I love those commercials they are running on TV for a basic antenna. They say, due to an act of Congress, you can now receive broadcast TV for free. They show the Capitol Dome and flash up "law passed". In fact, OTA broadcast TV has always been free. But I guess you're right, there are people out there that see those ads and think, wow, this is something new.
If you google, there are online resources that show you what stations can be received at your address and what kind of antenna you need.
Antennaweb.org is one.
And the word "digital", which means nothing for an antenna.
BTW, I there was one antenna in stores they called "free TV key", in a package shaped like a little chain saw.
IIRC, they're about to limit TV broadcasting to channels 2-26. UHF-only antennas are about to be less desirable (some stations may move to VHF).
I doubt that many would move to VHF unless they already have that transmitter. I do expect they will squeeze down the UHF band tho. When they went up to ch 83 they thought broadcast TV was going to be the future and we would actually have that many channels in bigger markets. The ability to use sub channels took a lot of pressure off of the bandwidth. We have a few channels here that broadcast 6 programs at a time. They tend to be old NTSC shows, compressed into low def digital tho (Grit, Laff etc)
I can't find it right now to be sure, but I think the cutoff will be channel 36 - not 26. And yes, some stations are being moved to VHF which is now considered less desirable. Why would they do that? Because they are being paid lots of money to do so. The auction process gave money that came in to buy spectrum go to stations willing to go off the air or move to a lower channel. The changes have already started and will continue over the next few years.
Uncle Monster posted for all of us...
:ely use it in TV mode. ^_^
TV in the living room via an HDMI cable. My 32" LED TV I have with me at th e center has 3 HDMI ports and one VGA port. My little Win 10 stick computer has only an HDMI output so it's what I had to use for a while until I got my friend Stinky to bring me a desktop from the house. Then I obtained a re placement motherboard for The Beast, my Dell Precision T3400 so I'm much happier now. I like the Dell business machines because I can pull a latch o n top of the case and the side cover tilts out allowing me to change a hard drive in less than 5 minutes. Computers aren't as much fun as they were wh en I had to carry a box of punch cards around campus. Computers were arcane contraptions that few people understood. Now every A-hole in the world has a computer. Ah, the good old days. ^_^
It's like digital cameras; now everyone is a professional photographer.
Mark Lloyd posted for all of us...
Nope, the military has VHF locked up. That's why the FCC made digital TV mandatory, reallocation of the spectrum.
From Wikipedia:
"The UHF band originally spanned from channels 14 to 83, though the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has twice rescinded the high-end portions of the band from television broadcasting use for emergency and other telecommunications purposes in 1983 (when channels 70 to 83 were removed) and 2009 (when channels 52 to 69 were removed by mandate at the completion of the transition from analog to digital television)."
I found that article also. Clearly it hasn't been updated to reflect last year's spectrum auction. I looked at 3 or 4 different sites and still couldn't find the latest information. I then searched for auction info and found a bunch of stuff written before the auction - nothing with the final result. Depending on how much was bid for the spectrum, differnt top channels would result. The first part of the auction didn't bring in enough to fund what the stations wanted for their channels. The second round worked. That is, the money bid by those wanting the spectrum exceeded what the stations wanted to move or go off the air. But I can't remember what the top channel ended up being.
Found it. My guess that it is channel 36 was correct. Here's a link to the article.
NBC NYC is one that apparently took money to move. They are changing frequencies as part of the move to a new shared facility at the new WTC. It's a little weird, but I guess it works like you say. They had some kind of auction where holders of the licenses for the freq that other services wanted got paid a lot of money to move or go bye bye.
Thanks for the link. It may be an indication of how much broadcast TV has declined in importance that this didn't get more coverage in the general press. Or perhaps it's just that it doesn't involve anything beyond a channel rescan for the typical TV viewer, and it will get more buzz when the channel transitions actually begin.
Here, we have a TV station that broadcasts on channel 7.
I have a friend who has only antenna for TV. One of the local stations is going off the air. It carries COZI, which my friend watched a lot. Maybe it'll be available elsewhere.
Grit and Laff are available here, on subchannels. Strangely, the cable does NOT carry them.
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