Can I use analogue Antenna 2 receive digital TV signals ?

Please I need a clarification on this. Can an analogue tv antenna be used to receive digital Tv programs ? Will the digital TV transmit on the same frequencies as the analogue counterpart ? ie those VHF and UHF frequencies. Thanks.

Reply to
fynnashba
Loading thread data ...

Yes. It's the same frequencies. The range used is smaller than before. Most wlil be in the area that used to be channels 7-50. 50+ are being sold off for other uses.

That said, strength and a clean signal are more important for digtal than analog. If your signal is grainy or has ghosting on analog, you may have problems with digital. With digital a poor signal will result in heavy pixelation or no picture at all.

Check out:

formatting link

--
If there is a no_junk in my address, please REMOVE it before replying!
All junk mail senders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Andrew Rossmann

In the UK, at least, it depends a lot on where in the band the multiplexes you are receiving, lie with respect to one another. Where I live, for instance, multiplexes are spread from one end of the UHF band to the other, whereas previously, all of the analogue channels that I could receive, were confined to the bottom of the UHF band, so I had a 'channelised' group A antenna. In order to receive all of the digital programs, I had to replace this antenna with a 'wideband' type, as the group A antenna was just not responsive enough up at the group C/D frequencies. Overall, this wideband antenna does not have as much gain as my group A did, but the gain curve that it does have, is much flatter over the whole band. I guess this situation will depend where in the world you are, and what channels / frequencies the broadcasters have available to them, but if the digital channels that you intend to use are in the same section of the band as your analogue ones, your analogue antenna should work just fine.

Caveats. The digital signals tend to be broadcast at lower power levels than the analogue ones, so if your analogue signal is at all marginal, digital may not work at all well, with frequent freezing and pixellation of the picture. Second, the signals are not quite as robust as they would have you believe, and are actually quite badly affected in some instances by multipath - 'ghosting', so if you have any of that with your existing analogue, again it might cause you problems with digital. Note though that all of my experience with this, is based on UK digital vs analogue terrestrial services, and may not reflect the situation in other parts of the world using different bands and encoding systems.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

In less technical English, digital either works or it doesn't. If the signal is received is clean enough and strong enough, your tv set will be able to decode it. If it is not, you won't. If you are just at the spot where it is almost strong enough, or there is almost too much noise or reflections, it will drop out, pixelate (a form of dropping out), etc. but that's generally rare.

Analog TV has a long way to go from perfect to unwatchable, so you what you see as minor ghosting or a little noise in the picture, may be too much for the digital signal to work.

As far as transmitter location, in the US, TV stations are not moving their transmitter sites, although many are (or already have) changed their antennas. If you needed several antennas in different directions, you probably will still need different ones in different directions.

US stations were assigned temporary UHF channels during the conversion process, some are staying on them, some are going back to their old channels. Any station that was on channel 2-6 will move as they are dropping them, the same with any station over channel 50.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
Reply to
Geoffrey S. Mendelson

The post-transition broadcast frequencies are 2-6; 7-13;

14-51. The low VHF band is still available as well as UHF
  1. There are not many stations on 2-6, but some in rural areas opted for low VHF because of greater signal range at lower transmit powers.

David

Reply to
David

To be honest, I think that's pretty much what I said, only in rather better English. As I said, my experience is based on the situation in the UK, where DTV is confined specifically to the UHF band - at the moment all the way from channel 21 to 68. Problems with reception here are not at all rare, when people try to use their existing analogue antennas, which are pretty much always 'grouped' types. In fact, it has been rather a bone of contention that it was originally 'sold' to the poor ususpecting public, as all that you needed to do was glue a STB or a 'Digital TV' on the end of your existing antenna, to enjoy hundreds of TV and radio stations in stunning digital clarity ...

Ha! say I ... A hundred and fifty quid later for your shiny new toast rack on the roof ...

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

On 25 mayo, 03:23, "Arfa Daily" wrote: it was originally 'sold' to the poor ususpecting public, as

Lots of sharks around. Whilst I don't agree with everything, I think they make a few good points on here:

formatting link

-B

Reply to
b

With small indoor antennas the digital channels are much better than the low analog channels. I never saw the digital channels as being good, other than HDTV. Good old time analog is much better than the new digital TV. There is probably no old time analog being broadcast since all the video is digitally compressed now anyway. I enjoy watching the HDTV all though its anoying to still see some small screen formats and some of the local news feeds use high compression with digital artifacts.

greg

Reply to
GregS

multiplexes

other,

were

replace

your

than

you

that

low

than HDTV.

probably

compressed

This is my beef too. A few HD programs and a lot of 480 compressed or converted material. I can just as well go to "Tubes" on-line. At least I can skip through the spam.

Reply to
JB

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.