"Honey, why do you have a Hellmann's jar stuck 40 feet up in the air?" :-)

A friend of mine sent me this link:

[Link: technology.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca]

...and his comments: Those bastards are taking away the right to free TV!!

If they don't want to pay for all those transmitters, then the solution isn't to get the government to foot everyone's Rogers, Shaw or Bell bill, but to start true FTA broadcasts (and then help people get the dish/receiver).

Well it looks like retro TV RTN will return to the air again here’s article from the buffalo news [Link: buffalonews.com]

Nooooo not Weather Plus! The article fisrt made it sound like RTN will go on 2.3, but at the end it sound like they will drop Weather+ all together.

Glad to see RTN is coming back

Technically everyone thought W+ would die at the end of 2008. But it's still going, and may for a while longer...

Hi Jane! I'm late in greeting you but I've been spending all my free time over at the airsoft forum and looking for a job!
I'd like to compare notes if you replace your VHF/UHF antenna. I'm only five minutes away but if you end up getting CFTO-HD
consistently I'll end up envying you,all of which I posted on previously..CFTO-DT is hit and miss here due to being in the downtown core and being in an outlying area you stand a better chance. Again i only really rely on CFTO between 23:00 and 01:07. See my other posts. Though the reverse is true for WGRZ-DT...its consistently strong even in bad weather when others further north some times lose it. Keep posting!

Keaster...hogger... keep the reports coming......good to hear of RTN...not happy losing This!
crossing my fingers on W+!!

WGRZ-TV is listed as the Buffalo RTN affilliate at www.myretrotv.com

This shocks me: apparently Bell thinks just like you, Daniel!
Their 'freesat' proposal sounds way too good to be true, to me, however. Bell Canada offering something for free? Yeah, right. And just how do they expect to uplink all the existing local affiliates and have enough bandwidth without having to send up many more concurrent satellites? They don't even carry the Ontario Legislature channel for paying customers, let alone anymore local affiliates of CTV, Global, etc. Mind you, the Ontario Parliament folks are already webcasting, and likely that will eventually do away with all traditional simplex broadcast methods.

On a related note, I find a comment by Ivan "Fecal-matter" amusing in this piece of news.
"Cable is rolling in money and can obviously afford to underwrite the losses. Good for them."
Oh boo-hoo, CTV. Again, why did they buy up so many stations, specialty channels, etc. if they couldn't afford them in the firstplace?

I just put up a CM4228"HD" facing buffalo and I get everything. But I don't get anything from Toronto exept CFMT--that was to be expected.

My question: Is there anything I should know about before I do this: Mount two 4228's side by side on my tower; one facing Buffalo and one facing T.O. I already have in mind how I will mount it. I know that both my leads should be the same legnth to the splitter. There would be about 12" maybe more between the two.

I'm limited for space because this antenna will sit between the top of the tower and just below the rotor from my 'main' antenna.

Combining two antennas facing in different directions is tricky business and almost always ends up making the situation worse.

You know how the leads need to be the exact same length? That's because the timing for merging signals is crucial - and that's when we're talking about antennas aimed in the exact same direction.

When you combine multiple off-angle antennas, you throw all that crucial timing out the window. What happens is the off-angle antenna picks up a reflected/ghosted version of the strong signals on your main antenna, but those aren't received at the same moment. You know analog ghosting where you can see one or more shadows? Same effect - the same signal, but different time. So then you take this off-time signal, merge it with your pristine one, and end up making your good signal worse.

HDTV receivers can handle multipath better these days, but even if you were to attempt something like this I wouldn't suggest doing it with bowties since they're poor at multipath rejection in the first place.

Have you considered a rotor?

Daniel:

I've got two TV's and they were both fed off the same rotary antenna. I was hoping to get something for the second TV that I could mount below my rotor that would get everything from all directions. No such luck with the 4228, so I figured I could wire two together, but like you've said I may just run into more problems.

The store here in St. Catharines, where I bought the antenna from has two on the roof one pointing to Buffalo and one towards Toronto. He told me all he did was use a splitter backwards and ran the single cable into his TV. He said he's getting about 26 channels.

Or what if I removed half of the reflective backing? Would that allow the signal to pass through from the other side?

On another topic; I read that Shaw Communications has bought three of the "A" Channels CTV was selling for $1.00. People are saying they believe Shaw is doing this to prove that CTV isn't as cash strapped as they are leading on. Those stations were CHWI 16 Windsor, CKNX 8 Wingham and another station out west.

Keep your eye tomorrow on WNYB tomorrow (May 04), as they will be ceasing analog transmission and shifting from 27.1 digital to 26.1 digital. I know I can get a fringe signal of WNYB on 26.1 so maybe now with the shift to full power on the station I will pull it in, even if the programming doesn't interest me. I find most nights I can get the -LP repeater from Buffalo on channel 15 without a problem.

I've received WNYB a couple of times - literally... have to check out the change.

regarding WNYB reverting to channel 26:

- I had to rescan all my tuners
- It is much stronger at my location

They are also showing some oldies shows in the evenings now (Beverly Hillbillies, Lucy, Bonanza).