Hughes HTL-HD can't receive Channel 32.1???

At a guess: the signal path from the transmitter antenna to your receiving antenna may have enough multipath-reflection components, that the ATSC demodulator / signal processor used in the Hughes converter may be unable to handle the job of echo-cancellation and recover a good echo-free signal.

If rotating the antenna isn't sufficient, then you might need an antenna which is more directional.

As a sanity check, try taking one of the converters to a different location - one with a clear line-of-sight to the transmitter position - and see if you can get a sync-up from there.

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As Dave wrote, maybe the chipset is older and can't deal with multipath so well.

Yes: It takes a long time, several seconds, for a DTV box or receiver to latch onto a data stream. You can't just zip the rotor through to see what'll pop up like in the good old NTSC days. Move it 10 degrees, wait

10sec, move another 10 degrees, wait 10sec, and so on. Maybe it sticks at some point.

DTV out here has huge problems with multipath. We have a top-notch antenna but lose digital channels at random. Analog is fine but only until early next year :-(

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Extremely annoying. You can watch a ghosty picture when a rain storm passes thru. But digital just goes away. I fear there'll be riots in the street come next February...or maybe there just won't be enough of us non-cable people left to mount a riot.

Never thought about it before, but why didn't they just turn off broadcast completely? Can't be feasible to run a transmitter if there are only a few hundred of us left and we're too cheap to buy anything advertised.

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It's quite possible the problem is at the station.

If you have the same problem with more than one receiver of the same model

-- but other models work fine, on the same antenna -- then it does suggest there's something about the bitstream the Hughes receivers don't like. Possibly, the station is missing a metadata table or it's configured wrong.

What happens if you punch in channel 33.1 instead of 32.1? (33 is the station's RF channel, sometimes if the remapping is screwed up it works if you punch directly to the RF frequency)

How about if you try 32.2? (it's quite possible they aren't transmitting a 32.2, but if they are and it works then the problem is definitely with the station's configuration)

I wouldn't rule out calling the station and asking for Engineering. They may not be helpful -- but they might.

That's what I said all along. Not really riots but the phones at congress representatives will probably ring like crazy and with mighty miffed callers. I am shocked how many neighbors in this area of typically well educated people are blissfully unaware of what's going to happen. Seriously, one engineer (!) looked me in the eyes "Converter box? What converter box?"

Some day it'll probably all end up as Internet streams anyhow. Most people have a reliable web connection but their OTA television connection will become a whole lot less reliable in February 2009.

We had that yesterday. Again. Wanted to watch the news, clear digital picture but with the usual "painted faces". Then the smoke from the wildfires shifted a bit and, poof, gone. Switched back to analog to see the news.

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Regards, Joerg

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Though if you don't have cable TV, cable broadband is not only unlikely but probably ridiculously expensive... and you're less likely to have DSL... in which case getting radio over your web connection is not really an option, let alone TV.

We have the three biggest networks on low-band analog here. Their digital signals are more reliable (and look a LOT better) than their analogs. Likewise CW-58, Ion, and one each religious and shopping channel. The only one that's *less* reliable in digital is MyNetwork.

Well, we have DSL. About one mile farther out begin some areas where people who move there have to decide that they don't need all this newfangled stuff. About another 100 miles or so east you might even have to accept that there ain't no singing wires, no phones, nada.

Very different here. The only analog one that sometimes goes into multipath beyond recognition is FOX. All others are always viewable with slight to modest ghosting. On digital the average is about 50% of channels being flaky or "no signal", meaning beyond the digital cliff. Unless they increase the power after Feb 2009 we'll be quite TV deprived. It's ok for us but some neighbors might become rather irate and vocal about that. Whoever is in political office early next year will need a lot of Maalox.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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