They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides, antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping the existing equipment in service.
Unfortunately, DTV signals are line-of-sight so anything from a building near the Tx tower ten miles from you or the woods, trees, hills, general terrain, etc., can make a weak signal fluctuate. It's normal to lose reception during storms, snow, rain or even high humidity in some cases. The higher the channel frequency (not the channel number you receive on), the worse the symptoms will be. We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in order to get anything to come in and you should see how bad it gets here! Digital has a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog signals. Our gummint critters are work.
Twayne
Actually, No! We had flaky analog pictures on some channels but crystal-clear HD on the digital channels on the same TV with the same antennas (two antennas pointing in different directions to deal with the widely spread transmitters).
Perce
I just saw something about fighting it on TV last night. Someone paid for that tv comercial.
Peter wrote in news:hin8on$m3r$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net:
can't do much about aircraft,but if strong storms or high winds are affecting your reception,perhaps your antenna is not aimed optimally,or it's mounting is not strong enough. One thing,though;10 miles may actually be -too close-,as you may be UNDER the station's antenna pattern. Thus the need for an outside rooftop antenna.
WRT the xmit power issue,many stations REDUCED xmitted power after a trial period. They wanted to save on their electric bill.
I also lost a low-VHF station(Ch.2) in the conversion. It's NBC,so no great loss.
Not always the case. My digital signals are much better than the analog ones used to be and I haven't lost any stations in the switchover. I can't pick up the San Bernardino PBS station digital signal (about 60 miles away), but then I never could get their analog signal either.
Bill
Humm.
I just dropped Comcast. $180.00 a month for the triple header internet, phone and TV was just a little nuts.
I live 25 miles from Chicago. Went and purchased a Winegard HD7694P VHF UHF TV Antenna
Built a MythTV media center.
Has 3 physical digial HD tuners for a total of 4 tuners(one is dual). With multiplex broadcasts I can record even more(6-8 channels at a time). Some TB hard drives and a subscription to Schedules Direct for $20/yr
Not even looking back. Real Digital HD is NOT what you get from Comcast.
1TB drive divided by approximately 1.6GB per ripped DVD leaves room for about 600 movies. This does not even include the 1TB drive used for everyday recording.I'm not even using the tuners in the TV's
dvi hdmi
A few comments: DTV signals are no more 'line of sight' than analog signals were. The degree of loss from not being 'line of sight' depends solely upon the RF transmit frequency rather than if the modulation is analog or digital. DTV signals do suffer more from dynamic multipath reception however.
What is an 80 dBm amp? Is that the same as (80-30) dB?
David
Bill wrote in news:hink0i$fl2$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:
North of Orlando,I get the Daytona PBS channel 15 when I could not under analog,but OTOH,I lost Ch.2 WESH-NBC. Good trade,IMO. ;-)
And under analog,my OTA channels were all snowy. Not under DTV.
I bought 30 feet of cable to try my antenna at various indoor and outdoor locations. I bought an amplifier because it would have been a good idea with UHF analog using that much cable. I never tried the amp because I discovered I could get all the channels indoors on the ground floor that I could get outdoors 30 feet above the ground. That convinced me that a few dB of gain wasn't important with HDTV.
One station 80 miles away would break up in some weather conditions. Reception improved if I turned the antenna 90 degrees from the transmitter. That must have reduced my gain by a lot of dB. I wouldn't have received anything at all with UHV analog, but digital worked.
I think multipath distortion from a reflection off the sky was causing the breakup. I don't know how turning the antenna helped. I was unaware of that kind of distortion with analog TV, perhaps because the ghost image was offset by only a millimeter or so.
I'm on a hill. My BIL is in a hole three miles from me. When we both had rooftop antennas, my reception was better than his. He couldn't get analog reception after he took his antenna down. He watched recorded movies.
I told him to try HDTV indoors. He had a cable and a 4-bay bowtie antenna. He paid $6 for the only balun available at Radio Shack. He couldn't get any channels, but when I unscrewed the balun and put my finger on the center conductor of the cable, he received some channels. Apparently that balun was causing reflections what would have been acceptable with analog TV.
I gave him a 25-cent balun and he was in business. He gets most of my channels and some I don't get, down in a hole with his antenna indoors,
80 miles from some of the transmitters. I doubt he has line-of-sight reception on any channel.A good old style UHF corner reflector antenna s working great for me, I picked it up at rogers flea market for 10 bucks. come spring I will put it on the peak of roof with rotor. currently is ty wrapped to my chain link fence post.
weather was too cold for much else, on most channels its 90+ signal strength
sears sells this. its a digital video recorder. its time based recordings not name based like tivo but works well, and is high def.yu can start watching a show while its recording which you cant do with a vcr
Pretty much the same here. And 3 of the stations actually now have substantially bigger footprints.
It "shouldn't" help then, but can somewhat because of the limited sensitivity of the receiver.
For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup transmitter.
It can help if you're splitting the signal. Best place for an amp is up on the antenna mast before the signal is split.
Maybe you could get something on the internet. However, that connection may be down.
When we had a storm 16 months ago, the electricity was off for 73 hours. The backup batteries on the cable node (I have cable internet) lasted 4 hours. It was another 24 hours before they put a generator on the cable node. I'm glad I don't have (cable company) Phone.
If their new frequency assignment iss close to the old one, that probably was possible. But part of the reason for getting rid of analog broadcasting was to free up the low VHF channels. Our old Ch. 3 still appears as Ch. 3 because the TV figures out the translation, but it's actually on Ch. 8. Our old Ch. 13 is now -- IIRC -- on Ch. 39. Major equipment replacement needed.
Perce
The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move to a new frequency. TV transmitters are built to operate on a single frequency. To switch channels, you have to replace it.
Alls i can tell you is that we are on the fringes of the KC metro area broadcast area, and we had marginal analog service of 4 channels at best. Now with a rudimentary antenna hooked to a new digital tv, i have over 18 channels that are perfectly clear.
The National Association of Broadcasters sponsored it. I couldn't find anything about it on their website, or anything about a bill before Congress to reduce or eliminate OTA TV.
I think broadcasters want political pressure because HDTV may give them a chance to expand. In recent years, most consumers, especially the affluent ones, didn't get their TV OTA because they weren't satisfied with picture quality. HDTV could increase the market and reduce transmission costs. It may become profitable for new stations to come on line, so broadcasters want plenty of bandwidth available.
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