Summary

A Chicago broadcast engineer visited a Michigan Avenue electronics store on July 15, 1999, to witness the city's first over-the-air HDTV broadcast by the local CBS affiliate in partnership with Panasonic. Reception difficulties in the urban canyon environment prevented him from tuning in either the CBS HDTV signal or the FOX DTV signal using a set-top antenna.

Source document circa 1999 preserved as-is

COFDM Vs. 8-VSB SERIES...
SOME REAL WORLD 8-VSB COMMENTARIES FROM THE FIELD...

 

HDTV Comes to Chicago (or so I hear)

    Al Domescik
    WCPX-TV, Chicago



Today, July 15, 1999 the local CBS affiliate in association with Panasonic is doing the first over-the-air broadcast of HDTV in Chicago.

They have receivers set up at a couple of electronics stores around town and at the Museum of Science and Industry. I went over to one of the local electronics stores, only a couple of blocks away from my station. I entered the store, around lunch time, and asked one of the salesmen where I could see the CBS HDTV broadcast. He took me back to a nice viewing room, set up like a living room, where they had a 65" Mitsubishi WS65903, with a Mitsubishi HD1080 receiver, and a set top antenna.

I couldn't get much info out of him on the antenna, all he said was it was a Turk and it was supposed to be able to receive UHF and VHF signals. It was some sort of black plastic funky rotating adjustable thing (I know, nice technical description).

When I entered the room the Cosby Show was on. This was the SDTV broadcast from the FOX affiliate here in town. The salesman informed me that he had been trying to tune in the CBS broadcast all day but was unable to do it, he wasn't sure if they were on the air or not. I called the engineering shop at the local CBS affil. just to make sure they were on the air, they were. He fiddled with the antenna, all the while lamenting how hard it was to even tune in the FOX station. "We've pretty much figured out EXACTLY where the antenna needs to sit to pick up FOX, but if you move the antenna even a fraction of an inch you loose the signal", he informed me.

We fiddled and talked for about 5 minutes, never did get to see the CBS broadcast, and decided to just switch back to the FOX station. We then fiddled and talked for about 5 more minutes, never did get the FOX station back, and I had to leave. He then informed me that the guy who was really good at tuning the thing in was out to lunch so he'd worry about tuning in a DTV signal later. He then switched over to a DirecTV signal and we left the room. Oh, by the way, the DirecTV signal looked just as good as the FOX signal we had seen earlier, to the best of my recollection. I wanted to do some side comparisons.

The particulars: This was a store, downtown Chicago, on Michigan Avenue, 900 N. Michigan to be exact. The store is on the sixth floor of a 30 some odd story office building about a mile from the transmitting antennas. If you are familiar with Chicago this is the Bloomingdale's building directly across the street from the John Hancock Building, definitely in the concrete canyons, and definitely not the optimum reception site. The salesman admitted that NTSC reception was not wonderful using the same set top antenna but was possible and watchable. FOX Channel 31 was received but when we tuned away we were unable to get it back. CBS Channel 3 was not able to be received in the 5 or so minutes that we played with it.

I saw the Fox DTV signal today for the first time since they went on the air, couldn't find anyone in town capable of receiving it. Alas I was not able to see the CBS signal. I would like to go to the museum today to see it but don't have time to drive down to "Da South Side".

Al Domescik
WCPX-TV, Chicago