Need Good OTA in New TV

[Jeffhs]

There is still such a thing as television DXing. I live 30 miles from Cleveland, within a mile of Lake Erie. Using just an indoor DTV antenna, I can receive stations from Detroit with excellent pictures when the conditions are right.

TV DXing is not what it once was; that is, now we must scan through every channel our HDTVs receive in order to find distant stations, since, as was noted, most DTV tuners do not allow for manual keypad entry (from the remote) of individual stations to scan lists--you must accept what the tuner finds, then delete unwanted channels as needed. (All DTVs do allow entry of any receivable channel in a given area via the remote's keypad; I am referring to adding or deleting channels to or from the scan list using the keypad.)

It would be nice if DTV tuners did have a manual channel scan list entry mode; perhaps in a few years the design of these tuners may be improved enough so that the tuners not only allow for manual channel entry to a scan list, but are sensitive enough that the TVs in which they are installed may be used for OTA reception in any signal area. As it stands today, unfortunately, some HDTVs, especially some of the cheap no-name makes (e. g. Polaroid, Craig, etc.), have tuners that do not work well at all for OTA in anything other than very strong to near-suburban reception areas; they may have issues with receiving cable signals as well.