Posted by dave73 on December 25, 2009 at 10:03:28:
In Reply to: Re: WLS-DT signs on Channel 44 today posted by stormy1 on October 30, 2009 at 21:11:26:
Other than those in downtown Chicago, I wonder how many people have bad ATSC tuners in their TV's & converter boxes if using the correct outdoor antenna. I say outdoor antenna because digital doesn't penetrate homes as well as analog does (though analog doesn't penetrate my home either). I'm approximately 30 miles SE of Chicago, and use a Magnavox DTV box, along with a suburban/rural Philips outdoor antenna, and it's optimized for channels 2-69 (as this antenna was bought in 2002). I was able to get WBBM-TV when they were on channel 3, and had little trouble with reception. I had plenty of problems with WLS-TV when they were on channel 52, but none at all when they moved their digital to 7. I also get them on 44, but 7 has a stronger signal. So I leave it on 7 (RF channel).
The only reason they didn't stay on 52 was because 52 is out of core, and they didn't request a new channel early on, like WBBM-TV did (since WBBM didn't want to stay on 2 or 3). So they had no choice, but to return to channel 7 on June 12th.
Now when I tried out a few TV's at Best Buy, the Best Buy I was at has an outdoor antenna, and a Toshiba TV I tried out didn't get WLS-TV on 7 or 44 (even with a scan), WBBM-TV until I did a scan, WXFT PSIP 60.1, and WTTW PSIP 11.1 - 11.4 pixelated a lot. WYIN-DT on PSIP 56.1 didn't come in at all either, and WYIN-DT is the closest of all TV stations to Best Buy. On the analog side, it picked up 7 stations, and surprisingly, I got all of the Chicago LP & translators, plus 2 or 3 translators in NW Indiana. So the Toshiba TV is out of the question for me, as it doesn't pickup all of the TV stations.