Just one month left of analog NTSC (again)

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by wilkes85

I just found out that they're switching the channels to UHF when they axe analogue TV here... which is just stupid because there are no UHF channels here, and there never were. So very few, if any people here would actually own a UHF antenna.

So i guess I won't be able to use the antenna on the roof at all, after 2011. It will just be a shrine to the good ol' days when TV was once free.

Where are you located? You may not have UHF stations in your area, but it could be that your local VHF channels will be moved to UHF channels so you may still get some use out of your antenna, or you could get cable so you won't have to worry about where your local stations wind up--on VHF or UHF. The UHF stations will be downconverted to VHF channels on cable anyway. The cable system in my area near Cleveland does that with the city's UHF channels (we have six such channels, on 19, 23, 25, 43, 55 and 61, with channels 19, 25 and 43 downconverted to channels 4, 10 and six respectively. Drives me nuts trying to find the stations sometimes, but that's the way they do it, I guess). This is done on our cable system and all others in the U.S. because it is easier to transmit VHF signals over coax cables; if direct over-the-air UHF signals were transmitted over your area's cable system there would very likely be problems with signal loss in long cable runs, among other things. In other words, higher frequency signals are more difficult to carry over cables; therefore, the UHFs are downconverted to VHF so there is little or no degradation in picture quality.