Evaluating to start a project or not...

[Externet]

Hi all.

Residing surrounded by 800ft tall mountains N,S,E,W, TV broadcast reception is very bad. Only one local station barely gets in. Of course, the worst programming on it. (Ion TV)

The plan is to install a 0.5W personal television repeater on top of a hill ~1/4 mile away on solar power, perhaps using a plain TV receiver -no screen- and re-transmit on a single UHF channel with a yagi aimed to my place.

I have a powerful enough laser to control the receiver at the hilltop to change channels souping-up its plain TV remote control. -That am not scared to accomplish-

What concerns me is linking WHAT signal out of the tuner to the transmitter at the hilltop. I would receive all channels in a single 'downlink' to my home TV receiver. Could do it easily with analog defunct TV but with digital; I do not know enough.

Or put together modular building blocks; depending on the complexity. How would you do it ?

Miguel

[CeaSaR]

Get one of those DTV convertors that were being sold when the conversion was going through.
Hook up the DTV antenna to the convertor, output that to the personal transmitter to the
directional Yagi (maybe with a waveguide to minimize transmission in any direction other than
toward you). Power all that with a storage battery that is recharged by the solar cell/charge
controller (make sure everything is properly sized for the maximum run time between possible
charges). Make sure the electronics are weather tight. Lastly, make sure that whatever
"channel" you use is free otherwise your local version of the FCC will come knocking with
a BIG stick . The end result will be that you can see what channel you have selected
on your TV at home without worrying about what happens up on the mountain top.

As for the remote, use the remote for the convertor and use one of the "ir repeaters" available
all over the net. Change the link between the repeaters from wired or rf to the laser transmission
as per your statement above. Hard mount everything to the side of the house to keep optical
alignment. Also sun shield the laser portions to ensure proper operation. I think that would be
the quickest way to acheive that goal. The only downside to using the laser is that you will
have times when the laser will not be able to reach the reciver due to whatever weather condition
or dirt collection on the outside covers. Cleaning several times a year will be an absolute necessity.

ION TV... ugh! I feel for you there .

CeaSaR

[Janitor Tzap]

Miguel,

Your making this harder than it should be.

First off....
Decide where is the best place to put the first broadcast signal receiving antenna.
Goto: http://www.tvfool.com/
Use they're "Check Your Address for Free TV"
And punch in the coordinates "Latitude & Longitude" or Zip Code.
This will give you the locations of the local Television Broadcast Towers,
and give you the signal strength.
Also, the type of antenna you'll need.

If the local Television Broadcast Towers are grouped together in one direction.
Then a directional UHF/VHF type antenna would work best.

If the local Television Broadcast Towers are in multiple directions,
{N,S,E,W} then an Omni Directional UHF/VHF type antenna would work best.

Here's a fairly simple passive repeater setup.
http://www.box.net/shared/ckfbf117io

Note: You may need a amplifier at the Broadcast Signal Receiving Antenna.

Good luck!


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[Externet]

CeaSar:
That would be good for analog transmitting; but my TV is ATSC digital receiver. I do have a converter and I thought of it but won't work. I do not want to retransmit in analog NTSC

Tzap:
There is neighbors living on the ridge instead of the valley and I know what is receivable up there. That is not the issue. Signals do not get to the valley floor. The zip code is a joke. Areas are at ridges, areas are at valleys. The internet generalization does NOT work.

[Janitor Tzap]

Tzap:
There is neighbors living on the ridge instead of the valley and I know what is receivable up there. That is not the issue. Signals do not get to the valley floor. The zip code is a joke. Areas are at ridges, areas are at valleys. The internet generalization does NOT work.

Miguel,

Please look at the PDF that is about making a Passive Television Signal Repeater.
http://www.box.net/shared/ckfbf117io

Reason I talked about the TVFOOL Signal Finder.
Was to find the Best Spot on the Ridge to place the Repeater.

Sorry, if you miss understood what I was trying too convey to you.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[Externet]

Thanks a lot with my appreciation, Tzap.

I did check your two-linked-yagis article. It looked better than installing a flat galvanized 4' x 8' sheet at the peak aimed as a RF mirror as I scratched my head first before posting.

Still agnostic about the effectivity those two yagis may bring; but if it works, no other solution would be better... and cheaper. If it does not work; not much $ lost.

The location on the ridge is not the point. The peak of the mountain is. It has the best potential. For directionality, there is only one major source for broadcasted TV nearby.

Investigating the web for equipment to put together got nowhere unless engaging into commercial equipment, fully out of con$ideration.
As alternative, I could think of a modulated laser downlink from the hilltop, to make it more interesting. But still in trouble to get the which output of a screen-less TV to modulate.... HDMI ?
Tinkered with ideas of a 30dB cable TV booster for $6 but still see no light. Cannot repeat on the same frequencies received. And no way am running a RG-6.

Miguel

[Bob Scott]

Tinkered with ideas of a 30dB cable TV booster for $6 but still see no light. Cannot repeat on the same frequencies received. And no way am running a RG-6.
Miguel

I once pondered retransmitting TV channels with a cable TV "apartment amplifier". They output up to +45dBmV or so (Voltage X 180) with an input of 0dBmV (1 millivolt into 75 Ohms.) Even then, it is not much transmitter power, just about 180mV, or 0.4mW per channel into 75 Ohms.
To get around the problem of feedback from the output antenna to the input antenna, you might try orienting the antennas in quadrature with each other. Orient the amplified rebroadcast one vertically and reorient your house antenna to match. It would take some experimenting. I don't have any antennas or any real reason to buy any. I would have experimented with it long ago if I did have.

..I probably would have found that system not satisfactory because of the large variation in power levels from different broadcast channels. That, and feedback at low amplification levels even with quadrature.

[haklesup]

I suppose you could put a whole PC (or maybe a netbook) on the hilltop with an ATSC TV card to recieve the signal. You can then use Wi-Max to retransmit to your local home network where you will have remote access to the hilltop PC to change channels etc. There are several TV recievers capable of HDTV and SDTV reception.

Not enough power on the hilltop? Perfect excuse to augment the system with a solar panel, inverter and storage batteries.

I hope that hill is yours and you don't have to worry about tampering.

WHat about forgetting the OTA signal and living on IP-TV direct from the TV station websites or Hulu etc. I know its limited in different ways than OTA but a viable option nonetheless.

[CeaSaR]

The major problem with building a power amplifier (transmitter) for the whole set of bands
is that you need such a wide band amp, ~ 50 MHz to ~1.010 GHz, with notches for other
bands such as FM, 87 MHZ - 108 MHZ, Police and Air Traffic Control, all the other miscellaneous
bands in between, that you would be much better off buying something to do the job that
is already FCC approved. That, or try to use the 2 antennae trick. I have read many stories
of that working for whole communities that were surrounded by mountains. If you are worried
about back waves, you can always throw a faraday wall or shield between the 2.

If you are interested in building your own antenna, look back to when kheston was asking about
extending his cell phone's range while out in the boonies, as seen here. You can find a link
to an antenna calculator there.

CeaSaR

PS - Sorry about my first post, I thought you were open to using the old NTSC channels as
a viable alternative. As it is now, perhaps you could use a tuner from a DVD recorder (as
long as it is ATSC) and use a small amp for channel 3 or 4 - the schematics can be found
on-line and I think they sometimes use a 2N3904 or similar (good to around 300 MHz).