Digital TV Technical Discussion

As Radiohead said, the masthead amp should be on the mast close to the antenna, to allow max signal quality into it.

Being in the roof will reduce the life, but not to the extent yours has been. If yours truly did fail, (I’m not certain it did, I’ve never seen a failing/failed one give those symptoms, not to say that they don’t).
If yours was only 4 years old, it’s just made it passed the 3 year warranty, like I said before, it’s not uncommon for a Kingray amp to go for 15-30 years.

I’ve replaced 10-15 year old ones literally over the road from the beach due to some corrosion. I think I’ve only ever replaced one about 5 years old & that was because more outlets were added & it wasn’t high enough gain, I refused it on another job, (gave it to the customer for free).

The masthead amps are in a weatherproof sealed box, small amounts of air & moisture get in, but it’s so small amount, it takes a long time to start corroding things & effect it’s operation.

Admittedly these are not in north Queensland, but i’ve put masthead amps in roofs before & to my knowledge they’re still going more than 5 years later.

Splitters of the old screw & saddle type design, installed under houses, give far more corrosion problems, than masthead amps.

I’d be interested to know the signal strengths at the antenna & outlets, (before & now), what was the old masthead amp model, how high or low was the adjustable gain set (if it had it), & how high or low is the adjustable gain set on the new one, they’re questions I’d like answers to, but not something you can answer unfortunately.

New power supply needed, quite possibly, they do fail in short periods of time, (I’ve had at least one fail within a 6 week period of being installed). I had one at my old house that was 11 years old & still going strong when I left though.
New masthead amp, I’m still not sure was needed, but honestly can’t say from here, without knowing more information.

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2 thing I can think of , off the top of my head

  1. We had an issue when an appliance outside (near our solar hot water ground tank) was causing the powerbox to keep tripping the safety switch. The power went on and off about 20 times before we figured out it was the circulator pump on our solar hot water and removed that . Whether this damaged the appliance in the roof or not I don’t know if it was sensitive to that.

  2. When we had the cyclone here in Central Qld , I can understand it wrecking the physical antenna. It was blowing a lot , wind moving at cyclone strength as well as rain blowing sideways. With the masthead amp, all I can think of is that when the power cut out during the cyclone (brown out was mentioned here). The power didn’t come back on for 5 days and then flickered when it did come back on as it did when it went off during the cyclone.

  3. The manhole after the cyclone in the garage was moved after the cyclone so I don’t know if any wind had gotten into the roof and moved things around and broken anything.

All i know is the old amp was a Kingray. Not sure what model unfortunately but I hear how good they are though.

Before the cyclone, yes it occasionally had signal issues but after it got progressively worse.

Power supply- Power injector behind the tv ? That was also replaced.

The sentence about having problems prior to the cyclone say it all.

Sounds like the old installation was sitting too close to the digital cliff edge (Google digital cliff edge if you’re not sure what I mean).

Maybe there’s not much difference between the old & new antennas (don’t know what you had before?), whereas the new one should’ve been a much higher gain antenna, & maybe the old masthead amp, wasn’t enough gain to overcome the system losses?

The new masthead might give you that bit more signal strength at the TV, but if the signal quality isn’t at the antenna, then the signal quality at the TV won’t be any better & you’re still going to have some issues as the weather changes & the signal reflects/refracts through the air differently.

Unlike the old analogue days, amps don’t improve the signal, with digital a poor signal in, will give you a stronger poor signal out. 15 years after DTV started, there’s still a lot of installers don’t understand that, (we’ve got a weak signal, I’ll just stick an amp inline. That doesn’t work). If you’ve got a weak signal, you have to fix that at/with the antenna, amps in digital installations are only to overcome distribution signal losses in splitters/cables, & signals shouldn’t be amplified more than the losses.

There could’ve been some damage due to power surges that didn’t help, but usually damaged electronics don’t gradually decline, they fail there & then. Also if an amps working, it doesn’t just amplify one channel & another partly but not the others (like you described), it’ll amplify all or none. If it’s not working, it won’t pass any signals through it, so you’ll have no reception at all.

From what you’ve said, my diagnosis, without having access to the installation & signal strengths, is: Your received signal levels at the antenna are unbalanced i.e. some stronger than others (not uncommon in weak/distant signal areas). In most normal conditions all channels are above the cliff edge, but some not far enough above it. When the conditions change (which is normal) the ABC is still above the cliff edge, WIN is just on the cliff edge, (maybe there, maybe not), & the other channels drop below the cliff edge.
It is recommended to have at the outlet, or at the input to an amplifier (if any), a buffer of +6dB or more above the cliff edge on all channels, it seems like you don’t have this buffer.

I’d like to say your problems are now all sorted, but I don’t think they are, I think you’ll still have more reception issues & may yet need another new antenna?

Keep us posted on any further issues if you have them.

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I thought I’d post an update on the MPEG-4 transition, based on what TSReader is telling me for the Sydney and Wollongong broadcasts:

  • Ten: 1/6 (17%)
  • ABC: 0/4 (0%)
  • SBS: 0/5 (0%)
  • SC10: 0/5 (0%)
  • Prime: 3/6 (50%)
  • Seven: 3/6 (50%)
  • WIN: 4/7 (57%)
  • Nine: 1/6 (17%)

Total: 12/45 (27%)

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Old one looked something like this http://imgur.com/CXjtVUh . No this isn’t our one as the amp is on the antenna but it was the same shape to ours.

New one is http://imgur.com/FL0JwBg

New one only had issues after a month with the existing masthead amp.but with the new masthead amp, all working now.

Only reception issue I heard from who watches it (I don’t much) flicking through the channels Ch 10 disappeared but then flicking back it was there. Not sure if that was a signal issue or the person wasn’t waiting for it to show up as the channels take a few secs to show up. Hasn’t happened on any other channels .

Will update when it rains etc and see if it deteriorates. So far so good.

ACMA finalises TV Captioning Quality Standard review

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has completed its review of the TV Captioning Quality Standard (the Standard) and published its final report.

Since 2013 free-to-air television broadcasters and subscription television licensees have been required to comply with the Standard, which sets out quality requirements relating to the readability, accuracy and comprehensibility of captions.

The review required the ACMA to consider the differences between live, ‘part-live’ (programs including live and pre-recorded material) and pre-recorded programs, and how these affect the quality of television captions.

After extensive consultation and consideration of international approaches, the ACMA has decided to maintain the current Standard’s approach to assessing the quality of captions.

The Standard currently considers the quality of captions in the context of a program as a whole, including the circumstances of the broadcast and the nature of the program being broadcast.

The ACMA has made a minor variation to the Standard to reflect its decision. The variation instrument and accompanying explanatory statement are available on the ACMA’s website.

I am staying at a hotel in Sydney at the moment, and it goes to show how rarely they do an update on their TV distribution systems.

LCN 78 is STILL showing with LCN name of “Fresh Ideas”, but is showing Racing.com OK

Similarly, LCN 90 is showing channel name of GEM but is displaying Nine HD fine, and 94 is “Extra” but shows 9Life.

Naturally, there is no 7flix or TEN HD.

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A lot of hotels only use the distribution system for foxtel that I’ve come across. So is the aspect ratio correct on all the channels?

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…and sometimes, the Foxtel channels will be transmitted in some form of analogue (which certainly looks quite ordinary on any newer flatscreen TV which most hotels would have these days) while all the FTA stations come in crystal clear digital quality!

Yes it is… including the FOXTEL channels, though like you say, the FOXTEL picture quality isn’t as good as free to air.

Wasn’t sure where to put this one, but here’s a useful website relating to VAST that I haven’t seen before.

http://sattvguide.com.au

It lists a couple of channels I’ve never really heard much about in ICTV and Westlink.

Also lists the LCNs and program guides for the regional TV news bulletins. It’s also interesting how some of these channels run for only 6 hours a day, but others run for 21 hours a day, depending on the broadcaster.

That’s my website. Thanks for the free plug!

Yes, for some reason Prime doesn’t repeat their local news bulletins beyond midnight. Seven, on the other hand, are happy to have their bulletins on a loop right up until 5pm the next day. I guess each network had a say in how they wanted to schedule their news channels. Southern Cross Austereo operate all 20 channels out of their Canberra facility.

Great site!

And I’m guessing then that 7QLD doesn’t have to pay anything more than Prime7 for transponder space simply because it chooses to run the bulletins on a loop rather than just say 6 hours a day?

Thanks! I don’t think the networks pay anything for the service as VAST is fully funded by the government. It must come down to whether a network wants old news replayed all day or not.

I would say you are right there.

I would like to see VAST revisit these news channels, though. Some bulletins have been axed since the service started. I’d like for them to consider scheduling more metropolitan news during downtime. VAST viewers miss out on 7 News Sydney and Adelaide, 9 News Melbourne and Adelaide and Ten News Sydney and Adelaide. Poor South Aussie’s get no metro news at all. There’s plenty of space available for them to either schedule these bulletins live or work them in later in the evening. Having 9 News Darwin on Ch 409 is also a waste as it’s now live on Gem every night as opposed to delayed on the news channel.

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Maybe it’s just me, but instead of the Darwin news wouldn’t it be smarter to show Nine’s Gold Coast bulletin on VAST Regional News Channel 409? Aside from metro bulletins and the likes of Prime7 “National” News at 6.30pm Regional NSW and WIN All Australian News, Nine Gold Coast News is the one major regional news service that’s missing from VAST!

And I also agree with scheduling the metropolitan news bulletins (preferably live, but even on something like an hour delay for a few hours would be sufficient) that the main VAST channels don’t show on the news channels.

Yes, they should definitely put Gold Coast’s bulletin in there somewhere. What about GWN7 News? Understandably, the news service is run by SCA and caters to EASB’s viewers only, but they’ve done a deal with Prime and should show all of Prime’s news services. It doesn’t exist just for permanent residents in terrestrial black spot areas. It also doubles as a service you take with you while traveling on the road.

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I would say the reason that 9 GC News is not shown is that the Gold Coast is part of the Brisbane TV market so it is probably considered a metropolitan news service rather than regional.

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And I would think that the Gold Coast is pretty well covered terrestrially by their 3 transmitter sites, that there may not really be a need to cover Gold Coasters with VAST (I would imagine VAST knows how many viewers have approved installs and where).

As for GWN7 News, isn’t GWN on the WA VAST service anyhow?
The only reason why Prime7 and WIN/NBN bulletins are shown is because those stations are not on VAST in NSW, VIC or QLD, and the bulletins are designed to cater for terrestrial blackspots in those states.

As for commercial metro bulletins eg. 7/9/10 Melbourne for Victorian VAST viewers (who are most likely up in the Alpine areas), that would be nice, but I guess the VAST view is that they are covered by ABC Victoria TV for that.