Easy - Keith Carridine
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gms49ers
It's Easy - Boston
RaiderPower
Take It Easy On Me - Little River Band
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R
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
Lately my eight year old Dell laptop has been shutting off even when I have a full battery. I have had to keep it plugged up all the time to keep this from happening. Any idea what is causing this? I replaced the battery about three years ago.
2 Replies · 45 views
arlo
A recalibration might be needed. Even if it shows full, the individual cells may have become unbalaced. And the BMS chip in the battery reports false information to the pc.
Try this. Start it up in the bios/uefi and leave it there until the battery dies and it shuts off.
It might just keep running longer than in Windows. Or run for a short while and shut off.
If it's the first case. Probably just needs a balancing. If the latter, the pack might just be dead.
Not throwing stones but perhaps just a cheaply constructed battery with substandard cells. Could be.

Patience. Keep restarting it in bios/uefi until it won't fire up anymore.
Then plug the charger in and let it complete a full charge. And see what happens. If it's better.
Do the same thing one more time. Run it until it dies dead-dead. Then just let it charge, pc shut off.
When charged, it might be better. It might not be.

There are bench jigs that read the actual BMS and override it to let a tech manually monitor and charge the separate packs. They can also reset any "time bombs" in it that cause an otherwise good pack to show bad.
Maybe Santa will be good to me some year.

You might just need a new battery. Maybe the PC power management chip is going. A Dell common thing.
Leaving a laptop plugged in with a full battery is known to reduce the life. Asus for one recommends that you don't leave the charger plugged in all of the time even when shut down. And setting Windows to charge the battery to 85% instead of 100% increases life.
That's all I got.
dishstaller
That's all I got.
That was quite enough....I definitely learned something from your post. Thanks
TRG
TRG
Pub Member / Supporter
Last reply · posted in Computers and Gadgets
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
5 Replies · 283 views
b4pjoe
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
If you can't get into the router to reserve an IP address just don't use DHCP on the device that needs connected and assign it to a specific IP address in the network settings.
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HipKat
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
They are not. Your best bet is to set up a third-party router, attached to the Starlink for your server, that you can get into, like a Linksys, etc
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Foxbat
…it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.
The Starlink V5 Install Kit I just got comes with the Mini Router. It is pretty limited in what it can do. For example, it can provide only one IP subnet at a time, no Guest Network, but it does support the pass-thru to a third-party Router. You can also split the Wi-Fi into separate 5 GHz & 2.4 GHz SSIDs to help some IoT devices that don't support 5 GHz bands to work.

The larger Starlink Router that still comes with the V4 Kit does support a Guest Network with separate IPv4 Subnet, but it's $120 from Starlink. And it still won't do DHCP Reservations.
harshness
If you can restrict the DHCP address space to assign addresses to one end of the subnet (i.e. x.x.x.50+), you can manually assign the IP address on pretty much any operating system. This is a default behavior on several popular routers. As the Router Mini only supports 235 devices, I expect that's already done.

Another option is to use a router that supports PoE to power the antenna. This article discusses that option (under PoE Power heading):

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Foxbat
Now that I've had the v5 kit with the Mini Router, it's not as bad as I first thought. Yes, no DHCP reservations, but you can set up multiple SSIDs that have separate IPv4 subnets, and like the big brother, you can select from 192.168.x.0/24 or 10.x.0.0/16 (where "x" is 1-4).

You can also split a subnet and have different SSIDs for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels to handle some IoT devices. I haven't discovered what subnet the 2nd NIC on the router assigns, I'm guessing it's the first subnet.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
2 Replies · 50 views
dishstaller
Sorry for posting the wrong link. Just corrected it.
dishstaller
Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter
Last reply · posted in The Chit Chat Club
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

2 Replies · 55 views
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Jimbo
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

They will have to look at the switching sections to determine WHY 2 trains were on the same track ... at the same time.
dishstaller
Thought this article might be of interest to some of you who might travel via train.