Atlanta AT9 install in progress

[dervari]

Well, the installer is here and decided it could go on my roof. The roof on the bonus room area is flatter than the normal roof pitch, so with the bipod support it will be pretty stable. He said no way could they have done it on the rest of the roof. WHEW!

As luck would have it, I forgot about a straight non-diplexed drop from my old dish to a now unused jack in the basement. He's going to bring the signal down on that and then we're just going to run a cable from the wall jack in the basement up through the drop ceiling and through the floor into the family room. Total cable run is about 20'.

 

[dervari]

Well, install is complete with only one small glitch. I wasn't getting the SD or HD Atlanta locals. Had to reboot the receiver and get a fresh guide download. Everything is working great now. The roof install looks good. He left the old mount on the roof so there wouldn't be any holes left in the roof. All in all I'm very satisfied with the job he did. I'm getting mid-80s on most transponders, and a 93 on the 103 Sat.

 

[charper1]

pics?

 

[dervari]

Tomorrow when the light is better.

 

[jimsoph]

Did you have to sign a waiver for the roof install from the installer? I am scheduled for Sunday in the Atlanta market but the installer said that they will not do a roof mount with out the waiver relieving them of any liability!

 

[dervari]

Well, he said I would have to sign a waiver, but he forgot. I just had to sign the "completed install" form.

Haven't had a chance to get a pic, but the roof install looks good and he did use the included bipod to help stabilize the mounting. Like I said, my roof pitch in that area is low...maybe 15-25 degrees.

 

[mbetts]

My Atlanta Install

Just had my AT9 installed Saturday. So far I'm pretty disappointed in the quality of the HD locals. Ch 2 ABC, Ch 5 FOX and Ch 46 CBS are acceptable but Ch 11 NBC is terrible. It is very "blocky" (non-technical term), pretty much unwatchable. I'm hoping this is an issue that they are working on. I've also experienced occassional picture freezes that resolve themself after a few seconds.

 

[f300v10]

Just had my AT9 installed Saturday. So far I'm pretty disappointed in the quality of the HD locals. Ch 2 ABC, Ch 5 FOX and Ch 46 CBS are acceptable but Ch 11 NBC is terrible. It is very "blocky" (non-technical term), pretty much unwatchable. I'm hoping this is an issue that they are working on. I've also experienced occassional picture freezes that resolve themself after a few seconds.

I have seen the exact same thing, and have been posting about it over at AVS. Glad to see I am not the only one who thinks NBC (WXIA) is sub par. To me ABC and FOX have been perfect, and CBS is pretty good. NBC shows compression noise all the time. I was wondering if this is due to NBC multicasting on 11-2. The MPEG4 encoder D* is using may be amplifying any artifacts in the WXIA MPEG2 stream, thus rendering artifacts that are there but not visible in the MPEG2 stream. Or as you pointed out, it could be an issue with the equipment D* is using for WXIA.

 

[hiltinuts2]

Hello peeps...
I live in Buford, Georgia and just had my DirecTV HD install last week.

I too am a little disappointed with local HD reception. Actually, I'm really disappointed. I just joined this site to do some research and bounce ideas off of anyone I can.

I have the DirecTV HD DVR with Triple LMB dish and for OTA a Winegard Sensar. I am still trying to find out if I have the Sensar 2200 (amplified) or just 1100 (non-amplified). My OTA line tests via the receiver show on the average 50-60 on all local HD channels (as they all come to me from the same general direction). I do manage to squeeze FOX5 in for a few minutes at a time, as for the other stations, I'm lucky to see at all.

1) Does anyone know what model the Winegard Sensar?
2) If it's the 1100 has anyone put an amp on this thing?
3) Anyone out in upper Gwinnett having these issues?

I'm not all questions...
I did get ahold of someone at Winegard regarding how exactly the antenna should point... there are some descrepences on the net on which directions the antenna should face... here is the definative answer from Winegard:

"Hello Matthew -- just think like this: "the jack is on the back". The jack being where the cable plugs into the antenna head. The "WINEGARD" name is the front of the antenna and should face the direction of your local channels' transmitters, and you can check the direction by visiting http://www.antennaweb.org/ all you will need to provide to get this information is your zip code.
If you are getting HDTV with this antenna, I should also let you know that you may find your pictures may be better if the antenna is pointed slightly away from the line-of-sight, because there may be an interefering signal that is breaking up your digital picture which can be "tuned out" simply by turning the antenna, or even slightly raising or lowering the antenna."

This is from an email from Derek who is an Antenna Product Engineer from Winegard.
I plan on "tweaking" the antenna when I get home.

 

[f300v10]

Hello peeps...
I live in Buford, Georgia and just had my DirecTV HD install last week.
I too am a little disappointed with local HD reception. Actually, I'm really disappointed. I just joined this site to do some research and bounce ideas off of anyone I can.
I have the DirecTV HD DVR with Triple LMB dish and for OTA a Winegard Sensar. I am still trying to find out if I have the Sensar 2200 (amplified) or just 1100 (non-amplified). My OTA line tests via the receiver show on the average 50-60 on all local HD channels (as they all come to me from the same general direction). I do manage to squeeze FOX5 in for a few minutes at a time, as for the other stations, I'm lucky to see at all.
1) Does anyone know what model the Winegard Sensar?
2) If it's the 1100 has anyone put an amp on this thing?
3) Anyone out in upper Gwinnett having these issues?
I'm not all questions...
I did get ahold of someone at Winegard regarding how exactly the antenna should point... there are some descrepences on the net on which directions the antenna should face... here is the definative answer from Winegard:
"Hello Matthew -- just think like this: "the jack is on the back". The jack being where the cable plugs into the antenna head. The "WINEGARD" name is the front of the antenna and should face the direction of your local channels' transmitters, and you can check the direction by visiting http://www.antennaweb.org/ all you will need to provide to get this information is your zip code.
If you are getting HDTV with this antenna, I should also let you know that you may find your pictures may be better if the antenna is pointed slightly away from the line-of-sight, because there may be an interefering signal that is breaking up your digital picture which can be "tuned out" simply by turning the antenna, or even slightly raising or lowering the antenna."
This is from an email from Derek who is an Antenna Product Engineer from Winegard.
I plan on "tweaking" the antenna when I get home.

Do yourself a favor and don't waist your time with the winegard. One of the best OTA antennas for the Atlanta area is the Channel Master 4228. You can get one at Fry's for $50. The winegard antenna you have is omni-directional, and you will get bad multi-path with it. The 4228 has more gain, and is very directional, thus doing a better job at rejecting multi-path. You will never get stable OTA reception with your current antenna.

 

[The Big Wood]

I second that opinion. I live just north of Athens and was able to receive WXIA on channel 10 100% of the time, and the others were only 5-10% of the time. Though the Channel Master 4228 wasn't strong enough for my situation, it should help you greatly since you are half the distance to the towers compared to my site. You may be able to attic mount the CM 4228 with an amplifier attached to it.

For more info, read up on the "ahdtv" group on Yahoo. They even have a loaner 4228 to use for testing your site.

 

[hiltinuts2]

Do yourself a favor and don't waist your time with the winegard. One of the best OTA antennas for the Atlanta area is the Channel Master 4228. You can get one at Fry's for $50. The winegard antenna you have is omni-directional, and you will get bad multi-path with it. The 4228 has more gain, and is very directional, thus doing a better job at rejecting multi-path. You will never get stable OTA reception with your current antenna.

Thanks for the input, I guess I'll try that!