DTV on standard NTSC TVs

[peverett]

This better DTV signal has not been my experience, or some of my friends in rural Oklahoma. I do not have a large antennas, but they worked fine on analog. Every time we have a windy day, the DTV craps out half the time on all the DTV converter boxes I have(I have several brands) and the one Digital TV that I have. And I am less than 30 miles from the transmtter! I did not have this issue with analog TV.

As to my friend in rural Oklahoma, it not only crapped out during wind, fog would kill DTV. The is 70 miles from the transmitter and finally gave up and got Satellite. He has a limited budget, so I am sure this extra cost hurt!

I used to live in the same area of Oklahoma and analog TV worked fine 70 miles from the transmitters.

I suspect these cable receivers are placed at the very best locations in their area for broadcast TV reception, both analog(before) and digital(now). The average homeowner does not have this luxury. The homeowners have to put up with things like blowing tree leaves, mutlipath receiption and such. These are the kinds of thing that reduced analog TV picture quality, but did not destroy the reception as these effects do with DTV.

[Kevin Kuehn]

Digital data transfer over wires and fiber optics makes pretty good sense, digital over the air, not so much. Just look at all the cell phone towers littering our countryside, pretty good proof that the technology does not work as originally advertised. Maybe they can use those same towers to relay OTA DTV.

[jr_tech]

CM7001:
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp...r%20Boxes&sku=
Not affiliated,
jr

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

CM7001:

Interesting device. I guess it might come in handy with a monitor that has HDMI input and no tuner, or use it as a second tuner for dual tuner PIP use with some TVs. I see they discontinued the CM7000 aka Dish DTVPal DVR.

[Electronic M]

If we are making a list of common use terms that are remnants of bygone technologly then we should add "ice box" and "tin foil" to that list.

[ChrisW6ATV]

At least into the 1980s, people in my family referred to lights left "burning", and my mother used the term "carfare" (as in streetcars) for all public transportation spending. Some people still use the word "album" for a collection of songs sold together, even though real music albums went away in the 1940s or 1950s (when the word started being used for long-play vinyl records).

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

At least into the 1980s, people in my family referred to lights left "burning" ...

I was looking at old TV print advertisements the other day online and saw an old ad from the '50s for Admiral "Son-R" remote control televisions. The ad stated that, unlike most other TV remote control systems, the Son-R remote turned the television completely off (except for the remote receiver) as well as on, and that "No tubes (are) left burning in the set!"

Also, there were some folks who still referred to refrigerators as "ice boxes" as late as the 1970s. Oscar Madison (played by Jack Klugman) in the 1970s ABC television series "The Odd Couple" was one of them, with his roommate, Felix Unger (the late Tony Randall) being another. I suppose there were many people who grew up in the '20s or earlier who still used the term "ice box" (out of force of habit, no doubt) for years or decades as well, even after GE introduced its "Monitor Top" electric refrigerators in the '30s. Again, it was largely out of force of habit; these older folks became so accustomed to using the term "ice box" when they had one that, when the electric refrigerator came out and the old ice box was scrapped, the term stuck.

As far as "tin foil" goes, however, I am at a loss to explain why this phrase was still being used even into the 1970s to describe foil which is, nowadays, anything but tin -- unless it was actually made of tin when it was first marketed in the US. Today, however, we know that this type of foil is actually aluminum, but as with the term "ice box", the phrase "tin foil" was used for years by some older people, again purely out of force of habit. When a phrase is used often enough, many times it becomes common in the language and is used for years, decades or even generations before it finally falls out of favor and is replaced by another. I can think of a few crude phrases still being used by some folks these days that originated perhaps thirty, forty or more years ago, and that refuse to die.

[peverett]

The term "tin foil hats" is still used to describe people whose beliefs tend to be on the edge.

I saw the line "Zenith, gone but not forgotten". I used to work for Motorola. They are "Almost gone" with only the Motorola Solutions group left after Google finishes buying the cellphone portion.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Jeff, I am using a TV antenna on my roof. I am also a ham (the W6ATV in my nickname here) and I own this house, so the TV antenna is just one more in the collection. It is a Channel Master Stealthtenna, that I installed to replace a bigger log-periodic-type one because I wanted multi-direction reception without using a rotator. I live in a flat area about midway between San Francisco and Oakland, California, so I pick up good signals from both cities here (about 25 miles from either city). In fact, this is a good location in general, because I can pick up all of those signals indoor with rabbit ears on a good DTV receiver (Zenith or Channel Master) as well. It is fun to use a 1950s pair of rabbit ears and a 1965 RCA CTC-16 and watch flawless color TV with the Zenith tuner.

I would definitely recommend that you give an antenna or two a try with your DTV converter (and your flat-panel TV in antenna mode as well) again. Reception here is much better than it was in the early days of digital TV, so the stations really have been improving their signals recently. As I am sure you probably know, if/when you move your antenna to different angles or positions while testing it, you need to wait a few seconds or more in each position to let the digital tuner catch up before judging the signal and moving the antenna again. Good luck.

[Jeffhs]

Chris, I just now looked at the "antenna" listings at TVGuide.com for the San Francisco/Oakland area, and am astounded at how many channels one can get just with an antenna in that area. I didn't count them, but my best guess right now is perhaps 30 channels, from both SF and Oakland -- some of those channels being duplicates (I noticed two DTV channels on the LiveWell Network in the SF/Oakland area, and several PBS stations).

I think I just might try my Insignia flat-panel TV on an antenna, just to see what I can receive here OTA. As I mentioned, the NBC station in Cleveland did not reach here at all in NTSC analog, and the digital signal is likely even weaker, so I don't have much hope that I'll get that channel here with an indoor antenna. ABC and CBS, on channels 5 and 19 here, respectively, just increased their transmitter power (at least 19 did; channel 5 just installed new transmitting antennas and is, to the best of my knowledge, still operating at the same power output it had when it was operating in analog), so I may have a good chance of seeing those two channels in ATSC digital. I don't have DTV converter boxes for my two analog CRT TVs yet, and don't know if I can even get them anywhere anymore, as most stores that did stock them prior to the DTV transition no longer do so, although I read somewhere on this or another forum that Radio Shack still stocks Digitalstream-branded DTV converters; for how much longer, however, is anyone's guess. Flat-panel TVs are becoming dirt-cheap these days (I bought my 19" Insignia FP at Best Buy this past August for $130, less shipping), and I just saw an ad in my Sunday paper for a 19-inch off-brand FP selling for under $100. Because FPs, except the monster 40-, 50-, 60+-inch ones, are becoming so cheap, there may not be much need for converter boxes (people more often than not trash their old CRT TVs, replacing them with FPs these days when the old sets develop any kind of repair problems), so I guess now is the time to get a box if you can find them.


BTW, I have noticed your ham radio callsign as part of your member name here at VK, and I remember reading in one of your posts to another thread a long time ago that you operate amateur TV on 440 MHz. That's one mode I never explored when I had my HF ham station in a Cleveland suburb, before moving here in 1999. Now, I operate basically just 2-meter FM and, for HF, since I cannot erect antennas (lease restrictions), I am on Echolink, node number 331660. My callsign is WB8NHV (first licensed June 1972) and appears after my name in my profile signature.

[colorfixer]

OTA television just may eventually disappear on its own, without the need to mandate its extinction.

Up here in the pacific northwest, a very historic television pioneer, KVOS is just such case. This was the first station that served the Vancouver BC market. It was a CBS affiliate (and at one time Dumont in 1953), that once it lost CBS (it was considered a Seattle market station, which had a CBS affiliate) it was all downhill from there. It just sold for 2.2 million to an investment firm owned by Michael Dell. The previous sale a number of years back was 28 million, so someone got a bargain.

In Vancouver BC, the market penetration of cable is so complete that most stations did not bother to go with transmit ERP's to equate their analog signals, and the "public" broadcaster (CBC) even discontinued a number of translators and fill transmitters across Canada.

Those who run the big 3 networks in Seattle made getting locals on satellite so difficult that when Directv first offered them, we had to file waivers to each affiliate to get ABC, CBS, and NBC. The ABC affiliate insisted to Directv that we should be able to get their signal (CH4) off air, even though where I live in Blaine, WA is well outside their grade B contour (we're >100 miles from Seattle, through typical northwest mountains and forest). Come ATSC, and even off my 50' amateur radio tower and with a "super deep fringe" UHF amplified antenna, I can't even begin to see their signals on a spectrum analyzer.

[Jeffhs]

If you cannot receive the Seattle stations where you are with an antenna, and satellite doesn't carry Seattle's locals for any reason (what about Spokane stations?), your only other option would be cable if your area has it.

I would think, in an area over 100 miles from Seattle, you would have at least one cable system -- unless you are way out in the boondocks. If you are located in eastern Washington state (I don't know where in the state your town is), you should be getting stations from Spokane and also across the border in British Columbia; since the latter, and for that matter all TV stations in Canada, now have converted all their TV stations to DTV, one converter box on your TV should do the trick if you still want to use an antenna.

[Jeffhs]

If you cannot receive the Seattle stations where you are with an antenna, and satellite doesn't carry Seattle's locals for any reason (what about Spokane stations?), your only other option would be cable if your area has it.

I would think, in an area over 100 miles from Seattle, you would have at least one cable system -- unless you are way out in the boondocks. If you are located in eastern Washington state (I don't know where in the state your town is), you should be getting stations from Spokane and also across the border in British Columbia; since the latter, and for that matter all TV stations in Canada, now have converted all their TV stations to DTV, one converter box on your TV should do the trick if you still want to use an antenna.

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by colorfixer

Those who run the big 3 networks in Seattle made getting locals on satellite so difficult that when Directv first offered them, we had to file waivers to each affiliate to get ABC, CBS, and NBC..

Now local channels are mandatory on Dish and DirecTV. I had to battle Dish go take the local channels OFF of my service as I receive over 70 OTA channels which Dish certainly can't duplicate, and they are not effected by rain outages. Dish made Locals mandatory shortly after I signed up for their service, and the first change I made to the service updated my account to include locals and added the fee to my bill. I argued with them and won, saving me a whopping $5 a mo off my Dish bill. Hey why pay for it if you already have better.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

Now local channels are mandatory on Dish and DirecTV. I had to battle Dish go take the local channels OFF of my service as I receive over 70 OTA channels which Dish certainly can't duplicate, and they are not effected by rain outages.

Seventy over the air channels? Wow! You must be at a very high point in your area, or else you have a 225-mile deep-fringe antenna with a preamp, rotor, the works. I've never known or even heard of anyone (until now) who can get seventy channels of TV without cable. You must be getting stations from everywhere in the Southwest US, and then some.