Don Bruder wrote:
In article ,
Robert Neville wrote:

Jimw wrote:

By the way, are there any decent antenna amplifiers for DTV, or does a
person just use the standard UHF VHF amps they always sold?
There is no difference between the analog and digital signal for antenna or
amplification. Anyone selling "digital" is selling snakeoil.

Correct so far.

The only difference would be for those who are using a VHF only antenna today
and have digital transmitters that are going to stay in the UHF band.

Partly correct, but for exactly the opposite reason you think. VHF
antennas will indeed become essentially useless. However, this is
because *ALL* digital transmitters are already on UHF (though some are
operating at lower-than-licensed power levels) and will stay there. When
the VHF signal is turned off in February, the VHF antennas will still
function as (lousy) antennas, but performance is likely to be so poor
that they won't be useful except in cases where there are very strong
signals.

And no, it doesn't matter that a station is now on a VHF channel, yet
transmitting digital - What's happening is that they're transmitting on
two separate frequencies - The standard analog signal on their "old" VHF
frequency, the digital signal on their "new" digital frequency. Which,
in *ALL* cases, is in the UHF band.


Not true in all markets. In fact, in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area,
two stations are moving out of the UHF band down to channels 11 and 13!
Previously, all stations were UHF here except for the low power catholic
station on channel 7. I made a simple dipole cut for channel 12 and it
works fine to pick up 11 and 13 digital signals.