Hi,
I have a new OTA setup for my HTPC and I have a hard time getting a reliable signal for all my channels at once resulting in regular sound dropouts of 1-2 seconds which is becoming very annoying.
Here is my
tvfool signal report.
My setup:
- In an apartment on first floor (no outdoor antenna option)
- New and cheap RCA indoor amplified HDTV antenna; model ANT1251 (Rabbit ear/loop style)
- Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 dual digital and dual analog tuner (this one ain't cheap)
- Athlon X2 2.6GHz + 4GB RAM + 780G chipset (Radeon HD3200)
- Windows 7 Media Center
As you can see, I am less than 4 miles away from my four desired local HD TV stations (I don't care for the U.S. ones) which spans over 65 degrees, not counting future stations which will grow that angle even more. Omni-directional antenna seems to be my only option.
When I look at signal strength in WinMCE, I see them very strong (100%) and occasional drops to 0%; this is very correlated to my sound dropouts explained earlier.
What would you suggest to:
- Gain a strong signal for all my four channels at once
- Avoid dropouts of usually very strong signals?
I tried several locations in the living room which has a window with a "LOS" of all the transmitters (though, there are quite a lot of 4-stories or more buildings effectively eliminating those direct LOS). Results vary, but my fundamental problem stays.