"Lee B" wrote in message
...


Not sure how new this development is, but one of the converter boxes
(Winegard)also takes an optional battery pack. Since my neighborhood had a
lot of power outages last summer, I'm thinking of getting one of them so
that I can continue to watch my old battery operated tv set. (The
alternative is to buy a new battery op tv, but most of them don't seem to
have a battery life as long as our average outage).

OTOH, speculation on one of the DTV forums is that after the cutoff of the
coupon program, there may be more enhancements to the converter boxes.
Apparently the coupon eligible boxes aren't allowed to have too many bells
and whistles.

I haven't done a whole lot of reading on the boxes since I have cable and
am buying a box as a backup. (Plus I have a coupon burning a hole in my
pocket, LOL).

I have cable and found it goes out more than the power and will stay out
longer. Last time the power did not go out and the telephone worked,but
the cable was out for almost 3 days. I have a digital ready
TV for the main viewing, but no way to get an antenna wire to it without
rerouting some things. In the basement I have an older TV that needs the
converter and it will pick up about 30 channels on the antenna hooked to it.
Also have a small generator (5000 watts) just incase the power goes out.