bad weather and 'failed to receive broadcast' message

[twcinnh]

My in-laws reception is OK until windy, wet weather arrives when they receive the 'failed to receive broadcast message'.

The house is low in a hilly area with a good number of trees. Prior to digital they had no problem with the antenna mounted in the attic (hence the 15 foot height of the antenna), but with digital they have the problem described above.

The antenna has been there over 30 years and worked well until digital. Could this be an antenna problem and is there an antenna or other device which might help?

Any help is appreciated.

Tom

(tvfool analysis: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...b7c8b08c248531)

[mtownsend]

Hello and welcome!

Your signals are very strong, so it does not look like you should be having any problems with lack of signal. To the contrary, you might be having too much signal overloading an amp somewhere in your setup. Do you have any amps?

If not, the next most likely problem is that the strong signals are bouncing around a lot and causing extra signal reflections (a.k.a. multipath) to make their way into your receiver. In the days of analog television, this would show up as "ghosts" in the picture. With digital television, you'll never see any ghosts, but the extra signal images can make it much more difficult to properly decode the stream of digital information. A good way to combat multipath is to use a directional antenna. Directional antennas are more selective of the signals they allow into your receiver, and this has the effect of delivering a cleaner signal to your receiver to decode.

What kind of setup do you have now? If we start with understanding your current configuration, it may help us figure out what steps to try first to get a cleaner configuration.

[twcinnh]

The current setup is an antenna in the attic.

It looks like something from Radio Shack and is attached to a rotor. (This is my father-in-laws house.) It has worked very well for over 30 years with analog. After finding the strongest signals for analog it wasn't moved for years, until the move to digital.

Now, the signal is good until the weather is bad. Especially on windy days. My concern is the house is in a hilly neighborhood and is probably the lowest with hills and trees around. During the recent near hurricane winds (with rain and snow) in the Boston area there was little reception with the "failed to receive broadcast" message received. As the wind died down some stations came back faster than others.

Would these conditions disrupt digital signals that much? Especially since reception was so strong prior to digital. (You can imagine they aren't very impressed with digital so far. I should mention my in-laws are 89 and almost 89.)

[mtownsend]

The channels at the top of your tvfool report are extremely strong, so you shouldn't be having any kind of trouble with signals being too weak. With signals at these levels, you could probably pick them up with just a paper clip!

It sounds like the blowing trees might be causing moving multipath that is making things difficult for your receiver. TV signals do bounce off of trees, and if they start moving, this can cause the signal after-images to move around. This makes it quite hard for the receiver to lock on to the digital data stream and produce a picture.

Your current antenna is probably somewhat directional. The first thing I would try is to re-aim the antenna. A directional antenna might be able to pick out a cleaner signal path that is not disturbed as much by the blowing trees. The signals are bouncing all over the environment (hills, buildings, trees, etc.) and the "cleanest" path might not always be the one with the antenna pointed straight at the transmitters. Your sensitive area in front of your antenna is probably about 60 degrees wide, and if you can use that to isolate a clean signal path, it will make it easier for your receiver to stay locked onto the channel.

I'd recommend taking a compass up into the attic for a visual inspection and start with the antenna pointed straight at the Boston stations (around compass heading 210 degrees). If you notice channels having a hard time maintaining channel lock, try turning the antenna away from that heading in small increments (do at least one channel change each time you move the antenna). Use the antenna rotator so that you don't need to keep going to the attic. See if the channels gain any stability.

It will take a bit of trial and error, but this might help you find the "sweet spot" that gives you the best stability across most channels without having to change any of the equipment you already have.



If none of this helps, you may want to try a different receiver for testing. The ability of a receiver to deal with multipath depends on how well their equalizer (multipath canceling circuitry) is designed. Equalizer quality can vary a lot, so one receiver might handle the situation a lot better than another. If you can borrow a converter box or some other receiver for testing, you might see if one device does any better than the other.

What is the make/model of the receiver you are using now?