I live in a rural area where cable is not available, and my property is so heavily wooded that satellite is out of the question, so I have been relying on a roof-mounted TV antenna for roughly 5 years. My location is about halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton in SW Ohio, and with analog, I could pick up the majority of both city's broadcast stations as well as the PBS channels for both cities.
I purchased and installed a 50" Plasma HD a couple of weeks ago, and when I fired up the setup program, I was more than a little pleased to find that nearly all the tv stations in the area are already broadcasting in digital, and better than that, most of them offer more than 1 channel with different content; for instance, the Dayton PBS station broadcasts 6 separate "channels" (for lack of a better word), as in 16-1, 15-2, 16-3, 16-4, 16-5, and 16-6. Each of these streams carries a different program.
The digital signal is far superior to the analog, and is clear and static-free regardless of atmospheric conditions. Even the stations which had pitifully weak analog signals here are clear and strong with digital. My television station lineup went from about 13 channels with analog to about 40 channels with digital, and it must be that the digital format is superior, because the analog channels that were weak and frequently full of static are still so after the change in television sets, but the same station's digital content is clear and static free.
I hope that everyone has the same experience as I have had. I was a skeptic too, and was just about ready to abandon tv for the internet altogether when I decided to give a new set a try. I am completely sold, and the cable/satellite channels can keep their 'services' as far as I'm concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in a rural area where cable is not available, and my property is so heavily wooded that satellite is out of the question, so I have been relying on a roof-mounted TV antenna for roughly 5 years. My location is about halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton in SW Ohio, and with analog, I could pick up the majority of both city's broadcast stations as well as the PBS channels for both cities. I purchased and installed a 50" Plasma HD a couple of weeks ago, and when I fired up the setup program, I was more than a little pleased to find that nearly all the tv stations in the area are already broadcasting in digital, and better than that, most of them offer more than 1 channel with different content; for instance, the Dayton PBS station broadcasts 6 separate "channels" (for lack of a better word), as in 16-1, 15-2, 16-3, 16-4, 16-5, and 16-6. Each of these streams carries a different program. The digital signal is far superior to the analog, and is clear and static-free regardless of atmospheric conditions. Even the stations which had pitifully weak analog signals here are clear and strong with digital. My television station lineup went from about 13 channels with analog to about 40 channels with digital, and it must be that the digital format is superior, because the analog channels that were weak and frequently full of static are still so after the change in television sets, but the same station's digital content is clear and static free. I hope that everyone has the same experience as I have had. I was a skeptic too, and was just about ready to abandon tv for the internet altogether when I decided to give a new set a try. I am completely sold, and the cable/satellite channels can keep their 'services' as far as I'm concerned.