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Complaints Pour In After Digital TV Test
djupedal writes "'Even if all goes smoothly, next February's digital television shift is likely to generate hundreds of thousands of complaints from television viewers around the country.
A major problem during a test run in Wilmington, N.C., was the inability of over-the-air viewers to receive new digital signals, according to figures collected after the test.'"
Yeah, but all of the digital stations are power-reduced to compensate.
The problem is that the official definition of "good enough" analog SNR that was used to calculate the needed digital transmit power is way above what many people consider watchable.
i.e. probably every NYC station is not considered "watchable" by the legal standards at my parents' house, but my parents have been watching TV for years there.
It doesn't help that NIMBY is keeping the Seacacus TV tower from getting built, and all the NYC stations have been forced to run reduced power ever since 9/11 knocked out most of their primary transmitters and everyone had to go to backups on the ESB. Only stations that had the ESB as a primary to begin with still have good reception.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
HD is not the same as Digital (DTV).
the article is digital vs. analog, not HD vs SD. There is already HD over analog if your TV can handle it. The thing going away is the analog broadcast spectrum that the FCC is auctioning off for other use. This is not a forced upgrade in all of your equipment, this is a new decoder that can interpret ones and zeroes, and is much MUCH cheaper than replacing all of your gear to view HD.
Being angry and offtopic and slurring names of retailers is easily seen as trolling .
They probably aren't as screwed as you think if their analog is watchable. The stations currently are mostly broadcasting digital at a tenth of the power they are licensed for to avoid interfering with the analog signals. Once the switchover occurs, they are suppose to go up to 100%. If you can pull in a watchable analog signal, then in theory you should be able to get the digital equivalent once that happens.