ATSC 3.0 Finally Coming to SF Bay Area - beth7808

[beth7808]

I live in San Jose. This has been so frustrating. My reception of channel 7 has gotten so much worse since the ATSC 3.0 rollout. We cannot get the 3.0 channels and so I feel that my Flex purchase was a waste and now I can't record Jeopardy (which is the only thing my husband wants).

We are also in the shadow of the secondary broadcast location at the top of Monument Peak and KGO. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think the next step is a gigantic rooftop antenna.

[jasonl]

What antenna are you using currently and where is it installed (roof, attic, indoors in a window facing towards SF, indoors not in a window facing SF, etc.)? And what part of San Jose?

[gtb]

I live in San Jose. This has been so frustrating. My reception of channel 7 has gotten so much worse since the ATSC 3.0 rollout. We cannot get the 3.0 channels and so I feel that my Flex purchase was a waste and now I can't record Jeopardy (which is the only thing my husband wants).

We are also in the shadow of the secondary broadcast location at the top of Monument Peak and KGO. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think the next step is a gigantic rooftop antenna.

Sadly, Hi-VHF from Sutro (KRON) has a very very mixed reception capability in the San Jose area (because San Jose, being the largest city in the Bay Area, covers so much actual area, one should either provide exact location, or use something like rabbitears with ones exact location to see what reception you might have, and what options you have, and what you need (I'll would guess a 100M tower with channel 7 deep fringe antenna would work :-) even as it is not practical for most), as it does in most of the south bay.

The "good" news is that with the use of the Sutro transmitter being converted to a lighthouse, KRON content was distributed across a number of other translators (on UHF), some of which have reasonably good reception in the South Bay (including San Jose), which often just need a rescan on the tuners (although you may still not be able to receive the broadcasts from Sutro).

[baldursgate]

I have this issue in Downtown SJ. I'm on the first floor of a pretty dense area, indoor antenna only, so I keep my expectations low. But I'm able to get 102 channels, with all the major networks having a ~70% or better signal except ABC on KGO.

There's a lot of interference around me especially during the day, so it comes through better at certain times. But the 7.x channels sometimes don't even show up on a scan.

[tjp]

I also live in SF Bay Area (a little North of SJ). My Flex gets 110-120 channels using a flat indoor antenna. Have you experimented with antenna placement? What really helped me get better reception was following "The Antenna Man" on YouTube. He has a video where he suggests purchasing's an inexpensive ATSC1.0 TV tuner that happens to feature a persistent signal strength overlay on the screen. This is mush easier to use than the Flex's signal strength. So, I used this method and moved the antenna around. I was shocked how much the signal strength varied. Sometimes by moving the antenna just a few inches. In my case it's an exterior wall that faces the direction of Sutro Tower. For some reason, there was one hot spot on the wall where the strength jumped up by about 20% - yet just a few inches in any other direction resulted in a loss of that boost. Go figure.

[removed by moderator - see forum rules]

[nickk]

I also live in SF Bay Area (a little North of SJ). My Flex gets 110-120 channels using a flat indoor antenna. Have you experimented with antenna placement? What really helped me get better reception was following "The Antenna Man" on YouTube. He has a video where he suggests purchasing's an inexpensive ATSC1.0 TV tuner that happens to feature a persistent signal strength overlay on the screen. This is mush easier to use than the Flex's signal strength. So, I used this method and moved the antenna around. I was shocked how much the signal strength varied. Sometimes by moving the antenna just a few inches. In my case it's an exterior wall that faces the direction of Sutro Tower. For some reason, there was one hot spot on the wall where the strength jumped up by about 20% - yet just a few inches in any other direction resulted in a loss of that boost. Go figure.

The HDHomeRun way to do that is to use the HDHomeRun Config GUI utility (Windows). You can select any physical channel and get real time signal strength, and more importantly signal quality information.