On Jan 13, 9:41*am, Eric in North TX wrote:
On Jan 13, 9:45*am, "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:

I can no longer find the message, but I'm sure that it was on one of
these two newsgroups within the past few days that I read an allegation
that the move from analog to digital for TV broadcasting was a plot to
push vast numbers of people to cable or satellite because the digital
signal is receivable only over a very small area.

I mentioned this allegation to a broadcast engineer yesterday. He told
me that in fact many people are not getting good reception of the OTA
digital signals and are moving to cable or satellite because many of the
expensive HD TVs on the market have appallingly insensitive antenna
inputs -- far inferior to the almost-free converter boxes that were
distributed over the last couple of years.

Perce

I hadn't heard that, but it is disturbing. I get great reception with
my converter box, in what had formerly been a fringe area. I have been
toying with buying a 52" Samsung LCD, but if it would be a step
backwards, I'll continue with my 36" CRT.

I'm also in a fringe area. I recently replaced my work shop TV, a 20+
year old 19" CRT with a converter, with a Sanyo LCD. The Sanyo works
just fine. FWIW the signal strength meter is in the same range (high
60s to low 80s, depending on the channel) as the meter of the
converter box.

Just make sure the store you buy the LCD from has a return policy.

When I first connected the converter to the old CRT I got a much
better picture than I'd ever seen with analog broadcasts. I believe
that the problems associated with the analog to digital conversion has
less to do with technology than geography. I'm not sure that the
"great' pictures people are lamenting losing with the conversion were
all that "great" at all. They were just used to looking at a
substandard picture caused by weak a signal and interference, none of
which digital is forgiving of. Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned.