622 OTA vs. 722 vs. Integrated ATSC TV Receivers

[logray]

My Funke 1922 VHF-HI antenna and Winegard AP-8275 pre amp provide 87% signal strength and great reception on both of my Samsung TV's built in ATSC tuners for KVIE Sacramento, CA station (channel 6.1 VHF 9) about 68 miles away. The channel also works great on the ATI HDTV PCI card and old Motorola ATSC STB.

On the 622 receiver however, all OTA channels except for channel 9 (digital 6.1 & 6.2) come up fine, mostly with 100% signal strength.

In the 622's ota menu "transmit number" 9 shows 0 signal strength no matter what I do, never jumps above that. Tried the same on it's digital version 6, still 0.

Tried deleting and rescanning all locals multiple times.

Numerous soft/hard resets/etc.

Since the DTV transition when this station went to VHF, the 622 has not been able to pick up KVIE 6.1 (but did last year before when it was on UHF), yet all of my other tuners pick it up TODAY without any problems on it's new VHF spot. It's a pain not being able to watch and RECORD! on the 622, and have to switch over to the TV's tuner to watch programs only live.

KVIE 6.1 is not offered by Dish in HD, only the SD version.

Has anyone else experienced this problem with the 622 not getting a channel yet their other ATSC receivers do?

Can anyone comment on the performance of the 722's OTA tuner vs. the 622?

And less likely can anyone else comment on their ability to pick up KVIE in Sacramento with a 622 (and post your location please)?

 

[mike123abc]

Maybe your signal is too strong?

While I have not revisited my OTA amplification system lately, essentially I had to use a big amp on the UHF band, no amp on VHF-LO and small amp on VHF-HI. If I amplified VHF-LO it would not work since the signal was too strong.

 

[JWKessler]

There are three OTA TV bands, each requiring a different type of antenna. There are the low band VHF (channels 2 - 6), VHF high band (channels 7 - 13) and UHF (channels 14 - 83). In addition there is an FM radio band stuck between TV channels 6 and 7, which can also have its own antenna design.

Many common antennas combine the three TV bands plus a section for the FM band into a single unit. If you live in a good reception area this is fine, but in difficult reception areas you can often get better results sticking with an antenna designed just for the stations broadcasting in your area. As an example, in my area there are no low band VHF channels, just high band VHF and UHF, so an all band combo antenna is actually not an efficient choice. A big chunk of that antenna will be doing nothing at all. In fact the low band VHF elements are the biggest part of an all band antenna so over 1/3rd of that antenna will be doing nothing but taking up space, adding weight and increasing cost.

For cases like this you can get a nice high band VHF/UHF antenna that will do a better job for less money than the all band units. You can also opt for separate antennas for each band, including the FM band.

The digital transition made things more confusing because the actual channel your local TV stations are broadcasting on may no longer match their branded channel number. For instance, in my area we had high band VHF channel 12 and UHF channel 40 prior to the transition. These two channels still use their old channel numbers in their branding and are remapped to appear on those old channels on digital TVs. However, channel "12" is actually broadcasting on channel 7 and channel "40" is now broadcasting on channel 8. This means I can get these two channels with a high band VHF antenna. If I tried to get channel "40" with a UHF antenna I would not have much luck.

So, it is important when selecting an antenna to pick one designed for the actual broadcast channels in your area, not the channels commonly referred to by the stations.

Getting that information can be difficult. I spent quite a bit of time finding the correct channels for my area when I was selecting an antenna. Here is a good source I found, showing the data for my area.

Stations for Binghamton, New York

To get your own data go here;

RabbitEars.Info

and select your market for a list of the physical channels your local stations are using.

You will find that KVIW, channel 6 (low band VHF) is actually broadcasting on channel 9 so you should use a high band VHF antenna to receive it.

 

[kstuart]

Has anyone else experienced this problem with the 622 not getting a channel yet their other ATSC receivers do?

Actually, my relatives' 622 picks up a channel that neither TVs ATSC tuner will pick up (which is 50-some miles away).

KVIE 6.1 is not offered by Dish in HD, only the SD version.

The STELA legislation requires Dish to add half the PBS-HD channels by the end of the year, and the other half by the end of 2011. There is no way to know for sure, but my guess is that KVIE would be added by the end of the year, since Dish should already have space on the spot beams on 129.