No worries at all, 2-1 NBC, I like the football games on that channel. And the HD quality is really good.
I posted that info to show how much the Pre-Amp made a difference for me. I have no rotor, so I kept going on my roof to manually adjust the antenna by turning the mast, then I scanned the channels over and over again till I got what I wanted.

Those 33s would most likely be the result of random corrupt reception of WGRZ's PSIP (NBC-2).

It's possible that OMNI and Sun are now drowning Global out, especially if you're not aimed directly at the CN tower.

I've noticed, the more I aim my antenna away from the CN Tower and toward Buffalo, the better reception I gain from those channels off the CN Tower along with Buffalo exluding Global HD. I would prefer Global vs. OMNI & Sun. So I am working on it. Global HD's upgrading the signal strength to 100kW, that should help out allot.

On a slightly different topic, how difficult would it be to build one of those amps, and where could one get ahold of a set of plans?

Good question, I think the plans might still be at my mother's house in havana , no reason for her to throw anything away of course. Will have to ask her to look for it next time I call her and wait until someone comes from Havana. In general is cheaper in NA just to buy one than to build it one's self. At such high frecuencies even the spacing between the printed circuit elements is critical, almost everything is critical. Small transistors can at least go through cuban customs , a UHF amplifier , in most cases no way!. So we had no choice, over here is different.

Think about it even between building a Gray Hoverman antenna or buying a cheap chinese knockoff antenna for 25 cad that also works most people find it easier to do the later.

Hoping some ppl in Waterloo can let me know if I'm unrealistic or just incompetant.

Last weekend I put a DB8 up on my roof, with a CM pre-amp, into a new 42" LG. No splitters, etc. We live in north Waterloo near Laurel Creek Conservation Area and I used a compass (and TV Fool) to point it straight to Toronto.

The only channels I've been able to pick up are CBC and CHCH, both rock solid. CTV came in for a few seconds one night, with signal strength at only 30% if I'm lucky, which doesn't seem to be nearly enough.

Based on others' experiences, should I be able to get CTV in HD in Waterloo, or is this wishful thinking? No obstructions in the way and the antenna is about 30 ft off the ground.

Would switching to a CM 4228HD antenna or using a more expensive preamp make a significant difference? It's not like the image in pixelated, I'm not picking anything up at all. If everyone else in the area is getting CTV, I assume there's something wrong with the antenna, or my setup.

Any thoughts?

Ignore the post above. Wrong thread. Apologies.

Well, its raining and WUTV-DT is breaking up a lot on 2 1/2 Men, hope it doesn't happen tomorrow
during Bones and Fringe.

EDIT: Well the next night's reception of Bones and Fringe was excellent! [the parasite ep]

Really? Last night while it was raining heavy at times, for some reason I've had the best reception with all my Digital Channels I've ever had before. I was even getting Global HD with minimal break-ups. This morning before work, again I checked and reception was in the strong.

Don’t know if this has anything to do with the rain, but even 2-1 NBC was giving me a 60 to 75% strong signal vs. what I usually get at around 55.

No problems with Fox for me tonight.

At UHF frequencies there isn't a lot of attenuation due to rain. What it likely happening is the difference in air densities is more pronounced during the rain and bending the signal more downwards. This is known as K factor in radio frequency circles.

Well that explains it, after the rain fall, my signal strengths in a few of my channels went back to normal which is still quite good anyway.

Any thoughts to what is going to happen after Feb 2010 when everybody goes Digital?

who is going digital after feb 2010? , US went last june and Canada will do it Aug 2011 I beleive. Better quality TV for some and no TV for others , other than that nothing else will happen, lol.

The US Government mandated that everything must be Digital by the end of Feb 2010, so if you are getting analog signals Free OTA, then after Feb 2010 you will no longer get them.

This is why I am asking whether we will start getting a lot more digital channels after Feb 2010? I know Canada is starting to convert everything into Digitial.

It's supposed to be August 2011, but at that point it really depends.

For cable (I include satelite here) not much will change, the cable company will likely take in a digital signal, convert to analog, then send that down the existing wire to analog sets.  At least at first, since it takes extra equipment to do the conversion, expect the cable companies to go "digital only" after a while reversing the trend, traditional basic cable stations will be sent in Clear QAM, and you will need a set top box to work with analog receivers.  Then it becomes similar to OTA.

For Over-The-Air, it's going to mean either a set top digital to analog conversion box, or a new TV.  Set top boxes, where available run about $100, which becomes the deciding factor.  Something like a 3 year old 60" Plasma that cost $2,000 when new and is still working perfectly might be a candidate for a set top box.  A 9 year old 20" bedroom TV might be replaced, and the old B&W you inherited from grandma, and you leave in the spare room for when relatives visit, may simply be retired. 

What will be interesting is the VCR, some set top boxes can be set to come on at a certain time, and the VCR is then set to come on and record, some set top boxes can not be  set that way, so I expect a lot of VCR's will be retired/replaced as well.  I have one that is a candidate for such, and the game plan is to replace it in 2010 with a home built PVR.