"-Lee Richardson" wrote in message
...
You obviously have not seen this website.
http://pages.cthome.net/fmdx/hdtv.html Admittedly he has a radical
antenna setup mounted way up high, but the digital channels can have
pretty well all the range of the analog ones. Especially considering
that many of the digital broadcasters right now are not operating at full
power, and probably even more so a year or two ago when this website was
first put up and many of these captures were made. Here in Evansville,
Indiana, I am able to receive CBS, NBC, ABC, several PBS's, and Fox in
digital using only an RCA omni-directional "garbage can lid" antenna
mounted in my attic. By contrast, the analog channels are almost
unwatchable with the exact same antenna due to multipath, etc.

Having said all that, I agree with the posts about the broadcasters
eventually going more for quantity than quality. They can keep
compressing the digital signals to where they will get so poor that all
the viewer will be able to make out will be the toll free numbers on the
24 hour a day infomercials. But for right now, the picture quality is
surprisingly good.

Lee Richardson
Mech-Tech
Evansville, Indiana

Lee -

Thanks for this !!

I lived in Macomb, IL (where those signals were received by Jeff Kadet) from
1950's to late 1970s .. so I know the TV DX challenges very well.
KHQA and WGEM TV (both VHF) in Quincy north of the Gates/Harris TV
transmitter mfg plant were the only 2 grade A contour stations (barely).

Weingard and AntenanCraft (made RadioShack antennas) both HQ in Burlington,
IA ..
http://www.winegard.com/

loved to test their deep fringe TV and FM antennas in Western Illinois
(Forgottonia) and southeast Iowa.

gb