I'm not sure where to ask this question so I figure this would be the place. I know the FCC mandated that we go HDTV only sometime in 2009 although deep down inside, I do think that can be pushed back, maybe. Anyways, there are a lot of portable, pocket and otherwise battery powered TV's out there that would be rendered useless along with the rest of the analogue televisions. Of course you can still use them via converter boxes but that would kind of defeat their portability, better hope you can benchpress a Buick, you'd need to be Arnold Schwartzenegger to carry around the box, an inverter, and a battery and the TV of course just to catch your soaps and sitcoms out in the bush.

So what I'd like to ask is, will there be portable and battery powered HDTV's, I'm sure there would be but why don't we see them now?

Inquiring minds want to know. :)

At Wal-Mart I saw an Emerson set that said it was digital--standard definition. I think these sets have a digital tuner but will display the digital program only at standard definition, not HD. This was a 27" set for $299.
This is probably how the portables will be...capable of receiving the digital signals but at standard definition only.
It seems though that there are not that many portable TV's in use (that I have seen) actually picking up over the air signals. Most that are used in cars or other vehicles are watching DVD's or video games. Most portables at home are usually hooked up to cable.

I'm waiting for a B&W portable "HD" digital TV set like those el-cheapo 5 inch sets with AM and FM built in. That I can take to the ball game.

I think this is gonna be a boondoggle ala the Seat Belt Interlock fiasco of 1974-the Feds backpedalled faster than you could say "Recall" on that one...I think they will, too, on this, when Joe Six-Pack gets up, flicks on his Orion he bought last year at Wally-World, & the gawdam thing don't work..."Whaddya you MEAN I gotta buy a new TV, or Dee-coater thingy ?!? By Gawd, I'm callin' my Congressman !!!

...And quite frankly, I'd love to see Our Masters In Warshington get one broke off in 'em over this...If HDTV was really as great as its claimed, it would be one thing. But it's NOT, & I think they're making a Dreadful Misteak. And Am I not correct that this great change-over DOES NOT mandate HDTV, just digital ? They can still use the clunky old 1941 NTSC signal, just TRANSMIT it digitally encoded? Oh yeah, they can now have "interactive" TV, you can customise the show so you can see different points of view, etc ? Well, big feckin' whoop-dee-doo.There'll be about 3 shows on at Christmas, the Super Bowl, The Masters, & maybe the last 2 games of the World Series that'll have that fol-der-all, who really cares? Geez, I'm a grumpy ol' bestid about this, ain't I ?!? Maybe its time to Go To Bed...

I wonder how many people are viewing over the air TV? I think in our area 85% are using cable or satellite...which as far as I know can transmit the signal as they please. I just don't hear much hue and cry over the digital TV changeover.

...All I can see is that the local cable companies will use this to jack up their already usurous bills that much further, for a marginal improvement that nobody really wants, needs, or will even understand how to use to its full (supposed) potential. Its like 100 day, 100 event programming on yr VCR-Hell, around here, I'll GUARANTEE that the electricity will go off WAY before then, knocking all yr fancy programming out, anyway...<grin>

Sandy is correct there is not a HD TV mandate just digital a station can transmit SD or HD it's up to them. In some places there is high cable/dish usage but I don't think the count is correct in major markets like LA. If I was a station owner I would not rip out my analog transmiter right after the turn off date. Unless something big happens I bet a few weeks later the FCC will let stations turn it back on if they want. Like Sandi said this will happen after the phones start ringing in Washingston and it will be a whole new ballgame. I have a different angle to add, I bet there will be some race/poor angle that comes into play just a thought. In the LA Market there are several UHF spanish stations and I bet there are a lot of viewers using rabbit ears to pick em up on a set that has no idea what digital is.

I wonder how many people are viewing over the air TV? I think in our area 85% are using cable or satellite...which as far as I know can transmit the signal as they please. I just don't hear much hue and cry over the digital TV changeover.

I am on cable, but only by force. I hate extra bills , and all I watch on TV is Hal Fishman's KTLA News. So air signal would be just fine for me... Except that I live in a deep canyon with no FM radio, let alone TV :tears:

Charles

There was an interesting article about this in TV Technology:

http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Masked-Engineer/f_mario_orazio.shtml

It is pretty crazy that they don't mandate HD signals of some sort. I think we'll probably just end up with multiple of the same channels rather than 1 at higher definition.

David

I wonder how many people are viewing over the air TV? I think in our area 85% are using cable or satellite...which as far as I know can transmit the signal as they please. I just don't hear much hue and cry over the digital TV changeover.

I only get 6 channels on my rooftop antenna. I used to have a satellite system, and cable before that, but got tired of paying too much money for basically 2-3 channels that I was usually watching!!!

I figure that I will ween myself off of TV this way. When NTSC goes away, I wont be too sorry, except that I wont be able to run my old sets off my antenna anymore. I think it stinks, personally, having to convert to a damn computer, basically. Wait until they start making the digital sets obsolete every few years.

NTSC looks damn good on my sets. :thmbsp:

I think this is gonna be a boondoggle ala the Seat Belt Interlock fiasco of 1974-the Feds backpedalled faster than you could say "Recall" on that one...I think they will, too, on this, when Joe Six-Pack gets up, flicks on his Orion he bought last year at Wally-World, & the gawdam thing don't work..."Whaddya you MEAN I gotta buy a new TV, or Dee-coater thingy ?!? By Gawd, I'm callin' my Congressman !!!

I sort of seeing something like that happening depending how things play out and we might have NTSC around for a lot longer than the FCC wants unless Uncle Sugar ponies up the bucks for people to buy the converter boxes. You ought to hear my father on this, he is like the hypothetical Joe Six-Pack you described, he sees it basically in his words, "'The Man' forcing something else on the people that he shouldn't be" and I would have to say I'm inclined to agree with him.

I think a better solution is to restore the UHF channels to channel 83 when analogue cellphones go out of use and perhaps stick HDTV up there or divide the UHF spectrum into HD and NTSC divisions and leave VHF for NTSC. Again you have to come up with the logitics, there might be some UHF TV station that would need to switch channels and so on, but I think it would be easier overall and we take it from there.

I mean, my 1982 Zenith is fine for me and maybe it is because my eyes are bad being very nearsighted and worse yet, severe astigmatism (although correctible), but the HDTV picture is no better than the one on my 1982 Zenith. I hear that some roundies might even have better picture quality if tweaked just right.

I'm waiting for a B&W portable "HD" digital TV set like those el-cheapo 5 inch sets with AM and FM built in. That I can take to the ball game.

Heh, would be interesting to see a B&W 5 inch HDTV and I'll up the ante further, how about a roundie HDTV? :banana: :D :yippy:

The digital feed of one of the channels near me looks worse than the analog feed on cable. They are massively overcompressing the digital signal to make room for more than one channel. It looks like something streaming over the internet.

Someone should try to adapt a HDTV chassis to a round CRT. I would imagine the hardest part would be getting the convergence to work. You would probably have to redesign the convergence circuit. I don't know if the yoke could handle the higher scanning frequency either.

When I checked with my nearby neighbors about whether or not they were seeing the same interference I am (ch 2 through ch 23(at times)!!!) on over the air tv the few I thought were on roof antennas had cable or dishes I hadn't seen.... I'm the only guy watching over the air TV in a several hundred foot radius.

But since the interference is at it's worst during the day, well, it was just the final straw to turn the fecking thing OFF...

I complained to my Senators and Congresscritter about the turnoff of OTA TV and just got crappy form letters back that showed that their staff never even read past my first sentence.

Well, when they have to turn back on the transmitters, that'll fix their a$$#$... they'll understand about waking the sleeping giant.......

and the racial angle is interesting.... works better than the poor angle...

and as to the issue of standard video going through the digital compression that mucks up the experience....

It will spawn a new breed, call em VideoPhiles, but some of them will already be AudioPhiles.... and AKers to boot!! :D

And anything that can handle an Analog video signal will be a collectors item!!! :D

The digital feed of one of the channels near me looks worse than the analog feed on cable. They are massively overcompressing the digital signal to make room for more than one channel. It looks like something streaming over the internet.


Same on mine. It looks like stop-motion, and it breaks up into little squares sometimes. I hate it! I'd rather have old-fashioned snow.

Charles

The entire analog television cutoff issue is being blown well out of proportion. This whole thing began when the FCC first announced, some years ago, that it would require broadcasters to cease analog television transmissions and go fully digital by such and such date--first it was 2006, now it's early February 2009. (The deadline for all new televisions sold in this country to be equipped with ATSC digital tuners is some time in 2007.) The issue has been trumpeted so much in the news media and on the Internet that it now has people actually believing they will have to junk their present (and in many if not most cases perfectly good) analog TVs and spend thousands of dollars on flat-screen HD sets when the cutoff date arrives. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you have digital cable and an older/recent but usable analog TV, you need not worry about the changeover; all the processing will be taken care of at the cable head end, or through a cable box. The box will convert the digital signal to the same type of analog signal your present analog set has been processing all along--the only difference will be that the picture won't be HD. For those still using over-air antennas for TV reception (which are in the minority these days--most folks have cable) there are now digital-to-analog tuners available that can be installed between your antenna and the TV set, not unlike the UHF television converters which were popular in the '50s through the '70s. The FCC required all TV manufacturers to incorporate UHF tuners in all sets manufactured after April 30, 1964, so government-forced mandates for changes in TV receivers and broadcast standards are by no means new.

For those still using over-air antennas for TV reception (which are in the minority these days--most folks have cable) there are now digital-to-analog tuners available that can be installed between your antenna and the TV set, not unlike the UHF television converters which were popular in the '50s through the '70s.

Those set top box DTV tuners seem to be getting harder to find, not easier. Most stores don't even have them, but they all have plenty of HD ready TVs. When I do see them, they still cost $200+. That's going to be a tough sell when a DTV compatible "SDTV" can be had for about the same price.

When you think about it, there is no incentive for anyone to make a cost effective converter. They would much rather have you buy a new TV.

Question: Why should I or anyone be required to buy a new tuner for my television? When UHF came out it was mandated to be included on new sets, just like the new atsc tuners are mandated on new sets. It did not mean I had to have a new tuner to receive existing stations. So the mandate did not put any burdon on the consumer other than higher prices for new sets. It did not obsolete existing sets. Just as color did not obsolete b&w television. In my area when cable goes down, like during severe storms and tornadoes, I use some small tv sets to watch our one local off the air channel. Adding a converter would not be practical.
I have no real use for digital tv. Analogue tv is quite adaquate. It is the program content, not the picture quality that really maters. A milliion lines of eye popping high definition resolution is useless on ablut 99% of all current programming.
I stand by my original comment that the only reason for the change is to allow local broadcasters to charge for their programming. Since it will be digital this will be easy. After all why should cable superstations be the only ones that can charge both advertisers and consumers? It will not happen overnight, but it will happen. Your local off the air station will transmit multiple video streams. The major programs that they think most people will want to watch will be on the streams you have to pay for.
It will signal the end of free off the air tv.

Bill R

I wonder how many people are viewing over the air TV? I think in our area 85% are using cable or satellite.

I've heard of some TV stations that are transmitting digital and analog decided that they could turn off the analog. And as 85% of their viewers use cable or satellite to watch their station, they figured that the analog transmitter was a waste of electricity. All they had to do was give all the cable head-ends digital decoder boxes that convert the HD to NTSC and in turn that feeds analog cable channel modulators to feed all the viewers an analog signal. The few over the air viewers were either SOL or bought HD set top boxes or sets.

Question: Why should I or anyone be required to buy a new tuner for my television? When UHF came out it was mandated to be included on new sets, just like the new atsc tuners are mandated on new sets. It did not mean I had to have a new tuner to receive existing stations. So the mandate did not put any burdon on the consumer other than higher prices for new sets. It did not obsolete existing sets. Just as color did not obsolete b&w television. In my area when cable goes down, like during severe storms and tornadoes, I use some small tv sets to watch our one local off the air channel. Adding a converter would not be practical.
I have no real use for digital tv. Analogue tv is quite adaquate. It is the program content, not the picture quality that really maters. A milliion lines of eye popping high definition resolution is useless on ablut 99% of all current programming.
I stand by my original comment that the only reason for the change is to allow local broadcasters to charge for their programming.

Bill R

If you have cable, you are already paying a fee to the cable company to watch so-called "free" over-air TV stations, so there really is no such thing as "free" analog TV anymore unless you get the stations off the air with an antenna. When the cutoff date arrives and the analog signals go off the air for good, you will still pay the cable company its fee for the service even if you have simply "basic" service, that is, just the local stations in or near your area. Of course, if you get a converter and hook it up to your old analog TV, you can still get the stations without paying an extra fee, but the outboard ATSC tuner will set you back at least $200 unless you scout around on ebay (I was browsing there a bit ago and saw a Zenith ATSC outboard tuner going for well under that figure). However, once you get the tuner (it will be a one-time investment), you will be able to see all your area's stations on their digital channels on your present analog TV, only not in HD, as I mentioned in my last post.

If you have cable, of course, you have nothing to be concerned about as the outboard cable box, which contains an ATSC tuner, will convert all digital signals on the cable (including your local stations) to one analog channel, usually channel 3 or 4. I have Comcast digital cable, a digital cable box, and an RCA CTC185 19" analog color TV. I am not one bit worried about the digital switchover, as the cable company assures me that the Motorola digital cable box I am using (leased from the company, of course) will handle all present and future signals on their system.

As for the quality of digital TV signals at this stage of their development, I'd say give it time; they will improve. I see the stop-motion and pixelation effects on some digital channels here as well every once in a while; in fact, the NBC Weather Plus digital channel on our system had all sorts of problems with the picture breaking up and so forth a while ago. The National Geographic digital channel (which, like NBC Weather Plus+, is only available on the digital service of Comcast cable) was also running into problems some weeks or months ago, only their picture was going on and off at odd intervals. I haven't seen the Geographic channel lately, but I'm sure the problem has been corrected by now. It may well have been a local interruption of the satellite signal to the head end or some other factor beyond the control of the cable operator.

While it is true that standard-definition TVs are available today, they still cost quite a bit and are presently out of reach of a certain segment of the population, i.e. those people on fixed incomes. Until or unless large-screen HD televisions come down in price to a level comparable to today's 19" tube TVs, these people will watch HD broadcasts on their old analog sets (using an external ATSC tuner or cable) until those older sets quit. I intend to do just that with my RCA CTC185 and digital cable, until the RCA gives up; even then, I have a 1995-vintage Zenith Sentry 2 in my bedroom which I will use to replace the RCA. If SD- or HDTVs come down in price before the RCA quits, of course, I will purchase one, but as long as the RCA is working as well as it is, I'll keep it, using the digital box ahead of it (the set works great and has a beautiful picture after almost seven years, thanks to the dark-tint inline tube and rock-steady automatic color control system; this set is as close as I've ever seen to set-and-forget).

While I haven't seen one in the flesh I have seen listings on ebay for SD digital battery powered portables, typically with 3" to 5" LCD displays. These are DVB-T though, I haven't seen listing for ATSC versions.

I'm not sure how practical they would be though. Sometime ago I regulary used a 2.5" LCD pocket TV (PAL analog of course) to catch a couple of shows while I was out. I remember that more often than not it was difficult to get a perfect picture especially in some locations, but I usually could get a watchable picture. If this was a digital set I doubt I would have gotten any picture at all.

I don't remember what the cut off date for analog is out here, other than it too has been pushed back. While I would prefer that the analog tranmitters stay on air I'm not really that worried about it. The DVB-T signal is sometimes better, sometimes worse than the analog signal. It seems to vary from channel to channel and from program to program. I don't really watch enough over the air TV anymore for it to make that much of a different to me.

I'm waiting for the ATSC standard to get withdrawn. It transmitts like crap, it frezzes us into 1990's technology, and heck, it's pretty silly as is.

My guess is when push comes to shove, the big 4 WON'T give up NTSC anytime soon because it'll limit their over the air market to such a tiny segment that they'll die a quick death at the hands of advertisers. And I don't see cable or cable channels saving their asses - cable's like the wild west now with 500 channels. How's ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX going to survive the onslaught of EVERYBODY?

Nevermind PBS, which will become a big sinkhole like Amtrak is...

Since 85 percent of households have cable, the local stations are already in competition with 500 channels - going to digital will not change that. The locals have to survive on what unique things they can provide, and digital will provide at least some opportunity, like the full-time local news and weather at the same time as the network entertainment program goes on.

The ABC O&O here in Chicago is doing both news (the local news is simulcast live with the main channel, then repeats interspersed with public affairs programs until the next live newscast), plus a 24-hour weather channel. The NBC O&O is doing 24 hour weather in addition to the main channel.

Small PBS stations that have checked their viewership and taken the digital-only plunge seem to be successful. However, everyone would agree that this experiment won't work right now for a major network station, because the 15 percent of homes and 22 percent of TV sets not on cable or satellite still serve too many viewers.

Notwithstanding anything else, anybody that wants to run an older tv off of the new DTV tuners, one that doesn't have a video, s-video or component video input, should lay in a supply of RF modulators!!

Every outboard tuner I have checked does NOT have an RF output!!!

I haven't found one yet with a channel 3 or 4 RF output...

And RF modulators are starting to get rare too (IMHO)...

The cable competition is exactly the point. Cable gets revenue from both advertisers, and viewers. This is something that wihtout digital local stations have been unable to do. Once they go digital encryption will be next and easy. Lets see they transmit full time local news and weather at the same time as network entertainment programming. Now which one will be free? Bet it won't be the network feed.
At least now I have the option of canceling cable if I want to. While it is true that I pay for local tv as part of my basic cable, I would like to point out that cable is not up 100 percent of the time. Last week lightning took out my cable gateway, I was able to switch to antenna and receive the local ABC affiliate station. My small sets have no option for adding a converter or tuner. They only have the built in whip antenna and no other input. So those sets will be completely useless. I wonder if Uncle Sam is going to pony up to replace them. I doubt it.

Bill R

I am one of the few around here using just an antenna. I don't plan on paying for tv so I guess if things go through I have to get a converter. With 75 tv sets I should get a few! Wonder how many 'free' ones uncle sam will give me?!

Although I am all analog, I know how bad digital is. I see it especially on the local PBS station which gets it's signal from across the state. It is very often unwatchable. The ABC affiliate isn't much better sometimes. This is a real shame-things should be getting so much better, not worse, than they used to be. Heck, take me back to the days of the seventies when "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" was a common annoucement (mostly, I guess, due to broken film)-at least they had the courtesy to make the announcement and acknowledge the problems. They seemed to care back then but now that seems to be going down the drain.

The local CBS affliate has a digital only sister station, currently UPN but will be Fox soon. They do massive amounts of cross promotion between the two. Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy have been moved to the second station and they have additional newscasts. Of course, all the local cable systems have it in NTSC.

Heh, would be interesting to see a B&W 5 inch HDTV and I'll up the ante further, how about a roundie HDTV? :banana: :D :yippy:

Well, no roundies, but there were those wacky little 16:9 wide-screen B&W NTSC portables that were brought up here in a different thread several months ago... :)

I still think it'd be fun to consider pooling together and see if we can somehow make the minimum order for those things from China... :D

When I checked with my nearby neighbors about whether or not they were seeing the same interference I am (ch 2 through ch 23(at times)!!!) on over the air tv the few I thought were on roof antennas had cable or dishes I hadn't seen.... I'm the only guy watching over the air TV in a several hundred foot radius.

But since the interference is at it's worst during the day, well, it was just the final straw to turn the fecking thing OFF...

I complained to my Senators and Congresscritter about the turnoff of OTA TV and just got crappy form letters back that showed that their staff never even read past my first sentence.

Well, when they have to turn back on the transmitters, that'll fix their a$$#$... they'll understand about waking the sleeping giant.......

and the racial angle is interesting.... works better than the poor angle...

and as to the issue of standard video going through the digital compression that mucks up the experience....

It will spawn a new breed, call em VideoPhiles, but some of them will already be AudioPhiles.... and AKers to boot!! :D

And anything that can handle an Analog video signal will be a collectors item!!! :D

Well, (the Race Card) seems to have worked all or most of the time. Dunno about the Poor Card though. I know if my maternal grandmother was alive right now, she would put up a huge fit of not being able to watch "her stories" on her 1962 (no UHF tuner) RCA B&W TV. I think it was a 17 incher. I remember she said a long time ago that when she passes on, I would get it, but I did not. Wish I did have it, right now, I have my Playstation hooked up to a 9 inch Sony B&W from 1966, even though her TV is black and white, at least the picture would be bigger. ;)

I currently have my 1998 19 inch Zenith color on top of the 1982 Zenith 25 inch in case if we have the red screen problem again until I can score the part. It is weird though, it can come in the next 10 minutes or 10 months, we turn it off for a week or so and watch it again, rinse, repeat.

I just started watching TV over the antennas again. It's a great arrangement all around. NTSC looks great, and I watch less TV!

I totally agree with Sandy that the TV makers will probably make DTV obsolete every 5 years, and will very soon after stop making converters for NTSC sets unless the feds really set a standard for DTV like they did for NTSC. I can just imagine someone with a DIGITAL set having to buy a converter and then a converter for the converter.

"Well, that's our anaolg TV we bought in 2008. Oh that? That's the DTV 1.0 to analog converter we had to buy in 2009 when they turned the TV off suddenly on us. Oh that's the DTV 1.0 to DTV 2.0 box. And the box on top is the DTV 3.0 converter to DTV 2.0 converter."

I imagine that a bunch of satellite and CATV companies will take advantage of the public's ignorance of the law and standards and kill the NTSC feed.

So, instead of antennas hooked up to my VCR, I'll probably have my colour bar generator hooked in instead! Besides, everything I need with TV I can get with DVD.

I think it goes without saying, I have not seen a single ATSC set top box (STB), yet Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc. have been flogging "HDTV ready" sets left right and center, and are quiet about the 2k7 sets with DTV tuners built in.

The less educated consumer who (foolishly) purchases a "HD Ready" set will be in for a shock.

The only STB I've seen (at a wholesale distributor), lists it for $300+.

I have to date not seen a single STB from a major manufacturer of HD ready TVs on the shelves let alone in their catalogs, except for the former Thompson brands and LG-Zenith, which you have to scout for off the net.

When I go into (insert consumer junktronics/box store name here) and ask for this elusive device, the acne laden sales associates are at first confused, trying to sell me a GI digital cable terminal, then when confronted with "No, I want to watch ____-DT off air" they tell me that I have to buy a new TV. "Uh, but I just bought my 300+lb progressive scanning 43" FD-wega hernia-tron and its HD-ready?"

OK, here's what really gets me going: How many DVD video recorders have ATSC tuners? Aren't these things supposed to be nearing the top of the consumer tech food chain? They too will be "obsolete" soon.

I totally agree that NTSC, when presented on a quality TV, with proper wide gamut phosphors (not the brightness over color crap that became the norm during the 70's), and processed correctly, still looks really good.

Considering how much noise is present on analog and some digital cable systems' offerings, its no wonder DTV looks so good to some. -the same people who can't figure how to hook their progressive scan DVD player to their component equipped tv, other than with RF (yes, the guy at berserkit city sold them a modulator).

In my office, I have a Sony PVM-2950, being fed composite video from a DBS receiver. Everyone who happened (trapped) by it during the World Cup remarked how vibrant the colors were. Yellow on the uniforms was intense bright yellow, not some dirty greenish-orange. Greens and purples were dark and true.
Now I see what Pete Deksnis was on about, but I digress...

I'm thinking of that quote from MIB: "This'll eventually make the CD obsolete... guess I'll have to buy the White Album again"

Broadcast is dying.

I figure in 10-15 years, all TV will be delivered via satellite or cable. There wont be enough of us left using antennas to justify using up valuable spectrum, maintaining multi-million dollar transmitters, and using megawatts of AC power to run those transmitters.
The government will jam it down our throat, just like they have with ATSC.
If they let engineers and technicians make the decisions, we might be OK, but instead politicians and bean-counters do it.
How many people (who really know TV) believe that everyone who gets NTSC will get ATSC over the air? My $100 dollar Channel Master antenna gets 15 NTSC channels, 10 of them very well, 3 fair and 2 poor. So far I have been able to get one 1 (that's one) channel digital. (shopping at home 36 hours a day. Ugh.) I've tried several UHF antennas with no useful change in performance.

My signal quality has degraded in the last couple years, as I am now within a stones throw of a new Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Costco, and a sea of small stores filling the spaces between the big boxes. Every time a new store goes up, I see more herringbone, dots, and squiggles in my weak-station reception. I figure it must be interference caused by the hundreds of computers, lighting systems, and switching power supplies that are beaming their crud into my antenna.

So, between the NTSC to ATSC changeover and the interference from my ever-growing surroundings, I too may be forced to abandon over-the-air, and hook up to $50.00 a month cable. One more tiny blow to broadcast TV.

Then again, maybe I'll just dig out my 25 year old Beta tapes, and watch Police Squad and WKRP instead of Survivor. (y'know, I kinda like the sound of that!)

I'm done ranting now.
ATSC lovers, it's your turn

Broadcast television may be in its twilight, -anyone even partially congescent who has watched "Survivor" and "'Idol" comes to that conclusion rather quick. If it was that bad in the 50's I seriously doubt that anyone would have bought a TV to begin with. Think of the frog in the pot of water waiting to be boiled and think how that parable applies to the homoginized sludge that is broadcast television.

The television broadcaster is still quite protective of their spectrum though. Anything that could even under a full moon, with all known celestial bodies aligned in an inconceivable way that might possibly cause any form of interference to their transmissions will cause them to whine to the FCC like my 7 year old before Xmas.

We have set top atsc tuner boxes at our Wal-Mart. Don't remember the price though, I'lll look tomorrow.

Bill R

Here is a box I have been using for a few months and am very happy with it. I use it on a LG 23" set. I use the component output. The manual shows an analog connection using the 480i output setting and a YPbPr format via a normal video output connection. Svideo available also. Never tried it. I wonder if it would output a 4x3 letterbox down-conversion.

One forum says NG for 4x3. It's built in aspect ratio converter does not change HD signals. I wonder if you ran it through a DVD recorder that does change aspect ratio displays would do the trick.

http://www.epvision.com/index.htm

I live 30+ miles from the xmtrs and in a valley to boot. I do not get all of the Phila stations as I am on the edge of the coverage area, but enough to be happy. I am using my 20 year old Winegard VHF/UHF/FM on the roof via coax with no splitters. Pure signal. I am looking at modern HD antennas with built in preamps and may try somthing inside the attic.

It does OTA and CLEAR...caps for emphasis...QAM cable signals. Of course, Comcast cannot spell the word 'clear' so it will not work with them. Some local cables are retransmitting the local digital in-the-clear so check your system.

Dave A

Earlier I was complaining about lousy over the air NTSC signals caused by digital reception at the station; the other night it was stormy here in the land of 3 stations. And there wasn't much choice on the tube that night. The PBS station was out about 90% of the time. Very amateurish-on the screen kept flashing messages like you would get if you had a dish and were having problems. "Searching for signal", etc. Switched over to the ABC affiliate & they had all kinds of digital pixelation crap, and the picture there kept blacking out as well. That left only the CBS affliate-the local station is a class act & their transmission was flawless all night. Glad somebody cares. I lamented to my wife that digital is what we have to look forward to. Guess I'll have to borrow those Police Squad tapes! (I have a bunch of WKRP already!)

Yeah, that's the problem with digital. Either you get the signal or you don't.

The conspiracy theorist in me says it's the government trying to subvert a good technology with a poor one so that so few people will be using rabbit ears that they can kill terrestrial signals for cable and satellite, and then have 100% control over our TV signals. What with "digital" radio being introduced, I wouldn't be surprised if, five years from now, we're complaining about the FCC killing off terrestrial radio and only offering us satelite radio.

At which point I might have to switch to reading the newspaper! (Or possibly find internet news.)

My reply to allowing the engineers to make the decisions is that in 2005, the government made more TV leglislation...in our favour. The engineers (hired by Microsoft and the RIAA) wanted to make a "broadcast bit" where we couldn't record off the TV unless they said we could. The feds stopped them.

Fact is now, most of the engineers are employed by the entertainment companies who want to squeeze us for every last dollar with "broadcast bit" programs, making it so ludicrous that we have to pay a fee to register video of our kids seventh birthday just to be able to watch it!