If this is the wrong newgroup, I apologize and hope you can recommend
a better one.

Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV
channels?

Or is it more likely my friend, who has a plain antenna in the attic,
needs an amplified antenna in the attic? She doesn't want an antenna
on the roof.

Any recomendations for a powerful converter box? Maybe with a good
Guide. She has a coupon good for 3 more days.



She's in north suburban Baltimore (Reistertown) and can't even get
channel 45, a Baltimore channel, (it says "No signal") that came in
perfectly for her and me too in analog, and perfect for me in digital.
OTOH, she does get channel 7 in Washington DC. The city is about 50
miles from her, not sure where the transmitter is, but it's farther
than channel 45's.

Reisterstown is more properly to the west of Baltimore. (I know because I
used to live off Liberty Heights avenue).

Bad reception might be due to a converter with poor sensitivity, but a good
antenna should be the first step in obtaining good reception.

If her coupon is about to expire, she might ask for a demonstration at a
retailer. (Good luck...)

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:48:08 -0400, mm wrote:

If this is the wrong newgroup, I apologize and hope you can recommend
a better one.

Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV
channels?

Or is it more likely my friend, who has a plain antenna in the attic,
needs an amplified antenna in the attic? She doesn't want an antenna
on the roof.

Any recomendations for a powerful converter box? Maybe with a good
Guide. She has a coupon good for 3 more days.



She's in north suburban Baltimore (Reistertown) and can't even get
channel 45, a Baltimore channel, (it says "No signal") that came in
perfectly for her and me too in analog, and perfect for me in digital.
OTOH, she does get channel 7 in Washington DC. The city is about 50
miles from her, not sure where the transmitter is, but it's farther
than channel 45's.

Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx and also to
http://www.tvfool.com/. TVFool is nice in that it can give you the
azimuth (direction) and a nominal expected signal strength for
neighboring stations.

The antenna is more important than the converter box.

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:04:51 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Reisterstown is more properly to the west of Baltimore. (I know because I
used to live off Liberty Heights avenue).

I'm from Indiana, where 95% of the streets and roads run due north and
south or due east and west. I get confused here.

Bad reception might be due to a converter with poor sensitivity, but a good
antenna should be the first step in obtaining good reception.

Well, the coupon is expiring and she's trying to decide whether to buy
another box.

Plus she has a cramped hot dirty attic which she won't go up in. I
can't go there, not because I'm fat, which I am, but because my
ribcage is too big for the hole in the closet ceiling, right in the
middle of my chest. (I have a little fat at my ribcage, but only maybe
an extra quarter of an inch.) I don't know why the hole is so small.
I'm 5'8", medium build. I have no trouble getting though the hole
into my attic.

If her coupon is about to expire, she might ask for a demonstration at a
retailer. (Good luck...)

Right. And some of the good ones seem available only on the web.
There are two models which will tune the converter box to a station at
a particular time, so if your vcr is set the same way, you can still
do timer recorders with a vcr, wihtout setting the channel each and
every time.

One is DTVPal Plus, which one "rater" said has 5 timer slots, although
the ad I saw for it doesn't say how many.

The other is Zinwell ZAT-970A`, which has 8 timer slots, although one
"rater"** said it had the lowest quality remote he had ever seen, and
one button was starting to break after only a few days. Other rated
it highly and said nothing about the remote.

**This guy said he had two converters and the DTVPal gave terrible
reception and that was improved in the DTVPal Plus. So I was
wondering how common that was.

Not only doesn't she get 45, but she had to add 7 several times before
it stayed, even though she watched 7 each time she added it. It would
still disappear later from the list of stations the up and down
buttons stopped at.


Thanks and thanks, Rich.

Considering that the unit will cost no more than $20 with the coupon, you
might as well get another one.

On 30 jun, 19:48, mm wrote:
If this is the wrong newgroup, I apologize and hope you can recommend
a better one.

Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV
channels?

the most important thing here is the antenna, far more critical than
with analogue. Indoor aerials like this will perform extremely poorly
compared to a roof mounted affair due to the weaker reception and
obstacles. if you're not getting many channels, the cause here is
most unlikely to be the box. they vary in sensitivity, but not that
much.

Get someone qualified to set up an external aerial properly, it's
money well spent and it's not as if you have to shell out cash for
this sort of thing very often, is it?

-B

Considering that the unit will cost no more than $20 with the coupon, you
might as well get another one.

In addition to different front-end sensitivity and multipath-
rejection capability, there's an additional tweak that some converters
provide which might be worth considering: "smart antenna" support.

The CEA has created a standard for "smart" (steerable) TV antennas...
ones which can switch their directional sensitivity pattern around,
under control of the TV or converter, in order to get the best signal
on each individual channel. In theory, any converter or TV which has
compliant smart-antenna support, can control any compliant steerable
antenna.

According to http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/smart_antennas/

"Preliminary tests by the CEA R-5 Antenna Standards committee have
shown impressive results, finding that a smart antenna can be most
effective in ghosty areas and can increase DTV system performance by
as much as 12dB. In addition, both the MSTV and the NAB have
endorsed the technology, and the NTIA is allowing the interface on
converter boxes certified in its DTV coupon program."

Taking advantage of this would require buying an installing a "smart"
antenna in the attic, and perhaps buying a new converter box.

It's also important to take into account the question of whether all
of the DTV stations in the viewer's area are on UHF (in which case a
compact antenna may work) or whether some are on VHF high-band or even
on VHF low-band (in which case, a physically-larger antenna is likely
to be required for good reception).

A roof antenna will almost certainly beat out an attic-mount.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
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