who else watches TV using an antenna?

Post Reply New Topic

for WP'ers seeking to drop their cable and get free over-the-air tv broadcasts via an antenna, there are a few things ya oughta know-

consult antennaweb.org and/or tvfool.com for detailed reception information- these two websites will tell you with great accuracy, which stations you can expect to receive with a given antenna height above ground. the FCC's engineering maps claim to be made with an undetermined antenna 30' above ground, but i found them to be wildly optimistic. antennaweb even tells you which specific antenna you are likely to need, and at which height, in order to get a dtv signal. tvfool goes a step father than antennaweb, and gives you the "+noise margin" specification of a given station at a given antenna height, this figure more than anything else will determine whether a DTV signal is receivable at your location- this is critical if you are on the fringe reception area- with the digital system, a few db can make the difference between getting the station and not getting the station.
______________________________________________________________________
just my 2-cents' worth, adjusted for inflation

i am a bit disgusted with the local PBS affiliate [seattle], KCTS channel 9- late at night, for some unknown [to me] reason, the signal starts getting very weak, and with a DTV signal instead of just getting snowy and hissy, you start getting in order-

*clicks on audio track
*drop-outs of audio, and/or stuttering- depends on tuner quality/error correction
*loss of high-frequency picture detail
*macroblocking or digital coarsening of the picture
*dropped video frames
*frozen on-screen motion of images
*total picture and sound drop-out, with a "no signal" display on TV set.

i wish some WP techie could explain to me why this happens after midnight. it's not like i fed the gremlins that live in the TV set.

Rabbit ears. I get 5 channels and I really don't miss the other 500.

anybody besides me who wonders why the religious channels have so many subchannels? my local religious station has FOUR friggin' subchannels! NONE of the secular channels has more than 2 subchannels. just wonderin.'

since the FCC made such a big botch of the whole enchilada regarding the switchover to all-digital television broadcasting, and since so many folk are [literally] left in the shadows as far as digital reception goes, the Farcically Colluding Commission needs to make things right by offering free cable simulcasting to anybody who cannot receive a DTV signal without extraordinary measures [such as a deep-fringe antenna up in a tall tree]. either that, or figure out a way to piggyback dtv signals onto cell phone towers or from satellites up in space, and to offer this gratis to the DTV-reception-deprived.

watching a fascinating program about the red baron, on KCTS channel 9 [seattle] i was chagrined to find that the program kept dropping out with up to 10 minutes between seconds-long little periods of reception. this crap lasted for the entire duration of the program, so i never got to see how it turned out. damned no-good american dtv system.

over the air dtv looks better than most cable for sure, but even as good as broadcast hdtv can seem, on sports it usually falls down due to the fact that it is re-compressed by the local stations so they can continue to broadcast revenue-generating sub-channels simultaneously with the hdtv sports broadcast- the result being that there are some terrible digital artifacts visible in sports, such as:

people in the audience [backgrounds] become suspended cartoon cut-out figures whenever there is a huddle of players in the foreground in any kind of action above a walking pace-

the grass on the football field turns into a muddled macroblocked mess whenever more than a few players is in the shot-

whenever there is action, there is also macroblocking and "mosquito noise" around the edges of objects.

i am no sports fan but for the benefit of those who are, i say that stations broadcasting HD sports should suspend the subchannels for the duration of the sports event, which should restore the sports to their less-compressed high definition glory.

advantage to living in city....i have cheap antenna sitting inside a cabinet, with doors closed, and pick up local nbc, cbs, abc, pbs(3), and fox. with recent digital switch, of course, you either have great reception or nothing. cable box allows 125? channels on another set. ok, ok, i'm gimpy. don't get out often.

multiple antennas, high as possible, may be necessary for 20 plus miles. no fun.

cable hdtv looks stunning. using last hdtv /tube/ 1080i/ set made by sony. led's look terrible by comparison-even 1080p/120hzs. too bad the sucker weighs 240 lbs.