I just got myself a digital TV (I inherited my mother’s) and it coincided with one of the worst storms during the last 30 years (fortunately just the outskirts, but you can see the aftermath here and there).
The night to yesterday when I couldn’t sleep and tried to watch it the reception was awful on all available channels. Yesterday it was calm and the reception was perfect, but when I switched it on in the middle of the night it had started to blow again and with the same result (strangely enough only on some channels although they all come from the same transmitter). So, what’s the connection between bad weather and TV reception and what can I do about it? One thing I can think of is better alignment between the antenna and the transmitter.
How do you get your signal, OTA, Cable or Satellite?
If it’s satellite, bad weather is pretty well known for causing the signal to degrade (or rather cut out altogether). If it’s cable, I’m going to wager a guess that somewhere between the head end and your house there’s a bad connection and the wind or water is causing problems, but when the weather calms down and/or the connection dries out the signal passes through uninterrupted.
If it is cable, you might want to call your cable company. They’re pretty good at taking care of this kind of thing for free. If the problem is outside of your house, there’s a good chance it’s causing problems for your neighbors as well.
tv is transmitted by radio waves. radio waves, especially higher frequencies, can be partially blocked and reflected by rain or water in the atmosphere; that is how radar can show storms.
with reception going bad in wind your problem could also be tree limbs blowing into the signal path. tree leaves can block signal, which you might notice better signal in winter if the trees loose their leaves.
It’s OTA. The antenna is good, I think, but when I checked it with Google Earth I found that I had pointed it ca 45° away from the transmitter. I’ll see what happens if I turn it a bit. As it happens I remember disturbances on windy days (no rain or anything) when I visited my mother and her transmitter was within eye-sight and there is no foliage between it and her house.
45 degrees could give you an analog tv picture. with a digital picture that is far off so that only when the signal is very strong would you get a picture. you can get a picture from the side of an antenna though not necessarily often or consistently.
the wind can also bounce a roof antenna and it might loose some signal strength for a second enough to cause a digital signal a problem.
My guess is that you are near a lot of tall trees. This is true for me, and reception is significantly worse on windy days. Most over-the-air digital signals are on UHF frequencies, which reflect somewhat off of branches, which results in fluctuating strength and multipath interference. In the analog days this caused picture “ghosting” – with digital it causes signal dropouts.
I am puzzled by Floater’s description that the transmission is OTA but there is only a single transmitter. Doesn’t every station have its own transmitter for OTA broadcasts?
multiple antennas and transmitters may be located at a single tower. multiple towers may be clustered close together on a single high spot (hill/mountain) or close together (downtown high building tops or an antenna farm [area for tall antennas to be out of the way of airplane flight paths])
My geometry failed me yesterday, I meant 90°. Anyway, last night was calm and the reception was excellent, but apparently there’s another storm on its way, so I’ll just wait and see what’s going to happen.
Just be glad you don’t have to use rabbit ears like I do. Semis, cars, wind, walking around, butterflies all screw up the reception. Pisses me off having to change the orientation every time I change channels as well, making a remote control useless.
if you have a strong signal you can get a picture from 90 degrees though a lot has to be right.
i have tv antennas pointing in two directions at 90 degrees. every couple weeks, when the situation is right for good propagation, then i might get a signal on an antenna at 90 degrees.
if you get a good signal often at 90 degrees then that is a good sign that if you aim the antenna towards the transmitting antenna you will have a solid signal. with digital tv aiming is a slower process, it might take up to a minute for any movement to show its effect, move the antenna and let the picture stabilize before you evaluate how the signal quality is. you do want to aim it for best signal, depending on your individual situation you might find that a blizzard might cut your signal significantly and you need all the signal that you can get.
place the rabbit ears closer to the ceiling on top of a shelf or on a pole lamp. that will limit the effects of walking around the room.
if you have two directions for stations then get two antennas and aim them and select with an A/B antenna switch. you still will have to do an action to change directions of the signal but you won’t have to reaim the antenna each time.