CHICAGO METRO AREA VOOM
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Videofx said:
I have seen this before (no audio on 9-2) on the digital tuner built-in to my TV. I know for some programming, WGN broadcasts a different audio track on 9-2. I have seen Friends reruns in spanish on 9-2.
stevegs1 said:
I live in Aurora and my installation is set for April 7. Maybe I should call them and tell them to go ahead and bring a Winegard to save some time and trouble since the stealth probably won't work.
Do you have the standard sized dish (what size is that by the way) and how has it been performing during the rain and wind storms we've been having lately? I read the other thread about rain fade and I am considering buying a 30" dish ahead of time so that they can install a larger one for me right off the bat.
Also, does the rain or wind affect the OTA reception at all?
Thanks!
FunkyBoss said:
Are you going to have Voom mount their antenna in your attic? I am about 32 miles away from the transmitters according to antennaweb.org. I wonder if a Winegard in the attic would perform better than a Stealthtenna on the roof or if I should just suck it up and put the 9ftx9ft Winegard on the roof.
Our house came with quite a large antenna in the attic. I'm pretty sure it's just for regular analog stations, though.
compurocker said:
As much as I really want CBS, I don't really want a huge metal antenna on my new roof (Ticks off the neighbors, homeowners association and most importantly, my wife). Since I was able to watch CBS last night without too many breakups with my RS Stealth antenna in the attic, I may roll the dice and have them just install the supplied Voom stealth outside for me, and see if it just being outside is enough to give me a little boost in signal to make it more reliable. If the Voom supplied antenna isn't enough, then maybe try replacing it with my RS antenna (which I assume is about the same thing) to see if that makes a difference.
As far as I know, antennas are antennas when it comes to digital and analog. So I bet the antenna up there will definitly get all the UHF digitals without problems. And maybe even CBS too. Have them try it first. Save yourself another large object on the roof.
FunkyBoss said:As much as I really want CBS, I don't really want a huge metal antenna on my new roof (Ticks off the neighbors, homeowners association and most importantly, my wife). Since I was able to watch CBS last night without too many breakups with my RS Stealth antenna in the attic, I may roll the dice and have them just install the supplied Voom stealth outside for me, and see if it just being outside is enough to give me a little boost in signal to make it more reliable. If the Voom supplied antenna isn't enough, then maybe try replacing it with my RS antenna (which I assume is about the same thing) to see if that makes a difference.
As far as I know, antennas are antennas when it comes to digital and analog. So I bet the antenna up there will definitly get all the UHF digitals without problems. And maybe even CBS too. Have them try it first. Save yourself another large object on the roof.
Where in Chiacgo do you live? The reason I ask is I live in Berwyn and I get CBS great with the stealth antenna from Voom.
omard. said:
Hi Omard, I live in Sugar Grove, pretty much right next to Aurora where 88 and 56 meet. I'm guessing about 40-45 miles from downtown where the TV towers are. I have actually had pretty good luck with my Radio Shack amplified stealth antenna in my attic from this far out getting CBS. It is watchable about 50% of the time. The big problem is that I don't get to pick which 50% of the nights are watchable.
How far do you think you are from the towers?So I'm hoping that by taking it, or the Voom supplied "stealth" antenna and moving it outside, I can get a little increase in signal that is just good enough to watch most of the time without having to have a huge metal monster antenna out there for everyone in my neighborhood to see. I am in a new subdivision and don't want to be the first out of 250 homes that has an "old-school" antenna slapped on the roof. :shocked But I do love my HDTV and hopefully will enjoy what Voom has to offer when they install it next week.
FunkyBoss said:Hi Omard, I live in Sugar Grove, pretty much right next to Aurora where 88 and 56 meet. I'm guessing about 40-45 miles from downtown where the TV towers are. I have actually had pretty good luck with my Radio Shack amplified stealth antenna in my attic from this far out getting CBS. It is watchable about 50% of the time. The big problem is that I don't get to pick which 50% of the nights are watchable.
So I'm hoping that by taking it, or the Voom supplied "stealth" antenna and moving it outside, I can get a little increase in signal that is just good enough to watch most of the time without having to have a huge metal monster antenna out there for everyone in my neighborhood to see. I am in a new subdivision and don't want to be the first out of 250 homes that has an "old-school" antenna slapped on the roof. :shocked But I do love my HDTV and hopefully will enjoy what Voom has to offer when they install it next week.
I live about 10 to 13 miles from all the tower and before the stealth I had the Terk TV55 and got pretty good reception and it was inside the house. When I got the Voom antenna I get all channels including CBS at above 80% some at 90%. I think you will get an increase once they put the antenna on your roof.
Spoke with the install company (Adant Wireless) yesterday. They are still scheduled to come out to install Voom today between 8 and 12. They said I would be the second install. So I'm guessing closer to 12. I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes... 
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Well, they came out (around 2pm) and left without installing anything! The installer (who seemed like a nice guy) said that my roof was too high and steep to install the antenna and he would need a 40 foot ladder to do it. Why wouldn't they ask about this BEFORE they send someone out??! I have a 2 story house that has 9 foot ceilings. So I would think it only adds another 2 feet or so to the height of the house.Now I have to wait to be rescheduled. What a major letdown!
Finally, I have Voom! The 2 guys with the 40 foot ladder came out today from Adant Wireless and did a very nice job installing everything. I made some suggestions to them on how I wanted it all run and they did it exactly how I wanted it. (2 lines from the dish and a seperate line from the antenna into the house) The only bad part of the whole deal is that the Stealth antenna still didn't get me channel 2 way out here like I was hoping for. It's not the installers fault, the stealth isn't built for 40+ miles out on a lower powered VHF station. Now I must decide if I want a big ugly antenna on my roof, or if I just settle for no CBS HD.
I can't wait for the update to happen too. The clock is off by an hour so the guide doesn't match up. Other then that, so far a happy voomer on hour 1!
I can't wait for the update to happen too. The clock is off by an hour so the guide doesn't match up. Other then that, so far a happy voomer on hour 1!
All the other OTAs work okay except channel 2? I'm going to have them try the antenna in the attic above my garage and if that doesn't work I'll have them try the stealth on my roof. I don't think I want a big ugly beast on my roof, either, so I may just live without channel 2. Actually I might keep Comcast for my locals. My VOOM install is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I'll report back afterwards.
compurocker said:
Yeah. But it's weird. Some channels have somewhat frequent dropuots with the Voom supplied ChannelMaster on the roof. While my other TV is hooked up to my older RadioShack Stealth antenna in the attic and has absolutely no dropouts. One thing they told me is that the Amplifier in the ChannelMaster Stealth is powered by the satellite box. So they didn't hook up any in-line amplifiers that plug into an electrical outlet. So I wonder if that could have anything to do with the dropout problems with the ChannelMaster around Chicagoland?
Our VOOM install went pretty well today. I was at work during most of it but I left some instructions with my wife. Unfortunately, the installer chose to ignore one of my instructions which was not to use a diplexer. Otherwise I was pretty happy with his work. He was polite and professional.
He actually asked me why I had said not to use a diplexer. I told him I had read on the Internet that it degrades the signal. He said he's done both installations with and without and its his opinion that the diplexer is not the culprit. He thinks the VOOM STB is the culprit. I told him I didn't doubt it because the VOOM STB is definitely buggy. He agreed.
He predicted we wouldn't get very many locals at all. I explained to him that I knew of someone in Sugar Grove (slightly further from Chicago than we were in Aurora) that could get all locals but CBS. He told me that he just did an install in Naperville (slightly closer than Aurora) which got very few locals. I was interested to see what would happen here, and so was he.
Luckily for us, we got every local, including CBS. The installer was surprised but glad to see it worked. How long they will last or whether there will be frequent dropouts will remain to be seen. We'll keep cable for now just in case.
I currently have the older software without daylight savings time. We were gone a few hours for dinner and still didn't have our program guide when we got back. I expected as much after reading these boards. I hope they fix that soon. Running upstairs to read zap2it will get tiresome.
Right now the status is reporting sat signal at 58, OTA signal at 90, sat number of channels at 131, OTA number of channels at 23. We only watched a bit tonight. We flipped through some channels, watched a movie, and watched bits of some late night shows on some locals. So far so good. I hope it stays good.
He actually asked me why I had said not to use a diplexer. I told him I had read on the Internet that it degrades the signal. He said he's done both installations with and without and its his opinion that the diplexer is not the culprit. He thinks the VOOM STB is the culprit. I told him I didn't doubt it because the VOOM STB is definitely buggy. He agreed.
He predicted we wouldn't get very many locals at all. I explained to him that I knew of someone in Sugar Grove (slightly further from Chicago than we were in Aurora) that could get all locals but CBS. He told me that he just did an install in Naperville (slightly closer than Aurora) which got very few locals. I was interested to see what would happen here, and so was he.
Luckily for us, we got every local, including CBS. The installer was surprised but glad to see it worked. How long they will last or whether there will be frequent dropouts will remain to be seen. We'll keep cable for now just in case.
I currently have the older software without daylight savings time. We were gone a few hours for dinner and still didn't have our program guide when we got back. I expected as much after reading these boards. I hope they fix that soon. Running upstairs to read zap2it will get tiresome.
Right now the status is reporting sat signal at 58, OTA signal at 90, sat number of channels at 131, OTA number of channels at 23. We only watched a bit tonight. We flipped through some channels, watched a movie, and watched bits of some late night shows on some locals. So far so good. I hope it stays good.
Hey compu, you are getting CBS too? Which antenna did they install for you? Where is it installed? Did they use a powered amplifier?
They used the stealth and installed it on the roof above my garage. There's nothing above the garage but a small attic so it's lower than the rest of my two story house. I don't blame him for not going any higher (I'm afraid of heights), but I was worried it might be too low. Guess not! I don't know if there is a powered amp or not. He got the antenna and dish all set up while I was at work.
For all I know CBS was a fluke when we tried it. I haven't tried actually watching it for any length of time. I'm not sure if I even like any shows on CBS.
For all I know CBS was a fluke when we tried it. I haven't tried actually watching it for any length of time. I'm not sure if I even like any shows on CBS.
Funky,
You should have a small power injector in your OTA antenna line. The internal amplifier is NOT powered by the receiver. There is no way the box would know if the antenna has an amplifier or not so it can't output any voltage to the antenna by default. I have seperate lines for OTA and SAT, in the line of the OTA I have a small 1 inch by 1 inch box that has an adaptor plugged into the wall. It's a Channel Master supplied part that is included with the internal antenna amplifier kit. If I pull this plug I loose most off air channels.
If you don't have it I would call Voom/ Adant and make sure you get the correct hardware.
You should have a small power injector in your OTA antenna line. The internal amplifier is NOT powered by the receiver. There is no way the box would know if the antenna has an amplifier or not so it can't output any voltage to the antenna by default. I have seperate lines for OTA and SAT, in the line of the OTA I have a small 1 inch by 1 inch box that has an adaptor plugged into the wall. It's a Channel Master supplied part that is included with the internal antenna amplifier kit. If I pull this plug I loose most off air channels.
If you don't have it I would call Voom/ Adant and make sure you get the correct hardware.
Just yesterday I threw away the box that my Adant Wireless installer had left for me to throw out. I found all sorts of goodies in that box, including some sort of VOOM documentation in a colorful plastic package, a DVI cable, and what looked like an amplifier for the antenna. I assume this means that my antenna doesn't currently have an amplifier, or is being amplified by the STB. Maybe the installer can flip a switch on the STB to tell it whether there is an inline amplifier or not. I salvaged these pieces and plan to take a closer look tonight.
I do seem to have intermittant problems with both channel 2 and channel 50. I don't watch a lot of OTA so I'm not sure how frequent the problems are or if there are problems with any other of my OTAs. I've just noticed a few times when channel 2 would stutter or channel 50 would not come in at all. My antenna is pointing directly at the tree in my front yard. I wonder if it will interfere once it gets full of leaves. If so, I plan to have Adant come back and mount the antenna on the roof of my house. Right now it's on my garage, which is a story lower.
I do seem to have intermittant problems with both channel 2 and channel 50. I don't watch a lot of OTA so I'm not sure how frequent the problems are or if there are problems with any other of my OTAs. I've just noticed a few times when channel 2 would stutter or channel 50 would not come in at all. My antenna is pointing directly at the tree in my front yard. I wonder if it will interfere once it gets full of leaves. If so, I plan to have Adant come back and mount the antenna on the roof of my house. Right now it's on my garage, which is a story lower.
cmslick3 said:
Yeah, they didn't supply the power injector. I talked to someone at Installs Inc. and he eventually agreed to send me one so I can try it to see if it clears up my problems. They are convinced that the antenna gets it's power from the STB, but I still don't believe it. I think maybe the satellite dish's LNB may get some power from the STB, but not the OTA antenna.
Either way, I'll post my results. Thanks guys for your replies.
