Just grumping (skippable)

[altivo]

It's Wednesday. It's exceedingly hot for so early in the year. The air conditioning at work is flaky and randomly variable. Boo.

This morning the nest of swallows in the barn disgorged about five immature hatchlings. I think it was the heat. They are big enough to have feathers, but can't fly yet. That means they sort of crowd each other in the nest until they are hanging over the edges. I suspect the heat forced them to move farther apart to avoid overheating and some fell to the floor. Cats would have gotten them before too long, so Gary moved them all into the blackberry brambles outside the barn door. Since the parent birds were divebombing him as he did this, we assume they know where their excess offspring went and will feed them there until they fledge. Assuming the cats don't find them all.

Commiserated with the boss about television. She lives closer to Rockford than I do, and ends up with even fewer choices than I have because Chicago is beyond reach for her antenna. However, further analysis suggests that if I can point my antenna at bearing 256° I should get four fairly good signals. Counting their subchannels that will include ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, MyTV, and Accuweather. No PBS or TBN, alas, though there's a sliver of a chance that TBN will come in. The nearest TBN station is about 5 degrees away from that bearing. Obstacle is that my creaky rotator won't go to that bearing. We can probably reorient either the antenna or the rotator itself so as to hit that point and give up another useless direction, though.

Comments

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

TBN? o.O

As in Jan and Paul Crouch TBN?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what's on TBN these days. Didn't have it in Chicago, and haven't looked for it since moving out here. I'm just operating there on the principle that any kind of variety in the wasteland that is broadcast television is better than no variety. Alternatives are essential.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

TBN is Trinity Broadcast Network and is the largest Christian television network. I believe it was founded by Jan and Paul Crouch along with Jim and Tammy Faye.

To be honest I do not know what sort of programming they push out but I do know that Paul and Jan are often seen on there sitting on their gold chairs in their hugely overdone studio telling you how they and God need your money.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You're right. I was thinking of TNN or TNT, rather than TBN, but the station in question is indeed a TBN affiliate. OK, no loss there. As you might expect, I'm not exactly up on television stuff, since I only use it for news and weather.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

I suspected as much. I really didn't have you pegged as the kind of person that would consider watching a televangelist even though they can be quite amusing at times.

Now as for weather, one of the minor benefits of digital TV is usually you get a dedicated news/weather feed from the networks. I noticed that in Dallas when I played around with broadcast TV for a short time.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep. I've seen it as a subchannel on one of the Chicago stations that comes in here for short intervals but not steadily enough to use.

One of the Rockford stations has an Accuweather subchannel, in fact, and I hope to be able to receive that once we change the antenna configuration.

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

you know, i WAS going to send you a box for free...but you bought one the same day i went to message you about it!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the thought. It's not really as big as my commentary might make it sound. We really don't watch television at all except for the news occasionally. I'm just irritated by the bureaucratic nonsense over it all, and the pointlessness. I really think the change was made without any regard for rural areas and with a lot of interest in making money for the electronics manufacturing sector, who were pushing HDTVs and not getting enough sales.

[cozycabbage.livejournal.com]

So... how is it digital TV if you're using an antenna? Or is the signal just encoded?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The signal is digital, yes. Just like wireless internet is digital.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Rotator? You mean you can actually move your aerial on the fly? This might be due to a difference in the way things work. In the UK ALL channels are broadcast from twenty or thirty transmitter towers./ I am willing to be that in the US each station has it's own transmitter and as such you need to orient your receiving equipment to that individual transmitter. Am I correct?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Remember the difference in distances here, and the fact that I'm not very close to any major city. Television stations are usually located in or near large urban populations. They do tend to cluster their transmitting antennae at optimal locations, so the tops of tall buildings are often loaded with them (along with other various radio services.)

In theory, with a good enough receiver and tall enough antenna, I would receive signals here from Milwaukee, Madison, Rockford, and Chicago. Each of those cities has multiple stations. In Chicago, most of the transmissions come from the tops of just two or three tall buildings downtown. In places like Madison, where there aren't a lot of high rise buildings, the towers may be spread around the outskirts of the city.

To the urban dweller, it doesn't matter because the signal is so strong that the antenna can be multidirectional. Out here, though, you need a directional gain antenna in order to receive a usable signal. Sometimes a special amplifier must be added as well. So yes, we have a "steerable array" antenna that was installed on the house shortly after it was built in the 1970s. Goodness knows I'd never have spent the money for it, but it was already here. It has a rotor and a beam antenna about six feet long and probably has a gain in the realm of 15 db. A remote control inside the house can, theoretically, direct the antenna at any point around the horizon. This is no longer working perfectly, but does function to some degree.

Rockford is at azimuth 275° while Chicago is at 121° and Madison is about 290° There are also single stations at some other points in various directions, such as Aurora or Freeport. In order to pick up most of these, the antenna must be turned in the appropriate direction.

Analog television was quite tolerant of weak signals, so an approximate aim was adequate. Digital television is very, very picky and just doesn't work unless the signal is fairly strong, so aiming the antenna becomes critical. Tiny tweaks are needed between individual stations in Chicago, even though they all lie within about one degree of angle. Rockford is much closer, so the signals are stronger and the aim is less critical. Madison is the most distant and I've not been able to receive it at all.

Much different from when I lived near Detroit as a kid. Back then we had four stations, period. Most people had the same kind of aerial, that had two tuned elements. One of these was pointed at channels 2, 4, and 7, who all transmitted from nearly the same spot, and the second could be separately aimed to pick up channel 9 from across the river in Windsor.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

So yes, we have a "steerable array" antenna that was installed on the house shortly after it was built in the 1970s

Aye..that;s what I was getting at. What a fantastically brilliant idea. I am used to the things just being set once, screwed into place and then moving. For reasons I explained earlier. :D

Digital television is very, very picky

I've been viewing digital TV for some time now. I must admit I am not overly keen on it. While a selection of more than 5 channels has a novelty value for a bit, it soon wears off when you see the quality of output deteriorate in front of your eyes. I can almost give you an exact year when TV moved from watchable to total dross.

Then there is the quality of the picture. Widely advertised as being superior to analogue I was very disappointed by the highly visible compression artifacts on some channels (Virgin 1 is APPALLING for this.) Woe betide you if you're viewing something like "The Hunt for Red October." The shades of sea water are supposed to change gradually. Not all of a sudden!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and of course, everything there in the UK is, or at least was, run by the BBC so yes, very likely all the transmitters and antennae were in the same place for any given region. Here radio and television stations are all private commercial ventures that are merely licensed by the government and set up their equipment wherever they can find a usable site.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, yes. I often wonder what might have been if it had all been different. If Winston Churchill had been reelected in 1945 instead of the Labour party. No welfare state for a start. I'd have probably died of rickets at 8. :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Rickets doesn't usually kill people, it just deforms them. If a nutritional disease were to get you in a developed country, I'd expect it to be beri-beri or something like that. And likely caused by someone's ignorance of nutritional needs rather than by a lack of available foods to prevent it. Still, yes, I get your meaning. The US has a terrible mortality rate among young children even today. The cost and unavailability of health care is to blame, along with a lot of persistent ignorance and misguided fears and religious attitudes.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

The point I was making was more along the lines of deregulated telecoms, but I kind of went off on one there with another example of what might have been different. :D

Sometimes I forget the point I am trying to make. i hope you find a way of receiving the stations you want.

[doco.livejournal.com]

I find your whole series of DTV posts very amusing. Reminds me a bit of the late 80s and these strange rotating devices and massive antennae you would find in the catalogues of the time. :)

Then again, the only time I've been without any television reception at all was when I was living in a flat where the cable TV had been disconnected and the DVB switchover had already taken place save for one transmitter that was a bit away, so all I could get was some patchy WDR reception and a near-unwatchable Dutch channel that slinked in from beyond the border. And that just was because I couldn't be bothered to go out and buy a DVB receiver as I was living off pot noodles at the time.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The thing is in Europe you rarely have to deal with the distances we do here. The nearest transmitter tower to here is about 60 km away. On air signals are chancy.

There is no cable television except in cities and towns. It just doesn't exist.

Satellite dishes are available, but too costly for the tiny amount of television I use. Particularly since they require a two year contract and a huge installation fee due to the nature of my property and surrounding terrain.

People who just can't live without television pay the money. Those who don't much care do without.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

*pets your nose* Sorry about the lousey AC at work, its terribly trying to work when the climate is muggy.

The AC and ventilation has never worked right in our building since the damn thing was built in 85

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Cooling off some now, thank goodness. And at least it's drying out. By Sunday it's supposed to be quite pleasant for a change. Good thing, too, with that outdoor demonstration scheduled. (Last year we had sudden thunderstorms and a tornado watch for it.)