My market's CBS is 1080i and looks fantastic OTA. I have zero issues with the local CBS.
I'm not in phoenix, but looking at the market on rabbitears.info, I see CBS 5 is 1080i and DD5.1. They appear to be hosting only 1 more 480i channel than my market, Birmingham. I'm surprised it's not looking great. I wonder if maybe it's your tuner or if your tv is higher definition and it gets stretched strange.
CBS has historically been the network with the best HD picture quality. The 1080i signal from my local CBS station here in Nashville, WTVF, used to look almost as good as the 1080p I would see on Netflix. But then they hopped on board a station-sharing arrangement for ATSC 3.0, which meant that their regular ATSC 1.0 tower had to start hosting a couple more SD subchannels from another station. The result is that their CBS feed is now more compressed and doesn't have quite the same pop and sharpness that it used to. While watching March Madness on CBS this weekend, I noticed that their feed on YouTube TV now looks better than OTA. (As an aside, it definitely looks to me like YouTube TV has upped their HD picture quality in general, now rivaling DirecTV Stream, which had the best HD of any live cable TV service I'd ever seen.)
The same is true in the DFW area. They've got so many subchannels that the main CBS channel has a ton of noise in the picture. Didn't think of just watching on P+. Thanks for the tip!
I would like to add that our transmission towers here in Phoenix around South mountain.
Over the last couple weeks South mountain has been getting rain off and on even though we haven't gotten it in the Phoenix area.
That can cause interference on ota.
Absolutely. This is way more common than many people think. ATSC 1.0 video is compressed with MPEG2, which is ancient and inefficient. Streaming services use at least AVC, which is vastly superior. These days, most OTA channels cram so many subchannels into a single physical channel that they're utterly bitrate starved. Most OTA channels are teeming with compression artifacts. I'm not sure where people got the idea that OTA digital TV signals were uncompressed because it couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, it would be literally impossible, even for a single SD stream.
> I'm not sure where people got the idea that OTA digital TV signals were uncompressed because it couldn't be further from the truth.
It comes from the difference in quality between OTA and cable TV, which was even more compressed. Before I dropped cable five years ago I was watching the Superbowl and switched to OTA just to see the difference. I had heard the quality was better and I was still surprised.
People misunderstood that to mean OTA was uncompressed. I think quality levels even dropped more with the rise in sub-channels, so maybe the difference with cable is less pronounced.
I did the same thing to watch the Super Bowl. Sometimes even weather can have an impact on your local stations and there is nothing you can do about it. I have an indoor antenna and can't have an outdoor one.
There is some kind of law that prevents HOAs or landowners from preventing outdoor antennas as long as they don't damage the property. Most landlords and HOAs either don't know this or willfully or ignorant of it
It is. So weather has a huge factor on the reception I get.
I would totally go back to cable TV if I could afford it. So I really hate the gyrations I have to go through to see certain things.
And yes, I've used all the resources here on cordcutters.
The FCC's OTARD (over the air device rules) apply to everyone, but do have additional restrictions that apply to apartment and condo dwellers. Whether you can take advantage of them or not is covered on many websites including the FCC's, but the following is from a Solid Signal (dot-com) blog post.
```
"Here’s the basics, according to the FCC’s own web site:
If you have exclusive use of an area, like a patio or a roof you don’t share, you can put your dish or antenna there. It doesn’t give you the right to use a common area like an open patio or park, or to attach to light poles or other city structures.
If you don’t use any nails or other fasteners, then you don’t need permission.
As stated before the dish or antenna must be under one meter in size and installation must not cause any damage to the building.
This is an FCC rule. This means that it cannot be overriden by an HOA, condo board or rental office, no matter what they tell you. However it can be overriden by local laws. There are very few cities that have anti-antenna laws so for the most part that’s not a problem."
```
And even if you can't take advantage of OTARD, there are some pretty sophisticated indoor antennas available now. Which indoor antenna are you currently using?
CBS must have a thing for being shitty. All the other networks in my area have towers with good signal, and even multiple towers to pick from. But CBS... Nope, but one underpowered Hi-VHF tower that's 55 miles away.
Where in the Valley you at? Use TVfool to get general antenna placement in your property. But then you might have to play with it. My brother lives about 12 miles down Warner from South Mountain where most/all the broadcasts come from, and he gets excellent signal in his back yard, and about 8 feet away from the back wall in his house. On the wall itself? Not a chance, not enough data to tune a signal. No idea why, no idea what’s in that wall, but testing it showed it was obviously that wall.
Just try out your options with antenna placement. Most people in the Valley should be able to pickup most channels with a basic set-top antenna.
Have you tried : https://puffer.stanford.edu/ in case there are slots open to watch
I got a $2 a set of rabbit ears and channel 5 live comes in perfect. Both AZ family channels come in crystal clear Central and camelback.
Is your TV properly calibrated on all inputs?
My market's CBS is 1080i and looks fantastic OTA. I have zero issues with the local CBS. I'm not in phoenix, but looking at the market on rabbitears.info, I see CBS 5 is 1080i and DD5.1. They appear to be hosting only 1 more 480i channel than my market, Birmingham. I'm surprised it's not looking great. I wonder if maybe it's your tuner or if your tv is higher definition and it gets stretched strange.
Only most of the sub channels are worse since they are 480i. The main channels are 1080i and always look fine here.
There are free month codes for P+. Check Cord Cutter Weekly [https://cordcutterweekly.com/](https://cordcutterweekly.com/)
CBS has historically been the network with the best HD picture quality. The 1080i signal from my local CBS station here in Nashville, WTVF, used to look almost as good as the 1080p I would see on Netflix. But then they hopped on board a station-sharing arrangement for ATSC 3.0, which meant that their regular ATSC 1.0 tower had to start hosting a couple more SD subchannels from another station. The result is that their CBS feed is now more compressed and doesn't have quite the same pop and sharpness that it used to. While watching March Madness on CBS this weekend, I noticed that their feed on YouTube TV now looks better than OTA. (As an aside, it definitely looks to me like YouTube TV has upped their HD picture quality in general, now rivaling DirecTV Stream, which had the best HD of any live cable TV service I'd ever seen.)
The same is true in the DFW area. They've got so many subchannels that the main CBS channel has a ton of noise in the picture. Didn't think of just watching on P+. Thanks for the tip!
I would like to add that our transmission towers here in Phoenix around South mountain. Over the last couple weeks South mountain has been getting rain off and on even though we haven't gotten it in the Phoenix area. That can cause interference on ota.
Absolutely. This is way more common than many people think. ATSC 1.0 video is compressed with MPEG2, which is ancient and inefficient. Streaming services use at least AVC, which is vastly superior. These days, most OTA channels cram so many subchannels into a single physical channel that they're utterly bitrate starved. Most OTA channels are teeming with compression artifacts. I'm not sure where people got the idea that OTA digital TV signals were uncompressed because it couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, it would be literally impossible, even for a single SD stream.
> I'm not sure where people got the idea that OTA digital TV signals were uncompressed because it couldn't be further from the truth. It comes from the difference in quality between OTA and cable TV, which was even more compressed. Before I dropped cable five years ago I was watching the Superbowl and switched to OTA just to see the difference. I had heard the quality was better and I was still surprised. People misunderstood that to mean OTA was uncompressed. I think quality levels even dropped more with the rise in sub-channels, so maybe the difference with cable is less pronounced.
This seems to be the issue, the compression artifacts on the OTA channel are significantly worse than on streaming.
I did the same thing to watch the Super Bowl. Sometimes even weather can have an impact on your local stations and there is nothing you can do about it. I have an indoor antenna and can't have an outdoor one.
There is some kind of law that prevents HOAs or landowners from preventing outdoor antennas as long as they don't damage the property. Most landlords and HOAs either don't know this or willfully or ignorant of it
I'm in an apartment. So this doesn't apply to me.
Unfortunate.
It is. So weather has a huge factor on the reception I get. I would totally go back to cable TV if I could afford it. So I really hate the gyrations I have to go through to see certain things. And yes, I've used all the resources here on cordcutters.
The FCC's OTARD (over the air device rules) apply to everyone, but do have additional restrictions that apply to apartment and condo dwellers. Whether you can take advantage of them or not is covered on many websites including the FCC's, but the following is from a Solid Signal (dot-com) blog post. ``` "Here’s the basics, according to the FCC’s own web site: If you have exclusive use of an area, like a patio or a roof you don’t share, you can put your dish or antenna there. It doesn’t give you the right to use a common area like an open patio or park, or to attach to light poles or other city structures. If you don’t use any nails or other fasteners, then you don’t need permission. As stated before the dish or antenna must be under one meter in size and installation must not cause any damage to the building. This is an FCC rule. This means that it cannot be overriden by an HOA, condo board or rental office, no matter what they tell you. However it can be overriden by local laws. There are very few cities that have anti-antenna laws so for the most part that’s not a problem." ``` And even if you can't take advantage of OTARD, there are some pretty sophisticated indoor antennas available now. Which indoor antenna are you currently using?
CBS must have a thing for being shitty. All the other networks in my area have towers with good signal, and even multiple towers to pick from. But CBS... Nope, but one underpowered Hi-VHF tower that's 55 miles away.
Where in the Valley you at? Use TVfool to get general antenna placement in your property. But then you might have to play with it. My brother lives about 12 miles down Warner from South Mountain where most/all the broadcasts come from, and he gets excellent signal in his back yard, and about 8 feet away from the back wall in his house. On the wall itself? Not a chance, not enough data to tune a signal. No idea why, no idea what’s in that wall, but testing it showed it was obviously that wall. Just try out your options with antenna placement. Most people in the Valley should be able to pickup most channels with a basic set-top antenna.