Digital TV questions

Depends on the individual station. Some are on VHF, some on UHF. Some that are currently on VHF will move to UHF after the switch, and might already be simulcasting their signal on their new digital channel, with plans to simply cut the power to the analog transmitter on switchover day. Some will stay put right where they are, some will move to another channel within the same band. It *TOTALLY* depends on each individual TV station and the whim of the FCC in assigning broadcast frequencies.

Exactly the same answer as #1.

*IN GENERAL*, due to the lower frequency, VHF will "get out" further than UHF, but this statement can vary in truth based on too many variables to try covering in a newsgroup posting. You could fill books trying to cover all the possible variations - terrain, foliage, material the structure is made of, weather conditions, day vs night, ionospheric conditions, station power output, antenna altitude (both TX and RX), sunspot activity - Each and every one of these things (and probably dozens more that I'm not even going to try to list) can have an effect on how far a signal (digital or not) can reach.

Assuming everything else in the system (Antenna, power output, location, etc) remains the same, the signal will be identical. What will change is the "fringe" areas - If you can get a useful signal now, you'll almost certainly get a perfect picture when you move to digital. If your signal now is "iffy", it's likely that it will improve tremendously. If it's

*REALLY* iffy, it's likely that you'll get nothing at all on digital. Then again, you might be surprised at how much better things are.

Digital TV is, quite literally, "all or nothing", where analog is anywhere from "Perfect" to "OK, but some snow", to "Just barely watchable", to "Can't get it at all". If there's enough of a signal for the tuner to work with, you'll get perfect picture and sound. If not, you'll get absolutely nothing at all. With digital TV, there is no such thing as "Well, it's strong enough to make out a picture through all the snow" like with analog. It's either perfect, or it's nonexistent, with absolutely no "in between".

Personal observation from making the switch: On analog, I had 3 channels (Not counting the spanish channel and the three religious stations that are completely worthless to me) that were useful, plus two more that

*MIGHT* be watchable at any given moment and were subject to fading in and out, along with 4-5 more that varied from "audio only" to "well, there's *ALMOST* a picture buried in all that snow". Now, on digital, using the same antenna, I've got almost two dozen channels I can choose from, every one of them cable/satellite perfect reception quality. (But beware... Just because I've got those two dozen channels coming in perfectly doesn't mean that all of them are worth watching!!! Digital or not, religious channels are garbage, as far as I'm concerned. Ditto the spanish, hmong, and ukranian (and two more that I can't even guess at what language they're using) language stations that I've started picking up since switching to digital)

Once again, digital TV is "all or nothing". Without knowing idiotic amounts of information about your *EXACT* location, the local topography, details about your exact setup, where the transmitters are in your area, and probably half a dozen other things, I (or anybody else, for that matter) can't even take a reasonable guess at whether you're going to lose TV, keep it, improve, or get worse.

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry...  for more info

Mostly, yes.

Some, yes (VHF-HI); most, no

It depends.

It depends.

It depends.

Hop over to

and try some of their tools. I've found that I can get good digital reception with just a set-top UHF loop antenna down to about a predicted -30 dBm.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Don Bruder wrote: (snip)

(snip)

Um.... not true that DTV is all or nothing. It most certainly can exhibit a symptom that is similar in appearance to so-called snow, what I call "confetti". I'm speaking of the gay colored blocks sprinkled all over the picture like confetti that can occur when the signal is flaky. My indoor antenna is admittedly poor, and I get "OK, but occasional confetti" several times every evening that I watch. Sometimes the confetti is coincident with the passing of a "junker" vehicle, sometimes with the passing of an aircraft. Last night I first noticed a new source of disruption: left-overs were heating in the microwave, and when the microwave shut off and the loud alarm squeeled about half the the TV picture simultaneously went to confetti for a split second.

So yes, there is "in between" with DTV.

--
Michael

The stations that are/will be available to you can be found here:

if you know your latitude and longitude.

If you don't know your lat/long, you can enter your address here:

and get the lat/long.

I get about 8 stations with a piece of wire out the back of a digital converter and about 24 stations with an outdoor UHF antenna ($30 at Radio Shack) sitting on the workbench in the basement. It should do even better when mounted in the attic ;-)

John

That "confetti" is a manifestation of "nothing" - The signal has dropped to the point where the tuner/decoder can't cope, so it has nothing to hand off to the display circuitry. The display circuitry expects image data in a continuous stream, but since the decoder circuitry has nothing to give it, the display circuitry basically says "Well, I have to put

*SOMETHING* there, so I'll just use the last thing I got". Which usually means the last successfully decoded block of image that came out of the decoder stage. Interrupt the image stream long enough, and you'll end up with a blank screen.

--
Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry...  for more info