VOOM in Portland, Oregon Area

[wbuffetta]

Last Night At 1:03AM Pacific Time In Rain My Signal Went From 84 To 69-70 & I Lost Sig.
For About 5 Mins., The Sig. Went Right Back Up To 84 (Still Raining). The Reason I'm Posting This Is The Only Other Time I Have Lost A Sig.(At Least As Far As I Know) Was A Week Or So Ago, When Raining At 1:03AM For 5 Mins.. I Just Wonder If VOOM Is Somtimes Messing With The Sig. & I Caught It.

Or Maybe I Watch To Much X-Files

 

[DarrellP]

Or Maybe I Watch To Much X-Files

Or maybe they are watching you! :shocked

 

[wbuffetta]

No Thats What The Required Phone Line Is For.

 

[DarrellP]

Does anybody knows what;s going on with Fox (32.1/32.2) in our area not being mapped by by Zap2it.com? has this problem being reported?

Walter, I've been on Zap2It and Voom about this from day one (3/13) and they keep telling me it's coming, but I've recently learned from our Local forum on AVS that the Fox subchannel is going away soon and all we'll have is 30-01. If you were not aware of this thread, browse it, there is lots of good tips & info for the Portland area. Also, Lee Wood, the engineer at KOIN is the moderator of that thread.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrel,
Thanks for the tip. I saw that thread a long time ago. I'm surprise that it's still alive. I personally don't watch a lot of local channels but it is interesting to know what's going on.

 

[wbuffetta]

OK PDX It's Suppose To Rain The Rest Of The Week, So Lets See How Our 18" Dishes With 94 Sig. In Sunny Weather Do.

 

[Walter L.]

Hey guys,
I just noticed that FOX was added to our OTA line-up.

 

[DarrellP]

Walter, they added that about 2 weeks ago. When you view the 480p WS channel, is it vertically stretched for you? Nothing I do except watching in Through mode (which reduces the size) will make it look right. It displays fine on my Dish 6000.

How are you holding up under the rain? I didn't watch any Voom last night and it was pouring pretty heavy here, I was watching CBS & HDNET last night.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrel, I don't remember about the scretching but I'll check and let you know during the weekend. what channel is the 480p one?
Regarding rain, so far my signal is surviving. After the 2 incidents (of lost signal) that I reported a couple of weeks ago, I haven't lost it any more, though I seen it drop (under rain) from 90-94 to 83-85. I haven't check today.

 

[DarrellP]

12-2 is the 480p as far as I can tell. I think KPTV keeps switching it around because on my Dish 6000, sometimes it will be 30-01 and other times on 30-02. The times I've seen the test pattern up, it's been on 12-2 and stretched. In fact, both channels are vertically stretched on the Voom stb, but only the SD channel is stretched on my Dish stb.

I plan on staying home this weekend so with the rain coming, I'll play around and see what I get. During the evenings I have very little time for TV so I usually don't have time to experiment and mess around with stuff. I may have to go up on the roof and tweak my dish, I looked at it the other day when it was clear and I only had a signal of about 87 whereas everyone else around here with a 24" dish is in the 90's.

 

[Vince2]

Hi Walter. I lost signal again this morning (SQ was in the 60's). Not much rain, just heavy fog and high humidity. Looks like the leaves are getting too thick on my neighbor's trees. I'm back on the roof this weekend to try to get another shot.
I have a 24" dish and the best I have ever gotten is 85, but that was before the leaves came in. Looks like I may have to go back to Comcast, God forbid!

 

[DarrellP]

Walter, I lost my signal tonight for about 30 minutes. I was watching MonstersHD, Frankentein meets the Outer Space Monster. I put my screen on the sat strength menu and whenever it hit 72 I would get freezing and breakups and anything below that would give me a black screen. It looks like that's the magic number.

It's weird, I had no rain to begin with, I watched the weather outside and the meter and it kept going lower and lower and hit bottom at 18. I looked outside and even though there was only light rain at my house, to the East there was this big hurkin black thunder cloud. After it passed through the area, my signal stabilized around 78. I'm going to try retweaking my dish this weekend. My 6000 will hang in there down to 48 so these stb's definitely have different meters in them.

 

[wbuffetta]

DarrellP I Lost Sig. Too! It Was Still Light Out With Darker Clouds Around & Light To No Rain & Sig. Mid 60's (During Dennis Miller 8PM Pacific On HBOC). I Got On The Web & Log On To Directv Web Site To Get Back All Prems.. Did So & Chilled Out, All Is Well. Then About This Post Time I Checked V* & All Is well With Sig. Around 80.
I Only Have The 18" Dish & I Guess You Have A 24". Maybe It's The stb That is Having Proplems.

I Hope We Can Gat This Solved. I Really Love World Sports & Rush.

 

[DarrellP]

As I type, I am being pummeled by some of the heaviest rainfall I've ever seen around here and my signal dropped to 0, yep, ZERO. It seems that when it first starts to rain, the signal drops significantly then comes back up. Right now I'm at 45 and no picture, thank goodness for OTA or I'd be SOL. I'm wondering if a 30" dish will even be enough, maybe I need a BUD with a Voom LNB attached. LOL

 

[DarrellP]

I just finished tweaking my dish and I am happy to report my signal went up from 85 to 94 so I'm hoping it will get me through the marginal times like last night.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrell: I was out-of-town during the weekend so I don't have anything to report about lost signal. However, last night I tried to check the Fox channel (12-2) to check if the content come streched (as you reported) but it turns out that I couldn't pick it up. That's very weird because I'm only <10 miles from the towers (I'm assuming that towers are in the same place as other locals). I'll try again today.

 

[DarrellP]

Walter, do you have another OTA digital tuner? I find that Fox seems to move around the 480p channel between 12-1 & 12-2 (30-01 & 30-02 on my Dish 6000). What's weird is that the 4:3 channel is always vertically stretched on both receivers while the 480p is vertically stretched on the Voom stb but not my Dish 6000. I can unstretch the signal with my pj buy placing it in Full mode, but then I have to put it back to normal for any other SD channel. Weird.

I don't know if that hard rain would have hit you in Hillsboro, it seemed to come from the South and was moving East and it appeared that I caught the edge of it, but man was it a storm! Last night we had quite the lightning & thunderstorm show around 6:30-7:00 pm.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrell: I don't have any other OTA turner. I'll keep trying. Maybe your question is a good one for the Local OTA thread at AVSForum.

 

[DarrellP]

I've read there that the 4:3 channel is vertically stretched but haven't heard about issues with the 480p channel being stretched. It seems to be a Voom stb quirk. I tried different settings in the Video setup menu and it didn't seem to matter. As long as I can unstretch it with my pj I'm not that concerned about it. FOX will be going HD this Fall so it will be a non issue at that point.

 

[Walter L.]

Darrel: do you know if the FOX tower is at the same hill (east of downtown) as other locals? I'm trying to figure out why sometimes I don't get FOX signal.