Metspitzer wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:45:34 -0500, "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

To the people that use OTA digital, how far do you live from the TV
stations?

I live in an area where we could never get good TV signals. I am
interesting in hearing from people that had poor TV and are using OTA
for digital. I live 45-60 miles from the stations.

I had poor reception with analog: severe ghosts on strong stations and
severe snow on others. In preparation for going digital, I bought a
so-called HDTV amplified set-top antenna. It made strong and weak
stations much better.

That antenna was terrible when I got a digital TV. I got an old 4-bay
outdoor antenna out of the closet and made a stand by sticking a pipe
onto the pedestal of a broken office chair. I think I got 40 channels,
all better than my best analog reception.

I took the antenna and TV outside, hoisted the antenna to a limb above
rooftop level, and used a cord to aim it toward each station the FCC
said was within 80 miles. I got the same 40 I got with the antenna
beside the TV in my dining room. My most reliable reception comes from
transmitters 80 miles away, while I can't receive from some transmitters
20 miles away.

It seems HDTV can work beautifully with weak signals because all that is
necessary is to count pulses. Multipath distortion can break the train
of pulses, causing trouble for HDTV. That's why I had trouble with the
amplified set-top antenna. Multipath distortion can come from
reflections in your house, outdoor obstacles like mountains, and even
reflections off the sky in some conditions. An impedance mismatch
between your antenna, cable, and TV can cause a similar problem.