In ,
Peter typed:
On 1/13/2010 6:26 PM, wrote:
wrote:
On 1/13/2010 12:37 PM, wrote:


If you are only 10 miles away over flat territory and using
an amplifier, that is likely your problem. You are getting
too much signal. If you remove the amp you should do better.

Chip


I bought the amplified indoor antenna after I was unable to get
satisfactory reception using several different configuration
traditional unamplified indoor antennas. The reception with the
amplified antenna was much better than using the unamplified
antenna, but still unsat. I'm in the DC metro area. One of my biggest
reception problems is
with a major network outlet that is broadcasting in a lower VHF
channel and dropped it's effective radiated power from about 220KW
analog to 12.5 KW digital!! That's right, not a typo. When I
called the station engineer to ask why they were using such low
power, they told me that they had petitioned the FCC to transmit
with greater power, but the FCC was concerned that greater power
would cause interference in the Baltimore metro area (which is more
than 40 miles north of DC). So, I can't receive a decent signal 10
miles away with an indoor antenna and the FCC is worried about
interference 40+ miles away. No wonder OTA reception of this
station is so difficult.

Have you tried an outside antenna? Your results would no doubt be
excellent. Chip

Chip,
Sorry that you must have missed my earlier postings in this thread. That's
exactly what I ended up doing, but even so, still do not get
reception free of occasional pixelation and short drop-outs when
there are strong storms, high winds, or airplanes in the line of
sight between the transmitter and my rooftop directional antenna. Peter

Unfortunately, DTV signals are line-of-sight so anything from a building
near the Tx tower ten miles from you or the woods, trees, hills, general
terrain, etc., can make a weak signal fluctuate. It's normal to lose
reception during storms, snow, rain or even high humidity in some cases.
The higher the channel frequency (not the channel number you receive on),
the worse the symptoms will be.
We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in order to get
anything to come in and you should see how bad it gets here! Digital has a
considerably shorter reception range than the old analog signals. Our
gummint critters are work.

Twayne

On 01/14/10 10:37 am, news.eternal-september.org wrote:

... Digital has
a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog signals. Our
gummint critters are work.

Actually, No! We had flaky analog pictures on some channels but
crystal-clear HD on the digital channels on the same TV with the same
antennas (two antennas pointing in different directions to deal with the
widely spread transmitters).

Perce

aemeijers wrote:
wrote:
On Jan 13, 10:45�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

There are proposals to elminate OTA tv completely and let the
broadcasters sell the banwidth or most of it for cell phones etc.

Uh, other than the leases recently auctioned off, the broadcasters
don't own the bandwidth to sell it. By definition and case law, the
airwaves are public property. Smells like urban legend to me.

I just saw something about fighting it on TV last night. Someone paid
for that tv comercial.

Peter wrote in :

On 1/13/2010 6:26 PM, wrote:
wrote:
On 1/13/2010 12:37 PM, wrote:


If you are only 10 miles away over flat territory and using
an amplifier, that is likely your problem. You are getting
too much signal. If you remove the amp you should do better.

Chip


I bought the amplified indoor antenna after I was unable to get
satisfactory reception using several different configuration
traditional unamplified indoor antennas. The reception with the
amplified antenna was much better than using the unamplified
antenna, but still unsat.

I'm in the DC metro area. One of my biggest reception problems is
with a major network outlet that is broadcasting in a lower VHF
channel and dropped it's effective radiated power from about 220KW
analog to 12.5 KW digital!! That's right, not a typo. When I
called the station engineer to ask why they were using such low
power, they told me that they had petitioned the FCC to transmit
with greater power, but the FCC was concerned that greater power
would cause interference in the Baltimore metro area (which is more
than 40 miles north of DC). So, I can't receive a decent signal 10
miles away with an indoor antenna and the FCC is worried about
interference 40+ miles away. No wonder OTA reception of this
station is so difficult.

Have you tried an outside antenna? Your results would no doubt be
excellent.

Chip

Chip,
Sorry that you must have missed my earlier postings in this thread.
That's exactly what I ended up doing, but even so, still do not get
reception free of occasional pixelation and short drop-outs when there
are strong storms, high winds, or airplanes in the line of sight
between the transmitter and my rooftop directional antenna. Peter


can't do much about aircraft,but if strong storms or high winds are
affecting your reception,perhaps your antenna is not aimed optimally,or
it's mounting is not strong enough. One thing,though;10 miles may actually
be -too close-,as you may be UNDER the station's antenna pattern.
Thus the need for an outside rooftop antenna.

WRT the xmit power issue,many stations REDUCED xmitted power after a trial
period. They wanted to save on their electric bill.

I also lost a low-VHF station(Ch.2) in the conversion.
It's NBC,so no great loss.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

DGDevin wrote:
"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.


One program that we enjoy every week is CBS Sunday Morning with Charles
Osgood. We used to record the program by VCR and have now changed to
DVR. Sunday Morning finally switched to an hi-def format last year.

Castle and The Good Wife are excellent drama programs this year, IMHO.
And Glee is pretty interesting too -- just about the only show we watch
on Fox. We also enjoyed Raising the Bar on TNT until it was abruptly
canceled. I'm a college football fan and really enjoyed the games in HD.
We are looking forward to the Winter Olympics in February. PBS has some
fine programming, but you have to pick and choose carefully.

Bill

In article ,
"DGDevin" wrote:

"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

"Vast wasteland" was Newton Minnow, after he stepped down from the chair
of the FCC. Of course, back then a big market (like L.A. and NY) had
three network channels and maybe three or four independents. And most
of the programming was pablum. He said it in 1961.

I've been in the entertainment business most of my life--my dad was a TV
producer/writer/director. I've seen a lot of things change since 1961.
For my taste, there's a lot of fun stuff to watch besides sports and
movies. Love Burn Notice and Leverage, and think Castle is smart
writing and fine acting. My guilty pleasures include NCIS and a couple
of other "action" shows. As for reception quality, I love my DirecTV
and my 70" Samsung and when I'm out and about, say a bar with a TV
showing sports, if it's an old set with a downcoverter, it's almost
painful to watch.

Best, R.E.F.

--
Never attribute to malice what can
satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.

news.eternal-september.org wrote:

We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in order to get
anything to come in and you should see how bad it gets here! Digital has
a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog signals. Our
gummint critters are work.

Twayne


Not always the case. My digital signals are much better than the analog
ones used to be and I haven't lost any stations in the switchover. I
can't pick up the San Bernardino PBS station digital signal (about 60
miles away), but then I never could get their analog signal either.

Bill

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

Humm.

I just dropped Comcast. $180.00 a month for the triple header
internet, phone and TV was just a little nuts.

I live 25 miles from Chicago. Went and purchased a Winegard HD7694P
VHF UHF TV Antenna

Built a MythTV media center.

Has 3 physical digial HD tuners for a total of 4 tuners(one is dual).
With multiplex broadcasts I can record even more(6-8 channels at a
time). Some TB hard drives and a subscription to Schedules Direct for
$20/yr

Not even looking back. Real Digital HD is NOT what you get from
Comcast.

1TB drive divided by approximately 1.6GB per ripped DVD leaves room
for about 600 movies. This does not even include the 1TB drive used
for everyday recording.

I'm not even using the tuners in the TV's

dvi
hdmi

Unfortunately, DTV signals are line-of-sight so anything
from a building near the Tx tower ten miles from you or
the woods, trees, hills, general terrain, etc., can make a
weak signal fluctuate. It's normal to lose reception
during storms, snow, rain or even high humidity in some
cases. The higher the channel frequency (not the channel
number you receive on), the worse the symptoms will be.
We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in
order to get anything to come in and you should see how
bad it gets here! Digital has a considerably shorter
reception range than the old analog signals. Our gummint
critters are work.

Twayne
A few comments: DTV signals are no more 'line of sight'
than analog signals were. The degree of loss from not being
'line of sight' depends solely upon the RF transmit
frequency rather than if the modulation is analog or
digital. DTV signals do suffer more from dynamic multipath
reception however.

What is an 80 dBm amp? Is that the same as (80-30) dB?

David

Bill wrote in
:

news.eternal-september.org wrote:

We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in order to
get
anything to come in and you should see how bad it gets here! Digital
has a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog
signals. Our gummint critters are work.

Twayne


Not always the case. My digital signals are much better than the
analog ones used to be and I haven't lost any stations in the
switchover. I can't pick up the San Bernardino PBS station digital
signal (about 60 miles away), but then I never could get their analog
signal either.

Bill


North of Orlando,I get the Daytona PBS channel 15 when I could not under
analog,but OTOH,I lost Ch.2 WESH-NBC. Good trade,IMO. ;-)

And under analog,my OTA channels were all snowy. Not under DTV.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

DGDevin wrote:
"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.



I keep DTV for reasons.

1 - To watch my alma mater's football games. The very few other shows
that I care to see I can usually get off the internet.

2- My wife watches stuff and would kill me if I canceled it. :-)


also, OTA reception is terrible where we live.

A Watcher wrote:
DGDevin wrote:
"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly
generate a conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care
about reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of
TV a week that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House
and a couple of other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives
up to the old "vast wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC
used so appropriately in 1961.


I keep DTV for reasons.

1 - To watch my alma mater's football games. The very few other shows
that I care to see I can usually get off the internet.

2- My wife watches stuff and would kill me if I canceled it. :-)


also, OTA reception is terrible where we live.


I meant DirecTV when I wrote DTV.

David wrote:


Unfortunately, DTV signals are line-of-sight so anything from a
building near the Tx tower ten miles from you or the woods, trees,
hills, general terrain, etc., can make a weak signal fluctuate. It's
normal to lose reception during storms, snow, rain or even high
humidity in some cases. The higher the channel frequency (not the
channel number you receive on), the worse the symptoms will be.
We're in a fringe area and have an 80 dBm amp running in order to
get anything to come in and you should see how bad it gets here!
Digital has a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog
signals. Our gummint critters are work.

Twayne
A few comments: DTV signals are no more 'line of sight' than analog
signals were. The degree of loss from not being 'line of sight' depends
solely upon the RF transmit frequency rather than if the modulation is
analog or digital. DTV signals do suffer more from dynamic multipath
reception however.

What is an 80 dBm amp? Is that the same as (80-30) dB?

David


I bought 30 feet of cable to try my antenna at various indoor and
outdoor locations. I bought an amplifier because it would have been a
good idea with UHF analog using that much cable. I never tried the amp
because I discovered I could get all the channels indoors on the ground
floor that I could get outdoors 30 feet above the ground. That
convinced me that a few dB of gain wasn't important with HDTV.

One station 80 miles away would break up in some weather conditions.
Reception improved if I turned the antenna 90 degrees from the
transmitter. That must have reduced my gain by a lot of dB. I wouldn't
have received anything at all with UHV analog, but digital worked.

I think multipath distortion from a reflection off the sky was causing
the breakup. I don't know how turning the antenna helped. I was
unaware of that kind of distortion with analog TV, perhaps because the
ghost image was offset by only a millimeter or so.

I'm on a hill. My BIL is in a hole three miles from me. When we both
had rooftop antennas, my reception was better than his. He couldn't get
analog reception after he took his antenna down. He watched recorded
movies.

I told him to try HDTV indoors. He had a cable and a 4-bay bowtie
antenna. He paid $6 for the only balun available at Radio Shack. He
couldn't get any channels, but when I unscrewed the balun and put my
finger on the center conductor of the cable, he received some channels.
Apparently that balun was causing reflections what would have been
acceptable with analog TV.

I gave him a 25-cent balun and he was in business. He gets most of my
channels and some I don't get, down in a hole with his antenna indoors,
80 miles from some of the transmitters. I doubt he has line-of-sight
reception on any channel.

A good old style UHF corner reflector antenna s working great for me,
I picked it up at rogers flea market for 10 bucks. come spring I will
put it on the peak of roof with rotor. currently is ty wrapped to my
chain link fence post.

weather was too cold for much else, on most channels its 90+ signal
strength

sears sells this. its a digital video recorder. its time based
recordings not name based like tivo but works well, and is high def.yu
can start watching a show while its recording which you cant do with a
vcr

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...00010000100600

I am REALLY ****ED AT DISH NETWORK. I am a 13 year subscriber. they
kept programing package prices the same, but hiked their fees
dramatically if you have more than one receiver. 17 bucks a receiver
plus other fees is insane

On 1/14/2010 11:55, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
On 01/14/10 10:37 am, news.eternal-september.org wrote:

... Digital has
a considerably shorter reception range than the old analog signals. Our
gummint critters are work.

Actually, No! We had flaky analog pictures on some channels but
crystal-clear HD on the digital channels on the same TV with the same
antennas (two antennas pointing in different directions to deal with the
widely spread transmitters).

Perce

Pretty much the same here. And 3 of the stations actually now have
substantially bigger footprints.

On 14 Jan 2010 01:42:05 GMT, wrote:

Gary H wrote:
[snip]

If you are only 10 miles away over flat territory and using
an amplifier, that is likely your problem. You are getting
too much signal. If you remove the amp you should do better.

Chip

And an amp won't fix poor reception anyway.

No, but it will help in marginal signal situations.


It "shouldn't" help then, but can somewhat because of the limited
sensitivity of the receiver.

Chip

[snip]


They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"How could you ask me to believe in God when there's
absolutely no evidence that I can see?" -- Jodie Foster

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:19:00 -0600, Gary H wrote:
On 14 Jan 2010 01:42:05 GMT, wrote:

Gary H wrote:
[snip]

If you are only 10 miles away over flat territory and using
an amplifier, that is likely your problem. You are getting
too much signal. If you remove the amp you should do better.

Chip

And an amp won't fix poor reception anyway.

No, but it will help in marginal signal situations.


It "shouldn't" help then, but can somewhat because of the limited
sensitivity of the receiver.

It can help if you're splitting the signal. Best place for an amp is
up on the antenna mast before the signal is split.

[snip]

I've heard of proposals to eliminate OTA TV.
For me,that would be a major bummer;no cable and 48K dialup net service,and
TracFone prepaid cell service.
Also,what happens in power outages or natural disasters? At least now,I can
use a battery powered TV,generator,or an inverter/battery.
Cable and cellphones didn't work after Hurricane Charlie in 2004.

The FEDS would auction off the freed bandwidth...more money for them to
blow on socialist schemes.

Maybe you could get something on the internet. However, that
connection may be down.

When we had a storm 16 months ago, the electricity was off for 73
hours. The backup batteries on the cable node (I have cable internet)
lasted 4 hours. It was another 24 hours before they put a generator on
the cable node. I'm glad I don't have (cable company) Phone.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"How could you ask me to believe in God when there's
absolutely no evidence that I can see?" -- Jodie Foster

On 01/14/10 07:23 pm, Mark Lloyd wrote:

They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.

If their new frequency assignment iss close to the old one, that
probably was possible. But part of the reason for getting rid of analog
broadcasting was to free up the low VHF channels. Our old Ch. 3 still
appears as Ch. 3 because the TV figures out the translation, but it's
actually on Ch. 8. Our old Ch. 13 is now -- IIRC -- on Ch. 39. Major
equipment replacement needed.

Perce

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:23:40 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:
[snip]


They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.

The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move
to a new frequency. TV transmitters are built to operate on a single
frequency. To switch channels, you have to replace it.

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

Alls i can tell you is that we are on the fringes of the KC metro area
broadcast area, and we had marginal analog service of 4 channels at
best. Now with a rudimentary antenna hooked to a new digital tv, i have
over 18 channels that are perfectly clear.

Tony wrote:
aemeijers wrote:
wrote:
On Jan 13, 10:45�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

There are proposals to elminate OTA tv completely and let the
broadcasters sell the banwidth or most of it for cell phones etc.

Uh, other than the leases recently auctioned off, the broadcasters
don't own the bandwidth to sell it. By definition and case law, the
airwaves are public property. Smells like urban legend to me.

I just saw something about fighting it on TV last night. Someone paid
for that tv comercial.

The National Association of Broadcasters sponsored it. I couldn't find
anything about it on their website, or anything about a bill before
Congress to reduce or eliminate OTA TV.

I think broadcasters want political pressure because HDTV may give them
a chance to expand. In recent years, most consumers, especially the
affluent ones, didn't get their TV OTA because they weren't satisfied
with picture quality. HDTV could increase the market and reduce
transmission costs. It may become profitable for new stations to come
on line, so broadcasters want plenty of bandwidth available.

On 1/14/2010 19:23, Mark Lloyd wrote:
[snip]


They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.

That would actually be an unusual situation because transmitters are
designed to operate on a specific channel. Plus purchasing new equipment
gave them a chance to buy much more reliable and power efficient equipment.

On 1/14/2010 20:07, AZ Nomad wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:23:40 -0600, Mark wrote:
[snip]


They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.

The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move
to a new frequency. TV transmitters are built to operate on a single
frequency. To switch channels, you have to replace it.

Right, that is why pretty much all of them had to go out and buy a
complete set of additional hardware (transmitter, waveguide, antenna) to
transition to digital

E Z Peaces wrote:

One station 80 miles away would break up in some weather conditions.
Reception improved if I turned the antenna 90 degrees from the
transmitter.

I've had the exact same experience here. My antenna is highly
unidirectional. It should need a rotator to point it exactly to each
transmitter for each different channel. But that just doesn't work
here. I do recieve good signal over a wide area with the antenna
aproximitly 90 degrees off. For one PBS station I need to rotate it but
even that is iffy if it will work pointing to the tower or turn it 180
degrees and it picks up good signal from the rear of the antenna. I
never know which is going to work best that day.

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:27:46 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:19:00 -0600, Gary H wrote:
On 14 Jan 2010 01:42:05 GMT, wrote:

Gary H wrote:
[snip]

If you are only 10 miles away over flat territory and using
an amplifier, that is likely your problem. You are getting
too much signal. If you remove the amp you should do better.

Chip

And an amp won't fix poor reception anyway.

No, but it will help in marginal signal situations.


It "shouldn't" help then, but can somewhat because of the limited
sensitivity of the receiver.

It can help if you're splitting the signal. Best place for an amp is
up on the antenna mast before the signal is split.

Yes. You need to amplify the signal when it's good.

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:02:59 -0500, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:

On 01/14/10 07:23 pm, Mark Lloyd wrote:

They had to buy all new equipment for the digital transition. You may
remember they ran their existing equipment on their old channels and
then added a complete set of equipment: transmitter, waveguides,
antennas, STL etc to transmit the "digital" signal while still keeping
the existing equipment in service.

For the stations around here, most of that was their existing backup
transmitter.

If their new frequency assignment iss close to the old one, that
probably was possible. But part of the reason for getting rid of analog
broadcasting was to free up the low VHF channels. Our old Ch. 3 still
appears as Ch. 3 because the TV figures out the translation, but it's
actually on Ch. 8. Our old Ch. 13 is now -- IIRC -- on Ch. 39. Major
equipment replacement needed.

Perce

Here there were no stations on VHF Lo (2-6), 1 on VHF Hi (7-13), and
the rest on UHF. They all stayed in the same band after conversion.
Channel 7 (ABC) used 10 for digital, and changed back to 7 after the
analog was turned off.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"How could you ask me to believe in God when there's
absolutely no evidence that I can see?" -- Jodie Foster

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:07:13 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

[snip]

The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move
to a new frequency. TV transmitters are built to operate on a single
frequency. To switch channels, you have to replace it.

That doesn't sound right, especially if the change in frequency as
small. Shouldn't it be something like the crystals used in old CB
radios?
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"How could you ask me to believe in God when there's
absolutely no evidence that I can see?" -- Jodie Foster

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:53:28 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:07:13 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

[snip]

The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move
to a new frequency. TV transmitters are built to operate on a single
frequency. To switch channels, you have to replace it.

That doesn't sound right, especially if the change in frequency as
small. Shouldn't it be something like the crystals used in old CB
radios?

Next time you're running a 4 watt tv station, that might be valid.

On Jan 15, 5:53�pm, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:07:13 -0600, AZ Nomad

wrote:

[snip]

The biggest expense was not the switch to digital, but the move
to a new frequency. �TV transmitters are built to operate on a single
frequency. �To switch channels, you have to replace it.

That doesn't sound right, especially if the change in frequency as
small. Shouldn't it be something like the crystals used in old CB
radios?
--
Mark Lloydhttp://notstupid.us

Commercial tv transmitters arent just a matter of crystals they are
very expensive custom built to frequency, so they dont produce
interference on nearby channels ...........

plus every station needs at least a primary plus a secondary backup.

loss of operation for even a hour costs them bbig bucks

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:


"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.- Hide quoted text -


Yeah I prefer the really old shows. RTN is showing some. its carried
on a OTA sub channel here

wrote:
I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.- Hide quoted text -


Yeah I prefer the really old shows. RTN is showing some. its carried
on a OTA sub channel here

I also like RTN. I wish they would schedule Alfred Hitchcock a little
earlier than midnight.

In article ,
mm wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:


"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

Well, the good news is you can get a load of that stuff on DVD.

Best, R.E.F.

--
Never attribute to malice what can
satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.

mm wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:

"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."
That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

Hey, I was a lot better in 1961, too. vbg

Bill

Tony wrote:
wrote:
I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.- Hide quoted text -


Yeah I prefer the really old shows. RTN is showing some. its carried
on a OTA sub channel here

I also like RTN. I wish they would schedule Alfred Hitchcock a little
earlier than midnight.

That's why many of us have DVR's.

Bill

On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:33:43 -0500, mm wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:


"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."

That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

you're ****ing insane.

mm wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:

"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."
That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly generate a
conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care about
reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of TV a week
that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House and a couple of
other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives up to the old "vast
wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC used so appropriately in
1961.

I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

It was a bit more intelligent and polite then. We also were not so
particular.

Bill wrote:
mm wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:56:01 -0800, "DGDevin"
wrote:

"Raymond Feist" wrote in message
...

Robert A. Heinlein from Napoleon's, "Never attribute to malice what can
be satisfactorily explained by incompetence."
That's better, I knew the version I had seen had "incompetence" in
there.

1) Is there anything that happens today which doesn't instantly
generate a conspiracy theory to explain it?

2) How does anyone find enough programming worthwhile enough to care
about reception quality? If I were only able to watch a few hours of
TV a week that would probably be fine, just so long as This Old House
and a couple of other shows were on the list. Most of the rest lives
up to the old "vast wasteland" description the chairman of the FCC
used so appropriately in 1961.
I remember 1961 and tv was a lot better then.

Hey, I was a lot better in 1961, too. vbg

Bill

So was I! I graduated from high school and was invincible.