Almost a year since analog TV died

[MRX37]

Still getting Canadian stations. Not too many DTV reception issues here (outdoor homemade antenna).

Since a large part of my job involves watching TV (testing projectors), I don't really use my DTV box at home a whole lot.

[sampson159]

other than wanting an extra box,i ve never had a problem with them.at and t was a headache!system never worked.i spent more time on the phone than watching.before i tossed them,i had credit built up.i dont sign contracts.i sold contracts for over 40 years.
i would never sign one with a service provider.let them pull the contract thing on me.when it was installed,(by a sub contractor),he tried to get a signature after it was in and operating.i told him i would take it too my legal council and to leave it with me.he didnt and it wasnt signed.if you want a contract,you need a sales professional to get the job done.they didnt have one!

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

The one place in the village that still uses an outdoor antenna for TV, as far as I know at this time, is the local bowling alley, just down the street from my apartment. They have a rather large, high-power fringe-area TV antenna on a rotor, mounted on a short mast (I don't know how short) on one of the building's chimneys. I've never been inside the building, so I don't know if they still have an analog TV or if they upgraded to HDTV. I'm almost sure the reason their TV antenna is so large and on a rotor is so that they can receive sports events from out of town; my area is not far from Erie and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Youngstown and Toledo, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, so with a high-power antenna in the clear on a rotor it is indeed possible to get locally blacked-out sports from other markets. I regularly receive FM stations from those cities in the spring through early fall every year using just the internal antennas on all my radios, including my vintage sets.

Why not ask them? It seems as if that might resolve many of your questions about DTV reception in your area. Many of the cities that you mentioned should be within the range for DTV reception with a decent antenna/rotor set-up. Detroit, for example, has several DTV stations with ERPs near 1 million watts, and a path that is mostly over water of only slightly over 100 miles.

I got lucky once when I inquired about a large FM antenna that I spotted only a few miles from my house, I thought that perhaps there was another FM DXer in my neighborhood... turns out that the antenna had not been used for years, and the guy was planing to remove it before painting his house. I helped take it down, and he gave it to me.
You might get lucky too.

jr

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

"Small portables have been mostly rendered useless. "

In every room of my house (12 miles from the transmitter sites) I can usually tune the major channels on this little 3.5 inch set, using the built-in monopole antenna. They are still worthless in a moving vehicle, however.

Even with an external antenna that clips onto the rain gutter around the car's roof? These antennas were used quite a bit with the first battery portable TVs for mobile reception; they worked quite well in the stations' normal coverage areas, but then again all TV was analog in those days and the signals were a lot stronger. However, I don't see having a television in a moving car these days as a problem; after all, it is illegal to have a TV set in a vehicle where the driver can see it. This law has been in effect for decades, dating back at least to the days of the 5" Sony Micro TV which was, IIRC, one of the first transistorized televisions capable of operating from a 12-volt car cigarette lighter socket as well as its own batteries. Besides, IMHO, I don't honestly believe there is anything that interesting on OTA network TV these days (yes, even the evening news) that can't wait until the person gets home to watch it on his or her regular TV set.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Even with an external antenna that clips onto the rain gutter around the car's roof? These antennas were used quite a bit with the first battery portable TVs for mobile reception; they worked quite well in the stations' normal coverage areas, but then again all TV was analog in those days and the signals were a lot stronger.

A little extra strength can't hurt, but the problem really is related to the digital system that was selected for the US.

"ATSC is optimized for a fixed reception in the typical North American environment and uses 8VSB modulation. The ATSC transmission scheme is not robust enough against doppler shift and multipath radio interference in mobile environments, and is designed for highly directional fixed antennas."

Possibly, some modifications to the coding scheme will help.

"To overcome these issues, additional channel coding mechanisms are introduced in ATSC-M/H to protect the signal."

Quotes taken from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC-M/H

jr

[joemama99]

I don't see why you couldn't get reception as near to town a some of you guys are.
I live in central florida about 100 miles saouth of orlando and regularly watch tv
from there with a 30 ft tower and channel master antenna.
On good days I can also get west palm beach and ft meyers-occassionally miami.Miami is at least 200 miles away.
As in all digital schemes,the signal does break up at times.Some days are definitely
better than others-have no idea why.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by joemama99

I live in central florida about 100 miles saouth of orlando and regularly watch tv
from there with a 30 ft tower and channel master antenna.
On good days I can also get west palm beach and ft meyers-occassionally miami.Miami is at least 200 miles away.
As in all digital schemes,the signal does break up at times.Some days are definitely
better than others-have no idea why.

Usually a good deal of Tropo Enhancement in your area...Good DXing!

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

jr

[JB5pro]

I think it is ine of the many things that is not for the good of the people but I am often wrong

[andy]

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[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

"ATSC is optimized for a fixed reception in the typical North American environment and uses 8VSB modulation. The ATSC transmission scheme is not robust enough against doppler shift and multipath radio interference in mobile environments, and is designed for highly directional fixed antennas."


"To overcome these issues, additional channel coding mechanisms are introduced in ATSC-M/H to protect the signal."

TV set manufacturers should use this mobile signal as a fallback if the set can't receive a decent enough regular ATSC HD signal. So at least the TV set user will see at least something. As I understand it, the mobile signal is intended for small display devices like cell phones.

[rpm1200]

That sounds similar to the system used in Japan. They have not switched off analog NTSC yet, but they also broadcast two types of over-the-air digital service, one intended for mobile devices and one intended for TVs. They use a different digital standard from ATSC. I like the idea of falling back to the lower-bandwidth signal, and I don't know if Japanese TV receivers do that or not.

[jr_tech]

It could get worse, apparently there is a proposal to downsize the TV spectrum to make room for more wireless networks. Article here points out some of the problems associated with "packing" the present channels into less space, using ATSC technology.

http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/97312

jr

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

What will hurt is when analog cable goes away completely.

What makes you think that? If analog cable "goes away" or whatever, everyone will just have to switch to digital cable. It's called progress.

Personally, however, I think analog cable will be around for quite a while, since there are still many, many analog TVs still in use in this country, and there are people (myself included) who are not willing to pay sky-high prices for digital cable. (I had my cable service downgraded from expanded basic when my bill went up to $55.67 per month; now that I have bare-bones basic [broadcast channels only], my bill is now on the order of $13 per month.) The government is already hinting at blocking inputs on set-top cable boxes so people won't be able to copy movies onto DVD or whatever; I found this out from a news report this afternoon on WGN America, which broadcasts WGN-TV's local newscast across the country (why? Most of that news is for the greater Chicago area and doesn't apply to the rest of the United States), and also in an article in the local newspaper.

The new ruling may also prevent recording of movies on VHS video tape, which, IMHO, would be going too far; after all, VHS is an analog medium and therefore is not (or should not be) affected by the ruling. Sony won a court fight against the motion-picture companies over three decades ago, which cleared the way for home taping of television shows and movies on VHS video; that has not changed--after all, the movie companies are more concerned nowadays with people copying films onto digital media, such as DVDs, and couldn't care less about an obsolete medium such as VHS. However, the article I read also mentioned that, when this ruling goes into effect (it may have already), people with analog televisions may not see very new movie releases at all, or until the film is released on DVD. However, I think the ruling will apply only to set-top cable boxes. I don't see how it would be possible to block, jam, whatever, the inputs of analog videocassette recorders (to which the cable is connected directly, without a box) to prevent recording of anything including television programs since, again, VCRs are analog devices. There are no laws, that I am aware of anyway, against recording TV shows on analog video tape.

I don't think, again, the motion-picture industry is anywhere near as worried about people copying movies onto VHS as they are worried about the same films being burned onto DVDs. They may have had a case back in the days of VHS movie rentals, but in today's digital age they very likely don't care much, or at all, about video tape anymore. After all, VHS is an obsolete analog video recording system which was upstaged some years ago by DVDs. Before we know it, DVDs will be made obsolete by Blu-ray....and who knows what the heck will follow?

Sheeeesh! I don't get it. I just do not get it at all. People have been recording radio programs, songs from phonograph records, etc. on audio tape for generations, and no one even bats an eye; why should television be any different? It's just another case of our government stripping us of our freedoms, one freedom at a time. Not wanting to go off on a political rant, that's all I'm going to say about this issue for now.

BTW, the so-called "death" of analog NTSC television is, IMHO, nothing worth celebrating when its first anniversary comes up on June 12, because its successor is causing quite a bit of trouble for viewers, even now. The change has forced many people to do without television when they found out their old reliable analog set won't work with digital signals unless they use a converter box, some people who cannot afford cable are having to deal with spotty or no reception on antennas, forcing them to do without certain broadcast channels they may have received perfectly well when TV was all analog, having to erect large antennas, in some cases with rotators and on towers, and so on.

Again I say, sheeeeesh. The FCC went waaaaaaay too far when it decreed that analog TV would end on June 12 last year. Did they not realize how much trouble this would, did and still does cause viewers today who cannot afford or do not want cable or satellite? Phooey.

[andy]

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[radiotvnut]

We still get around 60 channels of analog cable. On my Zenith CCII, I use the built in rotary tuner to watch 2-13 and the VCR tuner to get everything above 13. It's a rarity that I watch anything above 13. My Mother is the one who watches the higher cable channels on her TV. When/if the cable company drops all analog delivery and forces us to go with a converter box, they'll either lose a customer or there will only be converter boxes on the most watched sets - My Mother's TV (new flatscreen) and my 19" Zenith CCII. There are six TV's in this house that are on cable and I don't plan on paying rental on 6 boxes. The cable is too high, anyway. I'm sure that within the next 5 years, cable via analog delivery will be gone.