Part 3 of the series has the objective of helping the reader get a general picture of the adoption of digital TVs; the growing of the DTV installed base, household coverage, the combined conditions of both to meet the deadline of the DTV Transition and a projection for the eventual replacement of the full inventory of analog TVs within the US.
Over recent years some of the figures tossed by...
I can not recieve a signal with my converter box with any degree of of certaincy. The government is effectively precluding me from receiving TV as of Feb. Are there any plans to put repeater station in the those rural areas which will be denied service?
Have a large antenna with a large uhf front end that brings in uhf signals from over 60 miles away. I'm actually able to bring in several stations at random times and for randon durations. The most stations at a time that I've recieved is two, even though I sit inside a triangle formed by three major markets, Norfolk and Richmond Va. and DC.
Have you tried to re-orient that antenna at all ? Sometimes, particularly with this "Switch" there'll be a new Tower used for the digital broadcasting ... www.antennaweb.org ... is (1) Site of many .
Just input your ZIP + "digital"... ignore all those other silly questions & listed will be those available and their Compass Headings, both currently AND post Feb..
Food-For-Thought --- because of tremendous over production, the current world-wide financial mess, etc., there are already many ''super sales" on new HDTV sets ... obviously, no Converter of any sort needed & you'll no doubt "see" Much better results, including free, great quality "HD", especially with your antenna. !
Just sell your Converter to one of those millions whose Coupons have been "lost" in the mail!
I had to try four converter boxes (three different brands and tow of the same brand) before I found two that would pick up most stations reliably.
I also had to replace my 10 year old 4 way splitter and an amplifier for ones that could be used with the full frequency range. The last thing I did was to replace my main downlead cable with new RG6 and connectors.
I agree that checking antennaweb.org is a good idea for how to point your antenna.
I just set up an Insignia converter box from Best Buy for a friend and neighbor who had trouble getting things connected. Her old TV uses a 300 ohm twin-lead connection, so when she tried to use the 75 ohm cable supplied with the box, she had no idea what to do.
I got a 75 ohm to 300 ohm balen from Radio Shack and connected things up for her using her existing VHF-UHF antenna on the roof. She says it's been up there for about 20 years. Her analog reception was good on a few stations, but many had ghosts and some were quite snowy. I tuned the TV to channel 3 and did a scan with the new converter box.
We received 43 crystal clear stations, counting sub-channels, and my neighbor couldn't believe her eyes. She said her TV picture had never looked so good, and I had to agree that for a 1981 Sony the picture did look very good. There is no rotor on her antenna, but the converter box was able to pick up stations in several directions, some as far as 35 miles away. Even I was impressed, because she was getting more stations using the converter box than I am using a new Sony XBR5 digital TV with a CM4228 and AntennaCraft Y-10-7-13.
I asked if I could borrow her box to do a test with my antennas. I got the same results! Stations that my Sony does not get ("No Signal") the converter box receives with a solid signal. I don't know what receiver is being used, but it sure is a good one! Now if we could just find an HDTV with a tuner as sensitive and multipath-defeating as the one in the Insignia converter box, we'd have a great TV!
What I understand from Larry is that he would like to have a HD tuner for his Sony (not a 480i converter) that has as much tuning sensitivity as the one he tried for his friend.
Apparently he could benefit by adding an HD-STB (not a coupon-converter) in front of his Sony if such tuner proves to tune better than his integrated Sony tuner. It seems that his friend's tuner, although is part of a converter-box that only outputs 480i even content tuned as HD, is more modern and sensitive than the one installed on the Sony, because he is using the same antenna set-up.
I do not see any problems with that approach as long as there are sufficient inputs for that extra tuner in the HD system (inputs on the Sony, A/V receivers, etc), and the extra box does not bother the decor factor.
Later on the series I will be discussing the issues of sub-par/obsolete tuners that are integrated into DTVs and cannot be upgraded, which coincidentaly is the direction Larry seems to be taking.
The channel count for the "trial" was done at the neighbor's house on the Insignia converter box connected to the 1981 Sony tv. Pretty sure that 1981 model doesn't have an ATSC tuner.
The HD Sony TV was at Larry's house and the converter received more channels than the built in ATSC tuner on his Sony using the same antenna input.
I didn't realize that my post would be so confusing. LOL Akirby got it right.
The first channel count was done at the neighbor's home using the Insignia converter box on her old 1981 Sony. When connecting her converter box to my antennas and to my TV I got the same number of channels, but I cannot get all of these channels using the tuner in my one year old Sony XBR4. Several stations that the converter box receiver picks up and shows as having a "good signal", the TV tuner shows as "No Signal".
To make things more confusing, the newer Sony XBR4 receiver is much better than the one in my 7 year old Sony XBR2 CRT HDTV, so they are getting better and better all the time.
What I would like to see is a tuner that is as sensitive and as good working with multipath as the one used in the converter box in an HDTV! Maybe the newer TVs have them, I don't know.
It was just a "bad day" on my part .... it should have been obvious but I had a 'block' !
I would have certainly 'hoped' that your new XBR wouldn't have had anything but the very best available at the time ! And, I'd Never in a hundred years suspected a federal coupon Converter of definitely having a clearly better tuner ..... that's infuriating !
We can look forward to that next article re:"Tuners - better/worse" by Mr. LaMaestra.
