I appreciate the resources provided here and the volunteers so willing to help. Retired IT guy here. No stranger to technical issues but I am new to OTA TV.
First question: I am not familiar with Real vs Virtual TV channels. Why can't channel numbers increment sequentially as they did in the analog days? It seems really odd that my old channel 5 is now on UHF 48.
Second question: is there any economical (cheap!) way to measure channel strength in real time? That would solve so many problems right away! Pro gear is out of my price range. (A cheap tuner might work)
Third question: How do you accurately indicate signal problems in a digital system? The signal strength indicators on my two TVs seem rather useless since anything less than 85 percent is simply not watchable. The three channels I do get read a solid 100 percent yet the picture and audio are somewhat impacted by sporadic loss of audio and macro-blocking.
I am located only about 15 miles due east of Seattle but there is a significant ridge in between. The ridge is less than two miles away so I am in rather deep shadow. I am using the Monoprice HDA-5700 amplified antenna which is pointed due east to the Seattle cluster of major network transmitters. It is mounted 23 feet above street level on my roof. I have 50 feet of brand new quad shield RG-6 running to the entry point for the house cabling. The power for the antenna is inserted there before being connected to the two way splitter and the existing ~50 foot built in house cables. I lease the house and I doubt the HOA would allow a full sized array.
I do receive KOMO-TV 38 (4.1) and the position of the antenna with 100 percent signal strength correlates correctly with the coverage map. I do get occasional "stuttering" though, which is disconcerting and not fun to watch.
I am not picking up any other channels out of Seattle except for 33.1 on one TV which is surprising since the signal is coming in from 18 degrees south of where the antenna is pointed and - I really don't care about ION TV.
I suspect the real issue here is channels 13.1 and 20.1 which are 150 degrees off axis from my antenna, are line of sight, but come in 100 percent anyway. Can my amplified antenna be overloaded by those two?
I would like to pick up the NBC, CBS and PBS affiliates but wonder why I do get ABC (KOMO) and not any of them.
The TV Signal Analysis Results are here.
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...e1c68f62c268ee
Monoprice HDA05700 amplified antenna.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_i...seq=1&format=2
Photo of my installation:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxY...it?usp=sharing