OK, got burned again last night when trying to record "24" in high-def and want to know if there's anything that can be done about it.

I will have a week or two of good luck recording HD. I even recorded a couple of nights of the winter Olympics, a good 3-4 hour long recording. No problems.

However, if I happen to try to record a channel with a weak or spotty signal, what will often happen is _that_ recording will show as if it's OK, but the _next_ and all subsequent recordings will result in the dreaded "B"-length file. I usually reboot at that point to reset things, not knowing any better way of doing it.

With "24" last night, the recording wasn't "B" length, but it was obviously wrong... only 2GB and the preview thumbnail was gray.

For important programs like "Lost" and "24" I've taken to making SD recordings with one of my PVR cards as a backup.

Pretty sure my backend is running R5A16. I've switched to recording transport streams in preparation for 0.19.

Will 0.19 have things that prevent this problem? Is there any way to check to see if the HD3000 has been hosed? Or is there a better way of resetting it rather than rebooting the entire back end?

Thanks as always.

I'm not sure what can be done. I use to get great reception on Fox but now it sucks. Browsing the avsforum.com forum, I see many folks in the LA area have the same issue. ABC for me has always been spotty. Perhaps a bigger better antenna or maybe an amp.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Thanks for the reply. The heck of it is that I'm no more than 4 miles away from all transmitters per antennaweb.org ... but I live at the bottom of a hill and there's lots of trees. So one wouldn't think I'd need an amp--I guess the problem is multipath.

My antenna is a Winegard yagi (9065 I think); the company I bought it from and who installed it also recommends a Channel Master 4221

http://www.fairfaxantenna.com/ffx010506/4221.html

The wife would just love that. She hates the current antenna... all I'd need is something that looks like it belongs on top of an embassy somewhere.

ceenvee and cesman,
Multipath is likely, in an urban/suburban setting. I'm no expert, but I've been instructed a bit: look for ghosting to the right, on analog channels. I've got my signal split between my HD3000 and an stand-alone LG LST-4200a box, so I can tune the analog VHF/UHF stations and observe. Yes, I get ghosts to the right. Sometimes two or three. That's multipath, likely off the trees (lots of trees) the neighbor's house (in the way, and he won't move it) and the ground (a ridge rises up sharply, about 300' away, between me and the towers).

My digital signal on the LG box is perfect though.

But with the HD3000, I get drop-outs on one station that makes it unwatchable, one other is "mostly ok", and the others are perfect.

I've tried moving the antenna (external CM 4221), but can't get far/high enough without needing amplification, which brings its own set of problems.

So what's the difference? I suspect that the LG box (4th-gen LG tuner) does a better job with multipath rejection. So my next card (I planned on two, all along) will be the AirStar-HD5000AV-PCI, wich has a 5th-generation LG tuner. Hopefully, that'll solve my multipath issues. I'll just tweak the card settings so that my problem channels are only used by the new card, and I should be in "HD dual-tuner OTA heaven".

If you have "ghosting to the right", this may do the trick for you as well.

Assuming the problem is multipath may not be the right course. It could still be a signal strength problem. The transmit site for ATSC signals is often different than the same station's conventional TV signal. Look at antennaweb very carefully and see if the station you're receiving is further away than you think.

Or, just go get an amplifier, put it in, and see if it helps. Amps are not very expensive. Try to get the amp as close to the antenna as possible. That way it helps overcome the loss of the cable between the antenna and your receiver.

I have two amps in my system -- one up by the antenna itself and another just ahead of my 3-way splitter which feeds my three pcHDTV cards. Each amp has about 10 dB gain.

BTW -- I think "24" is something less than full high-def. Last night's episode is about 3.2G on my system. If you really want it I could put it on a DVD for you (just a straight copy of the NUV file).

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Nope, according to antennaweb I'm very close (I view digital stations only and check which stations they're talking about). This makes sense given my house's location (in a close-in D.C. suburb).

I have an amp for my cable signal splitting. I guess it couldn't hurt to try an amp, although things I've read claim that amplifying a signal that doesn't need it introduces new signal problems. The guys who installed my antenna were mentioned in avsforum as the area experts and they didn't recommend an amp.

And thanks for the 24 offer. Of course, I would never EVER do anything like send or receive recorded digital programming, whether physically or via P2P networks, so I will have to decline your generous offer.

Got a few links to those amps?

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I have one of this style (different brand) up at the antenna:

Bullet amp

And I have one of these down by my KM Box (again, different brand):

Signal amp

I bought mine in town at places like Radio Shack and Fry's Electronics. Prices were a little higher in town but you have the option of returning it if it doesn't help.

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Thanks.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I recently tried putting an amplifier on my antenna -- a stealthtenna. I originally had an amp on it that was causing problems for me. Deciding that maybe it was due to it being a cheap pre-amp, I decided to go with the Cadillac of pre-amps (Channelmaster 7777 according to the avsforum guys in my area). Nope. It still overloaded and caused more problems than it was worth.

My problem is probably not signal strength (towers around 8 miles away on the Sears and Hancock towers) and I don't seem to have a problem with multipath, my UHF digital chans come in just grand. My problem is atmospheric interference on my lone VHF digital channel (WBBM--channel 2 in the analog world is on real channel 3 for digital). It comes in but I do see low bit errors (< 200 usually) and occasional tears in the pic (though never for long unless the weather's acting up). Of course putting the antenna on the roof where it belongs after the roofers get done this summer will probably fix that problem anyway.

Aovermy: so when you record something off of BBM, do you occasionally get the "B" length problem? And do you have any way of "clearing" your HD3000 short of rebooting the backend?

BTW, to thornsoft, if you get better results with the 5th gen tuner in the Airstar, let everyone know. Thanks.

Will do. I ordered it yesterday from our friends at mythic.tv

I can just see forums of 20 years ago containing the same type of problems but with analog OTA. Funny how history kinda does repeat itself even in technology....

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ceenvee703,

I've never seen this problem. My primary HD tuner is a air2pc (2nd gen), the HD3000 is my secondary HD tuner (and I have 1rst gen air2pc (0.2) as my tert and quat tuners--almost fell over dead of surprise when I actually got a recording on the quat during the holidays). I guess my WBBM signal has never been so god-awful that it's caused this problem. More often for me is that a failure to tune a bad channel (say WBBM when its snowing or tropico is working its magic) will cause the backend to go boom. Because my HD3000 is in its own slave backend, it isn't tragic if backend goes down. Although even this hasn't happened for a while.

I am not sure if this is helpful, but I hit the dreaded 0-length ("B") file problem occasionally, but I am not recording from OTA. I have Comcast cable in the bay area and I am using a Motorola DCT-6200 connected via firewire. My assumption is that the signal quality would be more consistant on cable vs. OTA, although I don't know this to be an absolute fact. If this is true, perhaps the issue is something other than signal quality / signal strength?

Marc