2009 HDTV conversion.

[wa2ise]

In the New York City area, pirate FM stations, mostly serving poor immigrant communities, keep popping up. Seems that there's at least 5 on the air at any one time. I can imagine something like this happening when analog TV sunsets, that pirate analog TV stations take to the air. There are probably many poor people who can't afford cable or satellite TV service, and can't afford a converter box. That's the pirates' audience. And then there's everyones' grandmothers.

Would a pirate pick a VHF channel, or one in UHF?

Back in 1977 or so, in Syracuse NY, someone one weekend did a pirate TV station, possibly the first one in the nation. On channel 7, an otherwise empty channel up there. An article in the New York Times about it apeared one day buried in the paper.

[kx250rider]

I got a new HD TV device which uses my LCD computer monitor for display, and the computer for controls. Although I'm very impressed with the high detail and super-sharp picture when watching HD broadcast (KTLA Morning Show in Los Angeles on Ch 5.1 via air reception), there is a serious COMPLAINT: The picture has a stop-n-start jerkiness to it, and the audio track is slightly out of sync with the picture. Kind of like an early internet video, but with a clear picture.

The HD tuner I got is a USB device, and my computer is a Core 2 Duo 6300 (IIRC) with 2 Gb RAM and a fairly high-end ASUS board. So I can't blame a lack of power in the computer. If I go out and buy a new TV with an ATSC tuner, will I have better results, or might this be a problem with how far I am from the transmitter? Is this inherently a characteristic of a USB TV tuner, or maybe the one I got is cheap?

Any opinions appreciated...

Charles

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I got a new HD TV device which uses my LCD computer monitor for display, and the computer for controls. Although I'm very impressed with the high detail and super-sharp picture when watching HD broadcast (KTLA Morning Show in Los Angeles on Ch 5.1 via air reception), there is a serious COMPLAINT: The picture has a stop-n-start jerkiness to it, and the audio track is slightly out of sync with the picture. Kind of like an early internet video, but with a clear picture.

The HD tuner I got is a USB device, and my computer is a Core 2 Duo 6300 (IIRC) with 2 Gb RAM and a fairly high-end ASUS board. So I can't blame a lack of power in the computer. If I go out and buy a new TV with an ATSC tuner, will I have better results, or might this be a problem with how far I am from the transmitter? Is this inherently a characteristic of a USB TV tuner, or maybe the one I got is cheap?

Any opinions appreciated...

Charles

You need to better aim your antenna at the KTLA transmitter to get a 70% or better signal so you don't suffer dropouts. Dig up a compass and see post above for help.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by sleddogman

You need to better aim your antenna at the KTLA transmitter to get a 70% or better signal so you don't suffer dropouts. Dig up a compass and see post above for help.

Thank you for the tip... I do hope it's a reception problem. I'll post again when I get a good UHF antenna up.

Charles

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I got a new HD TV device which uses my LCD computer monitor for display, and the computer for controls....COMPLAINT: The picture has a stop-n-start jerkiness to it, and the audio track is slightly out of sync with the picture. ....
Charles

Jerkiness is not normal for a digital TV - blame it on trying to use a device (computer) with an operating system (Windows) which was never meant to do real-time video and audio, although many people are trying to make it happen. Computers that are sold as AV devices should not do this, as the manufacturer should have checked the compatibility of everything; but when you plug an external device into an existing machine, most bets are off. I have an ATI digital video card in my desktop machine that I built about 16 months ago (ASUS MB and AMD CPU), and it works fine with no freezes or skips -BUT it always puts up a warning message saying that there MAY not be enough computing power for maximum video quality, blah blah. Then it works fine for live viewing anyway. I have noticed that the RECORDED video (MPEG4) is not as good as the direct viewing, but I don't don't know if that's related to the warning message. I suspect not, as it doesn't skip or freeze, just has typical compression artifacts that lead me to believe the commpression algorithm/parameters could be better.

Mismatch of video and audio (lipsync) is a serious issue which the industry is devoting many man years to fix. It is not just due to the receiver (although it may be in some cases), but also due to the fact that audio and video take entirely different paths in modern TV plants, with different processing delays that have to be matched at each step. If you pay attention these days, you can find analog broadcasts with lipsync problems too. Sooo - if it's a constant problem with your setup, at least part of it may be your setup - but it could be the broadcaster - hard to tell.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I got a new HD TV device which uses my LCD computer monitor for display, and the computer for controls. Although I'm very impressed with the high detail and super-sharp picture when watching HD broadcast (KTLA Morning Show in Los Angeles on Ch 5.1 via air reception), there is a serious COMPLAINT: The picture has a stop-n-start jerkiness to it, and the audio track is slightly out of sync with the picture. Kind of like an early internet video, but with a clear picture.

The HD tuner I got is a USB device, and my computer is a Core 2 Duo 6300 (IIRC) with 2 Gb RAM and a fairly high-end ASUS board. So I can't blame a lack of power in the computer. If I go out and buy a new TV with an ATSC tuner, will I have better results, or might this be a problem with how far I am from the transmitter? Is this inherently a characteristic of a USB TV tuner, or maybe the one I got is cheap?

Any opinions appreciated...

Charles

The problem could be with your antenna, but it could be other things as well. What tuner did you get? What OS do you use? There are plenty of tweaks that can make things much better on Windows machines. I have only watched and recorded digital TV with Windows computers for the last two years, and have used numerous other PC-based digital tuners since late 2000. My current HTPC (Home Theater PC) has two cheap USB HD tuners bought at Fry's for US$30 each (so I can record on one while I watch on the other), and they work fine.

If you have no other digital tuners besides the computer one, the basic way to check your antenna is to see how well it works on analog UHF stations. If those are not pretty clear and stable, you will likely have problems with digital. If they are good, then we need to suspect the settings of your computer. (I got good reception of at least one or two channels with a little rod antenna and a Dvico Fusion 5 USB tuner on my Pentium M 1.5 GHz laptop in a hotel near LAX on one visit.)