Dang digital TV! Give me back my analog...

[Pasifikawv]

If your home is more than 70 miles from the broadcast location, don't waste your time and money installing an antenna. You're screwed. Dish/Direct is your only real option. Millions of households in rural areas are simply out of luck...

I forget the website, but there is a site where you can enter your address or gps cords. and the site will tell you how far you are from the towers for all the station in your area.

Even with the best of conditions, 70 miles is about the max. Hills, valleys, trees, tall structures etc. can all effect signal strength. Typically, a "line-of-sight" is needed for digital reception.

 

[sjmjax]

Here's a helpful, video guide to handling the analog to digital conversion.

Enjoy as this is happening all over the country this weekend....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w34nNux4Xw

 

[Spotteddog]

That was GREAT!
High tech, ya' gotta' love it!
60 years ago everyone was up on their roof's screwing with antenna's to get TV. Then again when color came in. Then yet again, when UHF was added. And now?
My, my, my?
How FAR we have come!

 

[FirebirdV8]

This won't help if you have dial up internet, but there are several free tv websites. There is hulu.com and most of the major broadcast companies have it on their websites as well.

Don't you just love government progress? If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?

 

[USAF385]

Yeah my girlfriend has high speed and we do watch a lot online. Most of the shows broadcast can be found on the network's site. My issue is mostly missing local news. I like the local news dang it!

 

[Rule3]

I feel your pain. We have cable and a nice HD TV. Now we get both the analog and Digital HD for the major stations. Almost 50% of the time the HD digital station breaks up the picture (pixelates)sp? or whatever., so we have to switch back to regular analog and we are paying for it!

From the photo of you nice home, you do not need to put a dish high upon a mast, they have small tripods and just so it has a clear shot up to the sat. Put it out in the yard and plant a bush around it.

I tried a line of sight antenna as broadcast towers are not far from my house and we are flat, flat Florida. The reception was crap. I am ready to cut the cable and just watch Netflix movies.

 

[Spotteddog]

FWIW,
If your in a "fringe" area for L/O/S TV reception due to topography, chances are your AM radio reception too already is marginal? So, if your an AM talk show junky as I am, wait till you hear the level of RF interference the converter boxes put up at the lower end of the AM frequencies! I've taken to pulling the (low volt) power lead at the box whenever I try listening.
Yup! VAST improvement! Can't wait for their health care...

 

[Titan]

This is an option I have also considered. I'm not really a fan of paying.. for anything. I mean.. I still use dial up. I do think I might have a dish guy come out and see if it will be possible from a mast further away from my house. The only issue I have with that though..... is it being in my yard. I look out my front window and see nothing but trees, farmland, and a big ol' "mountain" off in the distance. (I say "mountain" because sure isn't a mountain, but it deserves to be called more than a hill)

I don't blame you re the impact on your view and the ugliness.

Perhaps some camo paint!

 

[Titan]

Dish Network

The satellites are high in the sky, so unless you are completely surrounded right up next to the house, you should be good to go.

You're right about them being high in the sky, but depending on the receiving location and their position in orbit, they can effectively be at a low angle to the receiving dish and be blocked by trees, mountains, etc.


A good example of the problem is satellite radio which can very frequently be effected by dropouts due to trees, etc.
.

 

[The Last Standing Knight]

Digital TV Has A Lot In Common With Rotten Eggs

They are useless and smelly.

This digital stuff, with all the supposed time and effort put into it...ISN'T WORKING. It is hit or miss where I am and that's on the northside of the 4th largest city in the country! All installation procedures have been followed to the letter...it is not the equipment, it is the stations.

I can only imagine the trouble people in rural areas of Texas are having with it...if they can get it at all.

To all those advertisers out there in TV land who want their products seen on this new "Digital by Digimon" Television...how do you expect people to see your product if the blasted TV don't work!

We're stuck with this mess...another nail in the coffin of TV. Thank God for the internet.

TV should learn from Ruger: Make Sure All Bugs Are Worked Out BEFORE You Let The Product Out Of The Barn!

 

[wheelgun1958]

Perhaps you should consider free to air satellite.

 

[Firehouse]

You're right about them being high in the sky, but depending on the receiving location and their position in orbit, they can effectively be at a low angle to the receiving dish and be blocked by trees, mountains, etc.


A good example of the problem is satellite radio which can very frequently be effected by dropouts due to trees, etc.
.

Well, in the area that I reside in they are pretty high off the horizon. I've never had any reception problems, and I've been a satellite subscriber since DirecTV got started over 15 years ago. That was when the dish and receiver was over $1K and you had to install it yourself. I don't have the answers for USAF385, but I know what I have had good luck with. Of course, I can get everything locally with an outside antenna but he can't. Looking at his home photo, with as much foliage he has around his home, I'd say not much will help outside of cutting trees and raising a 100' mast. But I can't see it all.

 

[reerc]

Sorry for your troubles; we're on a pretty decent cable system - all is well.

 

[tomf52]

USAF385 - Whereabouts in NEPA are you? I'm in the Hamlin area and very pleased with Adams CATV.

 

[beach elvis]

Man, do NOT get me started on the analog-to-digital b.s.!

#1.) We didn't request it, yet in order to watch anything without cable, we gotta spend our hard-earned money for these boxes or it's, "No ticky, no laundry." Hijacking courtesy of the FCC and whomever else. My elderly parents have never had cable. Now these converter box people have forced their hands into my parents' pockets for no sensible, practical reason. I personally deeply resent it.

Compounded by...

#2.) About 10 or so years ago, I bought 2 battery powered TV's for my kids going camping, etc., and in case of power outage.
Back when the ice storm hit the midwest around Christmastime that year, I had no power for 2 weeks but I was still able to get news and info on TV.

Now those selfsame 2 TV's are worthless lumps of plastic, wiring, and tubes full of gas.
To me, that's just wrong wrong wrong. I oughtta cobble together what little brain I have left to try to come up with a battery powered converter "F"-ing box.

Now, will someone please tell me how all this digital stuff makes life so much freakin' better??????

"OOOHHH AAAAHHH, chrystal clear picture. My life before was crap and now it's just perrrfect."

Idiotic.

Ps. My wife2B has cable and a big-screen. I only watch TV for Fox News, the local weather radar, and the occasional, "Gunsmoke".

 

[USAF385]

USAF385 - Whereabouts in NEPA are you? I'm in the Hamlin area and very pleased with Adams CATV.

I'm about 30 minutes away from Scranton, near Lake Winola.

 

[USAF385]

WELL! For some reason I decided to check out the old analog signals. I wanted to see if they were gone.

Nope.

They're still there. Lucky me! I can still watch TV (for the time being).

I don't watch any of my stations on their primary broadcast. I watch ABC, ch. 16 on ch. 14 instead. CBS, ch. 22 on ch.19 instead. These are still being broadcast.

My uncle.. a former CNN employee and master of all things electrical/TV/Radio actually mentioned he thought they WOULD be keeping these secondary signals around.. for a while.

I don't mind.

 

[Ed333]

BS is right...

This was a solution in search of a problem..someone is making bucks off this whole fiasco, and I know it isn't me....i resent the fact that my little antique 12 inch Zenith B&W down in the basement is no longer there for me...not its fault...sort of like that cell phone that dealer sold me about 10 years ago, just before the type of signal it used was declared obsolescent. Some CEOs of some big corporations are going to make a bundle using that segment of the bandwidth that just got freed up, that used to belong to us, the Public.