Slashdot Mirror
DTV Transition - One Year Later
commodore64_love writes "One year has passed since NTSC-analog television died (R.I.P. 6/12/09 — aged 68 years), and the new ATSC-digital television became standard. According to Retrovo, the transition had some successes and failures. Retailers saw this as an opportunity to sell new HDTVs and 46 million converter boxes, while cable providers advertised rates as low as $10/month. One-third of the converter boxes the US subsidized — approximately 600 million dollars worth — were never used by purchasers. Overall 51% of Americans felt the DTV transition was good, while 23% said it was not. 12% of respondents report that since the switch they have worse reception. Others received better reception, gaining 24-hour movie channels, retro channels, foreign programming, and other new networks that had not existed under the old analog system."
The best (read sucky) part are all the perfectly functional, yet completely useless, "old" analog TVs that have been dumped (often illegally) in landfills. I have two that can't even give away.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
that $200M of absolute waste isn't punished.
Like anyone can even know that
Me, personally, I think it's great and had to be done. Recently got a tiny DTV to USB tuner (~$20) for my computer and think it's fantastic. No doubt everyone's heard this viewpoint.
But let me relay the experiences of my grandmother who lives in the middle of nowhere mid-west. She didn't get new channels. She didn't get 24 hour movie channels. She didn't get better reception. What she got was yet another box for me to put in the chain between her television and the antenna attached to the pole shed. She now has another remote. Her checklist of things to go through when she wants to program a recording just got one longer as well as things to check when it's not working. And when she records it, she can only do one channel at a time as that's what the DTV box has to be set on since her VCR can't control digital signals. She was already getting analog distortion or static when she recorded her soap operas and I think she had learned to cope with this kind of distortion when viewing them intently. Last I checked up on her she complained that the digital distortion (specifically the audio distortion) was much harder to work through at times as opposed to fuzzy static. The clipping of the voices seems to ruin her enjoyment of a cookie cutter three quarter view emo meltdown between two hams.
So I think a lot of the views you're hearing are people who are connected to the internet and the unspoken voice of someone who has neither the internet nor a cell phone is actually a large consumer of the programs on air wave TV and products advertised on nationally broadcasted programs. Just something to consider, after helping her through this change I would be doubtful that she is alone or unique to her age group.
My work here is dung.
For me it's been a true analog-to-digital conversion. I no longer sort-of-get any TV stations; I either get them or I don't. The stations I used to pick up pretty well, I now get perfectly. The stations I used to pick up poorly, I now don't get at all.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Unfortunately for the article submitter, there are no ATSC VIC-II chips in production...
I bought my TV in 2002, and it's served me well - except now that I'm thinking of dumping cable, I wonder if I can still get a converter box?
There are fewer over the air stations here in Springfiled, because with analog you could pick up Champaign and Decatur stations. People I know with digital TVs can't get those stations any more.
Free Martian Whores!
We STILL don't have TV service. If it isn't available on Netflix or Hulu, we don't watch it. I highly recommend you folks do the same. Getting rid of TV service was one of the best things we ever did.
Living With a Nerd
I was among those who got worse reception, unfortunately. I recall getting something like ten channels with reasonable reception prior to the switchover, and now I get five channels with one of them (the only HD channel) losing reception regularly.
Digital reception is so bad here in North Little Rock that after spending up to $60, $70 dollars for increasingly weird looking antennas, I just gave up and got cable.
I never liked analog static, but digital distortion is far - far worse... and that's assuming you can get any kind of digital signal at all.
Also... 600 million?!
You must have one *hell* of a good antenna to be able to pick up foreign programming from the USA (unless Canadian counts, to me it does not.)
Anyway, complaints are on the high side, especially for people who used to be OK with watching a half-static station. It's simply time to get a more specific antenna (since the frequencies for the new ATSC range are closer together) and a cheap amplifier (most cheap antenna kits now come with them) and see what that can do for you. I am 10 to 30 miles away from my regional stations and can get a solid signal on all of them with a cheap antenna at ground level. Add a little elevation and it should work equally well at greater distances. Elevation is key.
Nobody seems to know why things go wrong anymore or how to fix them (not that anyone really knew before, other than "wiggle the antenna a bit and then stand right over there"). In my case, I get great reception on most of the channels I got before. The HDTV thinks its getting one channel that I kind of got before (shows up when I scan for channels) but it just shows a black screen for about 5 minutes before it admits that it can't find the signal (same with the subchannels). But the weirdest is one channel (and all of its subchannels) that plays audio properly, but the video plays too fast, before freezing every second or so to let the audio catch back up. No idea if its something the network is doing on its broadcast, a weird artifact of bad reception, or if my TV just isn't processing the video data right or what.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
x% this, y% that... "Others received better reception" With no actual number for "others" why do I suspect that % was something like .1%?
So, I say let's do it again with IPV6? The complications would be a little bigger. The payoff would be much bigger.
Comcast wanted to triple the rate to go from minimal analog to the equivalent digital offering. We said, "No thanks," and disconnected completely. Even my ten-year-old son was on board with the decision.
We watch a few shows on Hulu, get movies from the local library, and don't miss standard television at all. Much much better.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, CW, and MyTV.
Now I get Zero. I got a converter box, and it'll pick up CBS intermittently; as in I'll get one or two frames every 10 minutes. But nothing else comes in at all.
Hope it was worth giving away all the bandwidth to phone companies...
who will now use that bandwidth to forcibly stream advertisements to your "smart"phones. /remember when the FCC worked for the greater good of society?
What's this "TV" thing you speak of? Oh, right: the screen for the game consoles!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I've not heard of one tornado warning yet. *crosses finge[r.]
Get an old analog set and use the Weller Method.
(Some of the web pages I found while looking for this article indicate that it's too unreliable, but I'm amazed that [1] I remembered reading the article 40 years ago and [2] Google actually scanned it and put it online.)
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I work for a small multi system cable company. We have several headends servicing small towns in south eastern Arkansas. Our primary problem is co channel. There are fewer DTV channels available so they gave out the same frequency to multiple stations. Also the range for DTV is much lower than the old VHF analog spectrum. With the old analog system Co channel was mainly a ghosting on the screen. With DTV it results in a complete loss of signal. We have tried several different types of antennas with no change in the problem. What we need to fix these problems is for the FCC to remap the frequencies they hand out to the stations. However they are not planning to do that blaming instead the cable operators for not fixing the problem.
Now I can watch Judge Judy in HD...whoopee!
I've tried Time Warner and AT&T's U-Verse in Austin. Both suck horribly. Back to the roof antenna circa 1980.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I love the digital switch-over. I am one of those people who get better reception. Living in the middle of Sacramento, I received fuzzy, poor quality analog TV. Digital has been flawless on all channels. I also get more channels-- including 3 from PBS. That's with a small set of rabbit-ears sitting on top of my TV.
The Atari 800 (and XL/XE computers) had a monitor jack. While it pre-dates the s-video and composite jacks, the signals are compatible, so you can wire a plug to connect to a modern TV using either input. The Atari 2600 game system has the same signals, but they aren't routed to an external port, so you have to take it apart and solder in an s-video and audio jack.
Nope. little tiny 32" round one. Point it east towards. Telstar 12 and get a lot, I can get a crapload of FTA stuff all over the sky from a tiny little 18" dish, but I find the low end small dishes suck compared to a nice 32" one with a decent quality feedhorn.
I've even got HD MPEG4 stuff in the open.
sonicView8000HD reciever works incredibly well. and it will scan the sky for me finding all the channels.. nothing but the initial dish alignment required... the dish positioner even will self align.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't live in the middle of nowhere, I live in a small college town with a population of 113,000. We used to sorta get 8 or 9 channels but since the switch-over we're down to 2 channels. The signals from Atlanta don't reach us unless I bought a fancy attic antennae.
Now, instead of watching OTA TV we turn on the Boxee and watch whatever I've downloaded.
We just have a PBS translator and a begging for jebus channel. Oregon Public Broadcasting has only converted a small number of their 40 translators throughout the state. In the case of my area they also have to move their intermediate links from 800 to 2000 Mhz, so it could be years.
DTV to USB tuner (~$20) for my computer
Before the transition:
After the transition:
Yeah, that was a worthwhile boondoggle. After all, every red-blooded American[Tm] has the right to see when their newscaster needs more makeup and a shave.
The stated purpose of the mandatory conversion was to get better service to outlying rural areas. Of course this was a total joke. It is the outlying rural areas that got much worse service as a result of the conversion. In my area three stations converted and three did not. When I still had the tv, I had to get up and swap cables to change channels. A neighbor tells me that with a fancy outdoor antenna he can still get PBS (which converted) but I've never been able to get it.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Retailers saw this as an opportunity to sell new HDTVs and 46 million converter boxes.
Nevermind the channels that once came in(less than perfect) that now do not at all. I've got all the time in the world for those pregnant pauses that makes flipping through channels a slow, laborious game of 'wait & see'. Please lock the cat outside during Survivor Bachelor's Got Talent, wouldn't want her walking to the food bowl and dragging the signal below acceptable display threshold when someone's about to win something for nothing!
Sure the solution is to pay more for a monthly service. Even if paying to watch advertisements and shitty reruns is anathema, like the famous commercial/mantra says, "just do it".
We can always pay more for less in the good ol' USA, land of the fee.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on May 31st that http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100531/NEWS01/6010323/Forger-s-company-got-562K-stimulus-contract/ a local company, Tekreation Center LLC, recieved $562K in federal stimulus money to provide installation demonstration services to those who needed help getting the converter boxes to work. Demonstrations! Not actual installations. Tekreation reportedly performed 1,453 demonstrations for installing a digital-to-analog converter. $562,000/1453=$386.79 per demo. The could have bought a decent digital TV for that price. Another massive waste of your tax dollars.
Cue the beeping sound of the trash truck dumping out these poll "results"...
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
thanks for the link!
FYI - the Glomar Challenger and the car from "Doppleganger" also in that issue.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I have a friend who gets over-the-air TV. (I have FIOS)... He used to get about a dozen channels badly between VHF and UHF, now he gets about 5 channels intermittently.
The picture either comes in great or not at all. The audio gets chopped up so badly, it's like those old cell-phones "be -... ch... ack... fu... da... cuh..." there's not enough to even guess what the person is saying. And don't even try to read lips, because the audio, even when it's coming in good, is out of synch with the image.
But the worst of it is that the "TV" portion of the screen is about 2/3 of the overall image broadcast, while the other 1/3 is either ads or other information meant to "enhance" the viewing of the Tv portion (The ABC weather channel or whatever that is, is the most annoying)... In the end, it's more like watching TV over the web, where the "full screen" of traditional TV seems to have disappeared.
Between that and the constant layering of logos and ads/previews on top over every program, it's soon going to get that all you'll ever see on TV is an eye or a nose jiggling about.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
> My favorite part is that quite often the same people who complain about the switch
> to DTV are the same people who complain about poor wireless signal and other issues
> caused by limited space in the radio spectrum.
Yes. And some of us solve the inherent problems of wifi in exactly the same way: we use wires.
I can certainly sympathize with OTA users that had their working "production" configurations
scrambled by a poorly thought out and somewhat inferior replacement solution. No one should
be complaining that they've lost stations. Trying to make up excuses for that is just dumb.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Only 12% of respondents report that since the switch they have worse reception? I find that hard to believe. Most of my neighbors lost channels. Before the cutoff of analog, I was already receiving digital channels for a year. For some reason, on the day of the analog cutoff, half of the digital channels I was receiving went away. I rescanned, tried different antenna amplifiers, and maybe even said a few incantations. Maybe they were broadcasting their digital signals with higher power before the anlog cutoff. I live 30 miles outside the city. At least with analog, I could watch The Tonight Show through the snow.
Anyone could implement an NTSC compatible, TV, Tuner card, PVR, camcorder... without paying anyone royalties.
Unlike copyrights, patents expire. For the first decade or so, NTSC color TV required a patent license from RCA (who incidentally sold its consumer electronics division to the company that now controls the MP3 patent). Unless you're fairly old, your reference point for comparison is probably sets produced in 1973 or later, over 20 years after NTSC was standardized. Likewise, ATSC is based on the same codecs as DVD (AC-3 audio and MPEG-2 video), so essential codec patents will expire within the next half decade.
COFDM modulation is the type used in Europe for terrestrial broadcasts, and it's far superior to 8VSB for those of us who live in major metropolitan areas. 8VSB is very suspectible to reflections from buildings. I have to stand on my head and balance 3 plates to get more than 1 digital channel at once. ATSC can't handle any type of signal drop without becoming completely useless. They could have done so much better. Look at the transition from black and white to color vs. NTSC to ATSC. Black and white owners didn't even notice the difference. Compare that to the dysfunctional digital transition and you'll understand everything that's wrong with modern technology standards.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
In the analog days there were effectively three tiers of programming on cable - broadcast channels, cable only non-premium stuff, and premium channels like HBO. Since it was hard to encrypt a channel the middle tier channels were left in the clear. So as long as you had cable ready TVs you only really needed a cable box for the TVs you wanted to be able to watch the premium tier channels on, secondary TVs like kitchen, home office, workshop TVs could work just fine without one.
With digital that changed, so instead of just switching from analog->digital the cable companies are switching from analog->ENCRYPTED digital and telling the public that it had to be that way all along - it didn't. So except for the broadcast networks which are required to be in the clear soon you'll need a cable box for EVERY TV in your house, not just the ones you wanted the premium channels on.
And what did the FCC do for us on this?? Cablecard was a failure and when they were available at all the only Cablecard equipped TVs were the high end ones - WRONG!!! For the really big TVs in your house having a cable box is less of a problem than it is for the small TV in your kitchen/office/workshop. The FCC mandated that every HD TV have a digital tuner, and that seems to include a tuner for unencrypted digital cable channels, but the cable industry is making sure that there won't be many of those, so that tuner is all but useless unless you get your signal over the air.
The FCC tried to use Cablecard so we wouldn't have to rent as many cable boxes. The result? You'll need more cable boxes than you ever did before.
...but what about some those other where they use NTSC, today. I'm sure they would beg to differ that NTSC is dead.
Countries and territories using NTSC
Since I couldn't get one locally, I bought an ATSC converter at Radio Shack in Portland, Oregon. Hooked it up to an antenna when I got home, scanned, got a bunch of local stations. All but a couple of the local Vancouver stations are on digital now, and I get three stations from Bellingham, Washington. An independent (KVOS), a home shopping channel (KBCB) and a repeater of a PBS station (K24IC, repeating KBTC, Tacoma, PBS and MHz Worldview).
The system works as advertised. I get DVD quality video with many channels in HD, though my el cheapo POS converter dumbs everything down to 480i NTSC.
I have no complaints.
...laura
We subscribed to Time Warner's 'community' service which gives us OTA channels plus cspan and some extra local PBS stations. In our area, the cable provider is required to have this service. Unless you know about it by accident, TWC would never tell you. Several things happened in the switch to digital.
Our service went from $10 to $20/month.
No digital anything. You must lease an HD black box service, plus pay for premium channels in order to get HD anything.
Meanwhile, on an Over The Air tuner, we have the traditional area channels in various forms of HD plus a few of the extra PBS channels. There are new-to-me channels serving immigrant communities in HD that we'll never watch, but that's it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I have to time shift my viewing. However most commercial signal vendors have integrated this functionalit (for an extra fee of course). Else the VCR has all but disappeared from consumer electronic stores. My old tape thing is well past its average lifetime now. Of course, whenever I complain some hacker tells how I buy a board for a computer and a large number of hours later I can have a solution.
The worst thing about the conversion is that there is no redundancy in the signal. No multi-cast, spread-spectrum, nothing useful for checking or comparing signals.
And that kind of broadcast is only useful over hard-wired, land-lines with guaranteed hardware in the middle. Which means paying a multi-conglomerate for permission to watch "over the air" signals.
Thanks, stupid government. I hope you learn next time!
8-PP
Over all I have been happy with DTV, I even dropped (evil comcast) cable because of it.
That said, I once and a rare while run in to an odd problem where something in the preview guide information will cause my digital converter box to crash. I try and bring up the preview guide, box will go nuts and then shut off. Also, some channels aren't very reliable about providing that information. I guess they don't consider I might actually stick around and watch a show if I knew what was coming up next.
That reminds me, I still need to really look around for a DTV portable that can be powered by standard batteries, but that hasn't been a priority.
Not really an option for a renter. We get fewer channels now and have used the TV mostly for DVD playing. Reception wasn't even consistent between the converter box and the new HDTV.
Not that it is a big deal to me over all. Really, I was more annoyed with the 3 months or whatever where the deadline was pushed back and having to try to tune the HDTV again because half of the stations used one deadline and half the other.
I got one of the coupons and bought a converter box (I think I paid $10 out of pocket). I constructed a Grey-Hoverman antenna (actually a series of them, each one better). I get AMAZING reception with my 15 year old 19" CRT TV. It makes the picture look new. I got every channel except one (total of about 20) from 30-35 miles away. I now get the "missing" channel as they have now gone to full power (for some reason they did not at change-over). Yeah, I can only watch or tape one show at a time, but it's rare for me to watch/tape different stuff. from the same TV. All in all, I'm happy. Thank you George Bush (let's see how the mods like that!)
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Here in the DC area, there are a number of "foreign" OTA broadcasts - I think it's up around channel 47. There are sub channels with Chinese and French, among lots of Spanish language and others. I also get the BBC America news broadcast. I canceled Dish network for an HTPC & OTA, and there's plenty of stuff for my limited TV watching needs.
30-35 miles is well within the transmission range. 100-150 miles is not, which is how far a significant amount of the population in rural areas are from transmitters. There are far more rural areas in the US than there are urban ones.
I invite you to watch these different DTT tests. Yes, i know North America are already screwed, but just to be clear Digital TV is not the problem, but the standard chosen in your country. Sure, in theory ATSC can reach farther from a single source, but whats the point when the system is so fragile analog works better? Naturally the rest of the world is avoiding ATSC.
This is how the Japanese system performs on the road. Can yours do the same? Actually, no. :)
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
To be honest, I have really liked the upgrade. I had decided to drop Dish Network as 'nice but too expensive for what I watch'.
So, my converter box (not quite free after rebate) expanded me from one to four PBS channels (Less overlap than you would think), a sports channel, several local news channels, and the main networks came in better than they had before.
After I upgraded to HDTV the converter box actually still had a better TV Guide system than the TV itself had, so it actually still got used for the three months it took me to put together a MythTV DVR.
Theoretically I have some complaints about HDTV - Imperfect analogue tends to be better than imperfect HDTV - slight fuzzy is better than blotchly squares, et al. But that's an issue of dealing with trade offs - the practical advantages far exceed the disadvantages.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
It's impossible to determine if it's a human pressing on a remote control or a computer hitting an IR blaster changing the channel.
Easy: just randomly discard 1 percent of keypresses. A human will see the OSD and reenter until correct; a computer will fail unless it has a camera trained on the screen.
I just gave up watching TV when they switched. I haven't missed it at all. I did buy a 55" rear projection TV right after the switch for $50 that I watch DVDs on, but I haven't wished I had a converter box even once.
Is there any compelling reason that I should have bought one? No one's been able to give me a good answer so far.
This sentence no verb.
I miss being able to use a portable TV while you are on the move. New portable TVs that can receive the digital signal seem to work well standing still but if you pick it up or move it just a hair the picture goes all haywire.
If I was going to all that trouble I'd just put up a multibander and work DX all night long. Screw the TV!
73 de w7com
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Wait, an LCD is too big, but your old-ass CRT RPTV is fine? Also, if you can't see the difference between SD and even badly compressed HD, you're blind. Lastly, why not just get a CRT RPTV HDTV if you love the technology so much? You can get them super cheap off of Craigslist these days.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Analog TV still exists in this part of Arizona. The digital transition has not yet occurred here. Some mountain top translators were exempt from the requirement to make the digital transition. The nearest translator here, is still analog. I still get 6 analog TV channels on my old mid-1990s TV set from a rabbit ears antenna, without the help of a converter box. I do not have cable or satellite.
For several years, I kept hearing that analog TV would not exist beyond the deadline. Well, that deadline came and went, and I am still watching TV on my old mid-1990s TV set. My old, mid-1990s 13-inch TV set is sill working just fine with antenna reception, without a converter box. If I am not mistaken, the old mountaintop translator in on Mt. Francis.
When I briefly tried hooking up a converter box, I lost all 6 analog channels and got just 1 digital channel instead. So I disconnected the converter box, and went back to watching analog TV instead.
In addition to the 13 inch TV set, I also have an older version of the CCrane Radio Plus, which back then included audio only reception of the channel 2-13 television band. That radio still gets 4 analog TV channels very clearly. It also gets NBC on channel 6, which my TV set does not get. Because the radio does not include the UHF channels, the it does not get the 3 UHF analog TV channels.
I am one of the few people in this small city, which do not have cable or satellite. I have also heard of a couple of mountaintop translators in New Mexico and Colorado, which are still analog. I have wondered how the mountain top translator is still sending out analog TV, if the signals they are receiving are digital. I assume the must have installed converter boxes at the translator.
If my old 13 inch analog TV sets ever wears out, I hope that a new TV set would still also be capable of receiving the older style NTSC signals (not just the newer ATSC digital signals). If I am not mistaken, some cable TV systems are still analog, so I hope that means that backwards compatibility with analog TV will still be around for a while. If not, should I get a new or used older NTSC capable analogy TV, while they are still available? My approximately 15 year old 13 inch TV set might not last forever.
DTVs work even better.
When it's lightning, my channel 8 freezes-up for a second. When the storm is directly overhead it's like watching stroboscope. It's not as bad since they increased their power from 5 to 30 kilowatts, but it's still noticeable. I imagine if a tornado was within a mile of my house, Brian Williams' image would simply freeze and not move at all..... run for the basement! ;-)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>The worst thing about the conversion is that there is no redundancy in the signal
False, false, false. The data actually is spread across the time domain, so if there's a temporary "blip" such as from lightning disrupting the signal, the tuner's CPU can pick-up pieces from 1 second later, and then reconstruct the picture via the built-in error correction.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The Blaster can just change to the same channel twice in a row.
Change to 245. Change to 245 again, and the box misses the 4 and ends up on 25.
>>>
>>>>
What she got was yet another box for me to put in the chain between her television and the antenna attached to the pole shed.
>>>>
Nowhere, Nebraska implies legacy - low power - VHF broadcast and UHF transponders.
Trash the old - likely decades old - antenna.
Mount a new one, designed for fringe area reception. Mount it high. Don't cut any corners. Work strictly by-the-book. If you aren't comfortable with heights, let a pro do the job.
Consider installing a very low-noise pre-amp.
>>>
D00d! I don't need the advice but if I had mod points I'd give them to you for the next month. This is what /. used to be---and I'll say it again for the deluded moderators---you fucking suck, blow me.
Sorry, man. Great work. Rock on.
I have a whole lot more time to sit staring at Slashdot and all the other good sites out there(about 4) now that even with the best antenna money can buy I can only get 4 stations and half of those are sporadic at times not to mention they are 1 spanish channel and the rest are QVC or something.... I mean what the F@##??? I guess the good side to it is I do have a lot more time to surf the interwebs! unless I want to spend another 50-80 bucks a month for a dish??? of course there is always c-band... I guess it is still around ;-)
FragHARD or don't frag at all
hmm?
:NY DMA. Digital is great ! I went from 15 or so analog to over 35 digital channels-a neighbor, who went the no $ $40 converter box route is also delighted. We homebrewed an antenna in about 30 minutes and he has about 15 channels with a bowtie in the attic. The picture looks way better than the cable compressed signal. I don't pay my sat company for local channels, either. I get two channels of PBS, which is nice. My Sony HDD 250 makes it all wonderful ! (out of production, sadly). I did this geek style, but my neighbor used a $40 converter box and a homebrew antenna and he too is very happy-so his cost was $40 for the transition and 45 minutes for us to build the antenna.
I believe (and expect I will be corrected) that the interference in DTV is the rain droplets, since it seems like my reception problems occur even in heavy mist, when there's no lightning anywhere in the region.
BTW, who's broadcasting with mere tens of kilowatts? When I was looking at television transmitter info before the Big Switch, they all seemed to be using hundreds of thousands of watts. Several of the stations were at a full megawatt for their digital signal, which is pretty disgusting when I consider that the first nuclear power plant I heard of only produced about one megawatt.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
"were never used by purchasers"
How do they know that? Was it a question I missed on the Census?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Not if your kids are fans too.
I wonder what the situation is there? Mine is astronomically better. But I live in a big city with a clear shot to the broadcast antenna farm. I figured you either get a great picture or basically nothing watchable. I guess not being watchable is worse reception. I pretty much thought that if you had it before you'd have it after. Of course you have to aim your antenna right. I have a $12 directional that I aimed with a $0.50 compass.
My experience with attempting to view over-the-air digital signals begs to differ - there has been enough coughing and hacking (blockiness, miscoloring, audio missing video) and going completely to black in normal weather that the digital signals they've left us with are far from ideal.
Analog for me!