DTV in Pittsburgh?

[cellio]

Last year I bought an amplified antenna and a digital converter box in anticipation of the national switch to digital TV in February. Then Congress delayed it to June, which means my antenna warranty will expire a week before the switch. WQED switched on April 1 and I've been getting zilch on channel 13 since then, but maybe I've been looking in the wrong place. According to this list they might be on 38 now, but I'm not getting signal there either. (WQED's web site does not actually appear to have channel information.) I live 2 miles from WQED, but Pittsburgh is a hilly place.

I'm not sure if any other local station has made the switch. (Google is inconclusive.) I just checked signals tonight, and currently I am only getting 2 (CBS), 4 (ABC), 11 (NBC), 47 (Christian), and (weakly) a couple other UHF channels. (There were more signals the last time I did a survey.) So it's not clear whether the equipment I bought specifically for the DTV transition even works. (The antenna claims to be digital-capable.)

If you're in Pittsburgh and are receiving any stations digitally, which ones (station and channel number)?

If anyone has any debugging advice beyond waiting to see if everything goes dark in mid-June, I'm interested in hearing that.

(No, I'm not interested in subscribing to cable.)

Edit: Scanning is not dynamic; you need to explicitly have the converter box re-scan when channels are added/moved. Thanks, all.

Comments

[dsrtao]

www.antennaweb.org says, based on a rough guess of mine at your zip code, that you should be able to see the following stations in order from best reception to worst:

* yellow
uhf WPGH-DT 53.1 FOX PITTSBURGH, PA 56° 4.0 43
* yellow
uhf WPXI-DT 11.1 NBC PITTSBURGH, PA 89° 3.0 48
* yellow
uhf WPMY-DT 42.1 MNT PITTSBURGH, PA 56° 4.0 42
yellow
vhf KDKA 2 CBS PITTSBURGH, PA 49° 3.4 2
* yellow
uhf KDKA-DT 2.1 CBS PITTSBURGH, PA 49° 3.4 25
* yellow
vhf WPCW-DT 49.1 CW JEANNETTE, PA Jun 12, 2009 (post-transition) 49° 3.4 11
red
vhf WTAE 4 ABC PITTSBURGH, PA 141° 18.2 4
red
vhf WPXI 11 NBC PITTSBURGH, PA 89° 3.0 11
blue
uhf W65CG 65 TBN PITTSBURGH, PA 123° 7.4 65
* blue
uhf WQED-DT 13.1 PBS PITTSBURGH, PA 107° 5.1 38
* blue
uhf WQEX-DT 16.1 HSN PITTSBURGH, PA 107° 5.1 26
* blue
uhf WPCW-DT 49.1 CW JEANNETTE, PA 107° 5.1 49
* blue
uhf WPCB-DT 50.1 CTV GREENSBURG, PA 115° 15.3 50
* violet
uhf W65CG-D 65.1 TBN PITTSBURGH, PA 123° 7.4 47
* violet
uhf WTAE-DT 4.1 ABC PITTSBURGH, PA 141° 18.2 51

[cellio]

Thank you! (And thanks for the reminder about antennaweb.) After a rescan I'm getting many (though not all; need to tinker) of those. (Silly me; I had thought scanning was dynamic. I only had the channels that were there when I set up the box and ran the initial scan.)

[evil-baron.livejournal.com]

Did you run the channel scan on the box again? You would see not "13", but "13.1", 13.2", "13.3", as well as 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 11.1, 11.2, 22.1, 22.2, 53.1, 53.2, and maybe 40.1

The second thing is that hills and buildings can seriously impact your reception. Do use the Antenna Web site, and select your exact location (it will show you the direction and strength of signals that you can receive, and it takes the terrain into account. I trust the results as an RF engineer, having done similar studies for the state's PSAP radio systems.)

Finally, all signals are transmitted in the VHF and UHF bands as before, just on different frequencies than before.

[cellio]

When you say "rerun the scan on the box", which box do you mean? The converter box appears to be plug-and-play; is there something there I need to do?

My configuration is: antenna -> converter box -> splitter -> VCRs, TV. The VCRs have a scan function that I've used frequently while testing. I have also tried just stepping through channels with the TV.

[evil-baron.livejournal.com]

Please check the manual that came with the box. The remote control Menu should take you to the setup screen. Just select the channel scan function.

Who is the manufacturer for your box?

[cellio]

Got it, thanks! I had thought the scan was dynamic, which on reflection is more than I should have expected from a $40 box. I re-scanned and everything's fine now.

[evil-baron.livejournal.com]

One is glad to be of service.

(I'm just an old geek.)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

What, you mean you haven't been following the DTV transition, including the unpacking/repacking order, for the last 10 years?

The FCC has local call in centers that can help. Info available at www.fcc.gov. You local TV station;s websites will aslo have useful information.

[cellio]

I've been following it at the level of "what do I have to do", but apparently incompletely. :-) (Most of the talk has been "get your converters! get your converters! get your converters!". Yeah, I did that part...)

Thanks for the tips!