DTV Boondoggle

FWIW, I've heard that most DTV transmitters are on reduced power until the transition, which may improve things....

jak

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First of all, read:

Secondly, converter boxes and TVs differ on their sensitivity. Some digital TVs receive weak signals much better than others. Same story with converter boxes. A good indoor antenna and a good, sensitive converter will work wonders.

Finally, it's true that *some* of the DTV channels are at reduced power now, but not all. Things will improve *somewhat* come February, but not on all channels. A good antenna and a sensitive converter box are your best bet.

You might find this thread interesting:

What about those of us that live 75 miles (or more) from the transmitter? I'll damned if I'm going to pay for cable or satellite.

To a first order approximation, if you can get analog broadcast signals now then you should be able to receive the corresponding digital stations.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

snipped-for-privacy@seas.upenn.edu (Samuel M. Goldwasser) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@seas.upenn.edu:

count me in too. apartment,2nd floor,stucco with metal mesh uunderneath,almost like a Faraday cage.I lose channels when the upstairs neighbor moves around.

I use an old Gemini amplified rabbit ears with UHF disc antenna.Lost Ch.2 NBC completely(no great loss),but gained PBS Ch.15 out of Daytona Beach(55 miles away),a great benefit.

Google shows some homebrewed non-amplified antennas that might be interesting,BUT,they might not be accepted by the SWMBO,not "fit in with the decor" type problem.

Are you in a place where you can put in an outdoor antenna? Preferably high up... (UHF antennas are pretty small and 'tolerable') or put it in the attic. then use a distribution amp and feed it to all your TVs.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
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You and me, pal.

If you can fit a big outdoor antenna into the attic, just laying it on the attic floor usually works quite well. Nothing small and convenient will work very well, especially indoors. A mast and rotor outdoors are the thing to have.

.upenn.edu:

5

Jim,

Both of those channels have relocated their DTV transmitter sites quite a distance from their original analog sites. Chan. 2 (and chan.

55 when they were still on) broadcast analog from Orange City. Chan. 15 broadcast from west of Daytona Beach. Being a college-based station, they don't run much power or have a particularly tall tower. I get snowy, but watchable, reception on 15 in the NE suburbs of Orlando with a large rooftop Yagi.

All the central Florida DTV stations have located their DTV transmitters at the antenna farms east of Orlando, where the Orlando analog TV and FM stations broadcast from. Channel 2's DTV signal is actually on Chan. 11, and Chan. 15's DTV is on either 30 or 33. Chan.

68's (college-based PBS out of Melbourne) DTV is on the other. One advantage to this is that you won't need a rotor to pick up all the available DTV stations as they are all broadcasting from the same location. The downside is that Daytona and Melbourne are at the Northern and Southern ends of the Orlando coverage area, and the analog stations gave folks in those cities a strong local PBS signal. With DTV, they will lose the local signal, and Orlando will end up with three PBS channels.

Mike WB2MEP

Sure, but this entire DTV thing was supposed to be a step forward, not back to the days where people had to have outdoor antennas!

I guess it is a step forward for the manufacturers of DTVs, antennas, and other video equipment, and cable, fiber, and satellite content providers!

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snipped-for-privacy@seas.upenn.edu (Samuel M. Goldwasser) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@seas.upenn.edu:

C'mon;nobody ever claimed that DTV would only need simple indoor antennas. DTV's claim was for an improvement over NTSC..in picture quality,and for better use of existing bandwidth(subchannels).

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
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There might be something of interest here:

Richard J Kinch wrote in news:Xns9B33DEDE3C7BBsomeconundrum@216.196.97.131:

that kinda screws apartment dwellers.(like me) They can't install outdoor antennas,and usually don't have access to a attic.

--
Jim Yanik
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Sam:

It might help us if we knew approximately where you live, and the directions/distances of the signals you are trying to pick up. A good antenna in the attic with a distribution amplifier as suggested earlier should work pretty well, especially if the antenna can point out the gable end of the roof, and you do not have aluminum siding. Getting a signal thru regular roofing shingles works ok when the roof is dry, but there is a lot af attenuation when the roof gets wet or snow-covered as it does here in IL where I live.

Bob Hofmann

Five Orlando FM stations were located on the Ch 55 tower in Orange City when I was a Broadcast Engineer there. They had an eight port RF combiner that could handle 50 kW per port, and a curtain antenna at about 1000 feet. One RF engineer worked for all five stations, and lived on site so things could be repaired as quickly as possible.

I can't see either TV station abandoning that site, since it is the tallest tower in Central Florida. It is taller than the Ch 2 tower on the other side of Hwy. 17/92, and was the tallest at 1200 feet, prior to the Ch 55 tower's construction.

That PBS station on Ch 68 was on Ch 18, and traded allocations in exchange for Ch 68's crappy NEC transmitter. It was originally installed in Orange City, on the same 1749 foot AAT tower that Ch 55 used. BTW, Ch 55 owns the land, but not the tower.

The analog Ch 55 signal covered all of Central Florida, all the way to the gulf, and I got one reception report from Texas.

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If that's true, then it's likely that your house is RF shielded either by chicken wire in the walls (stucco) or aluminum foil backed fiberglass insulation. If so, there's no hope for an indoor antenna.

Try a cheap and simple experiment. Take a length of RG-6/u CATV coax. Strip back about 20" of the outer jacked and shield. Shove it out the window, hopefully on the side of the house that faces the TV xmitters. Crimp an F connector on the other end and connect it to the TV sets antenna connector. This is a truly attrocious TV antenna but should work in a strong signal area by moving the antenna outside of your shielded house. If it works noticably better, you might consider a better outside antenna, which should improve reception even more.

If you live in an apartment complex, you might consider inspiring the landlord to resurrect the rooftop community TV antenna system, and distribute the signal to the entire building. Most CATV coax distribution system come together in some manner of utility room. It's easy enough to disconnect your coax cable from the cable company and reconnect it to a community antenna system.

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?? This entire "DTV thing" was a way for the government (via the FCC) to raise money by selling off more of the broadcast spectrum.

It is/was a "step forward" technically only for those that benefited by having a digital signal replace an analog one that was marred by video noise and signal quality issues. If you can't receive the signal, you no longer have those issues. :)

It is only a step forward for those that can receive/benefit from the SD or HDTV signal. For those that had/lost a snowy/fuzzy analog signal, hardly a step forward. Or for those companies (read: Comcast) that are using the consumers confusion/bad luck to their advantage.

If the wiring is owned by them, they can. Most of the apartments we served were wired by our cable company, and the contract with the owner stated they had to buy it from us, if it was to be used for anything else. The few that had existing wiring were done with either 300 twin lead, or single copper braided shield RG-59, neither of which would pass the FCC leakage requirements. Some mid band channels could interfere with aircraft communications, and others would wipe out two meter Amateur radio, or high band VHF communications. Since the cable company would have to opay the fines, they simply didn't use owner supplied wiring, if it didn't consist of new, approzed materials.

Most of the buildings had locked wiring cabinets, as well.

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There are two kinds of people on this earth:
The crazy, and the insane.
The first sign of insanity is denying that you\'re crazy.

Add one more to your figures.

You are too susceptible to hype. This wasn't about *better* (as we see, for many it will be WORSE); DTV is all about **more profitable**.

UCLAN wrote:

Bingo!

Now you're on the beam. Those commercial interests lobbied hard for DTV:

There's the subscription-based distribution industry -- Rural viewers who could previously get by with a snowy picture may now need satellite dishes to get anything and folks who weren't too bothered by multipath (with analog) may now need cable/sat.

...then there's content providers -- Digital == ***DRM-capable***

Of course, guys in the electronics services industries can also cash in on DTV boondoggle by getting savvy in exactly the theme of this thread: What do I, Joe Consumer, need to watch terrestrial DTV reliably?

My feeling is that (very local) CATV is about to see an upswing.

The analog shutdown in Wilmington, NC will be a useful boilerplate.

The coastal plain of NC with its dearth of tall urban structures won't translate to all areas, of course.

I hadn't considered foil-backed insulation as Jeff L mentioned. That sounds like a high probability glitch for a bunch of folks.

Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

he could also put an antenna in a window facing the transmitter/antenna farm,IF he has one facing that way.

Landlords will not go to the trouble or expense of CATV antennas. They don't get anything for it.

--
Jim Yanik
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at
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