Benefits of Digital TV?

[KeithE4]

Hi all....Reception here is the only issue ..Used too get all locals with a wire on the ANT connection on back of TV or VCR when it was analog.Now I only get a half a channel which is only 20 miles fro here.

With digital, an antenna must be properly constructed, be high enough above ground, and pointed exactly in the right direction. That really has little to do with it being digital; it has just as much to do with the stations running much lower power, especially on VHF

Plus Digital cable here is rubbish altogether.Its bullcrap now that you need a box on every TV in the house...That should of never happen.....

Broadcast digital TV uses 8-VSB modulation. Digital cable uses 64QAM or 256QAM, and uses different (and more) channels. They are not compatible.

Other then that.Its nice to see the many sub channels that are similar like cable channels..

Some are good, some are absolute junk, and some are color bars. YMMV.

Not to get into the hot p topic as it seems where this is heading but If I was a VIP at the time . I would vote against DTV years ago since the reasoning for it was big telecom want the bandwidth for their phones and other wireless rubbish.I guess they were not happy when they started to rob the upper UHF band for the first round of cell phones"Those Big Brick Phones" back in the 1980's .Meantime they could save alot of bucks with those $40 buck hand outs and use it somewhere else..Its to late in the game now to revert it if there is a big stink over it..

"Wireless rubbish," and wired rubbish for that matter, is now as necessary a utility as water and electricity. The market made it so. The needs of hundreds of millions of phones, tablets, and other digital devices are orders of magnitude more important than a few thousand TV transmitters. The decision has been made, both by the public and the government. It is a done deal. People need to just get over it.

 

[centerfreqradio]

With digital, an antenna must be properly constructed, be high enough above ground, and pointed exactly in the right direction. That really has little to do with it being digital; it has just as much to do with the stations running much lower power, especially on VHF



Broadcast digital TV uses 8-VSB modulation. Digital cable uses 64QAM or 256QAM, and uses different (and more) channels. They are not compatible.



Some are good, some are absolute junk, and some are color bars. YMMV.



"Wireless rubbish," and wired rubbish for that matter, is now as necessary a utility as water and electricity. The market made it so. The needs of hundreds of millions of phones, tablets, and other digital devices are orders of magnitude more important than a few thousand TV transmitters. The decision has been made, both by the public and the government. It is a done deal. People need to just get over it.

Thanks for your input and info Keith..Got to get a better antenna..Then I can cut the cable...

 

[KeithE4]

Thanks for your input and info Keith..Got to get a better antenna..Then I can cut the cable...

Thanks. I should also say that any well-made antenna should work for you. Get an antenna that would have worked well in the analog days. There is no such thing as a "digital antenna." The antenna doesn't care what kind of signal it picks up. If you see an antenna marketed as a digital antenna, you might want to leave it alone. An old Channel Master with a rotator and preamp, if necessary, will work just fine. It depends on your market, your stations and how far away they are, and your terrain.

Start here to determine what you need: https://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29

 

[landtuna]

Only because the voters are lazy. To say the least. They don't take voting seriously.

I don't think that is the only reason. Consider:

The incumbent has almost free access to media "in his/her official duties".

They can apparently lie their faces off and cronies help cover.

Any gerrymandering aids their reelection.

They have full party backing ($$$$).

They are able to pander to supporters and potential voters.

 

[TheBigA]

They are able to pander to supporters and potential voters.

Doesn't matter. In the end its up to the voters. There's nobody else in the polling booth when they vote.

In this last election a couple dozen incumbents were voted out. It takes action by voters, and as I said, most of the time they're lazy.

 

[TVCOOL]

Having just OTA TV is great for me up to 55-60 channels of variety programming to choose from and better picture than cable TV.

 

[TexasTom]

Having just OTA TV is great for me up to 55-60 channels of variety programming to choose from and better picture than cable TV.

Yup, I agree.

For me, the digital transition went very smoothly, and was a net benefit. I already had an outdoor antenna, and that antenna worked perfectly for picking up our digital channels in Dallas/Fort Worth (which are UHF and Hi-band VHF). So I get reliable reception, a better picture, and more channels.

And considering that more people are using antennas to receive television again, I'd say that I'm far from alone in liking the OTA digital TV experience. OTA viewing is now higher than it was during the final years of analog broadcasting.

 

[zeebre12]

Just wondering regarding OTA TV in the US, why are there so many foreign ethnic international channels? Nearly every second or third channel is like this. There seems to be an over proportion of these channels. Sometimes you'd think you were in Pakistan/Asia flicking through the channels. Compared to other countries there seems to be loads.

 

[TheBigA]

Just wondering regarding OTA TV in the US, why are there so many foreign ethnic international channels?

For basically the same reason why there are so many ethnic AM stations in some cities. It's pretty much the only way they can make money, because the other audience has gone elsewhere. The other options I notice are religious or shopping channels.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Having just OTA TV is great for me up to 55-60 channels of variety programming to choose from and better picture than cable TV.

Now that I finally have a decent outdoor antenna set up and since stations have added more subchannels in recent years things are definitely better for me as well. I still would like to see some improvement in Jackson, TN, and I still can't get WMC and WHBQ in Memphis because of their being further away and on VHF I'm able to get more channels than ever, and the picture quality is great on the channels I can get. Hopefully things will improve even more with ATSC 3.0 with better signal quality and the ability to have more subchannels.

 

[Kelly A]

I don't understand your comment. In the analog days I lived almost 40 miles north of the towers and had an outdoor antenna in my attic (which was lined with signal-blocking foil) and still I received every signal available in my contour. No drop outs. No static. Perfect analog picture. I now live 8 miles (as the crow flies) from those same towers with that same giant combination antenna mounted about 10' AGL and suffer pixelation on virtually every digital signal from time to time and cannot receive about half the subnets at all. In addition, there are frequent signal failures at times during each day (example: channel 3 at noonish, channel 10.1 at sunset in summer (although 10.2 is fine), 8 and 15 intermittent, 7 total blackout etc. 12 used to be crap but I can't remember the last time I tuned it in so it may or may not still be an issue. I conclude from this that VHF digital is junk and UHF digital only somewhat better. Perhaps that is why the number of OTA viewers is so low.

Your frustration is probably because the installation at your home is old, or your antenna is VHF- only. I live 50 miles from Washington DC, and I get 78 digital channels between Baltimore (North of DC) , Washington DC, and Richmond, VA (South of DC). Sure you may have to replace old RG59 coax with modern RG6. You'll need to trash old Radio Shack splitters or amplifiers, because they won't provide the bandwidth for DTV reception. Also a good dual band antenna, not mounted in an attic will help the most.

 

[Mr Tony]

You'll need to trash old Radio Shack splitters or amplifiers, because they won't provide the bandwidth for DTV reception.

huh?
They are using the same frequencies for digital as analog (albeigh less channel options) so the same amplifier you used for analog will work for digital.

 

[NoDakObserver]

If you are farther away from the towers, you were hurt by the transition, especially the stations that went from full power channel 2-6 to UHF without trying to duplicate the old coverage area. For instance, areas of southwest North Dakota lost access to KXMA (CBS/Dickinson) during the transition.

Numerous translators were also shut off, at least in North Dakota, both locally owned and corporate owned ones, I assume because of the cost to transition.

Jamestown, ND, which has one full-powered Fox station, used to get NBC and ABC on translators, and I assume CBS could be picked up over the air.
Now, the translators are shut down and the Fargo stations I believe are out of range, so they would get only their single Fox station and its subchannels.


Where it is good is if you are in range of the towers and in a market with multiple stations. The ability of a station owner to put multiple networks on their channel in smaller markets has made a huge difference in getting new OTA programming available. Dickinson, ND had full power NBC and CBS OTA with a FOX translator before the conversion. Now, Fox is a sub-channel of NBC so it greatly increases its coverage area. The CBS channel added a CW sub-channel. My parents have an upstairs TV in Dickinson with a much clearer picture than before the transition, especially for Fox. My relatives out on the farm praised the signal quality after the transition too.

 

[landtuna]

Your frustration is probably because the installation at your home is old, or your antenna is VHF- only. I live 50 miles from Washington DC, and I get 78 digital channels between Baltimore (North of DC) , Washington DC, and Richmond, VA (South of DC). Sure you may have to replace old RG59 coax with modern RG6. You'll need to trash old Radio Shack splitters or amplifiers, because they won't provide the bandwidth for DTV reception. Also a good dual band antenna, not mounted in an attic will help the most.

You didn't read my post(s) very closely.

My antenna is a combo VHF/UHF/FM connected to two digital TV's via RG6 and sitting on top of my 10' patio roof. There is no FM trap on the cable now but I have tried that in the past with no apparent effect. Likewise, I have run an amp in the past but that had mixed results. I took it off. Being only 8 miles as the crow flies from the towers I can't imagine needing an amp. The one strange thing is that both TV's (relatively new digitals) get slightly different reception off the same antenna/cable. The "big" Vizio gets more channels more consistently than the slightly smaller Magnavox. I've reversed the single splitter and even removed it and results are so similar than it makes very little difference, if any. I'm pretty much convinced that it is an ERP issue - especially with the LP's. But then they don't carry much content I would watch so no great loss.

Any live TV watching now is usually done via smaller TV's with "bow tie" antennas locally attached. The big TV is used primarily for streams and/or recorded programs (from the 'net or DVD) by the adult females or the granddaughter. The Magnavox sees only occasional duty watching a local morning show on RF 10 (or 10.2 if 10.1 is having stomach problems) or the midday or evening news (if the wifey turns down her personal volume).

BTW, I once lived in the NE Richmond Metro (Hanover County near Old Church) about 10 miles from the city center in the old analog days. I had a similar big combo antenna mounted about 20 AGL with a rotater. IIRC I could receive all then-current stations (TV and radio) from a single point on the compass except RF 8. Had to move the antenna to get 8 but don't remember in which direction.

 

[davideduardo]

Just wondering regarding OTA TV in the US, why are there so many foreign ethnic international channels? Nearly every second or third channel is like this. There seems to be an over proportion of these channels. Sometimes you'd think you were in Pakistan/Asia flicking through the channels. Compared to other countries there seems to be loads.

Few other countries have the number of immigrants and the huge diversity of national origins and language usage that the US does.

In the last measurement in LA, the #1 tv station in most of the sales demos and most of the day is KMEX, which is in Spanish.

There are Armenian, Chinese (both major dialects), Thai, Korean, Tagalog, Farsi, Hindi, Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese and other channels and program blocks in LA because there are significant groups of persons from those language areas and there is commercial support for such programming.

So the reason why those channels exist is that they can make money.

 

[kenglish]

There are quite a few things that make a difference in the modern digital world...things that we now see as just "good engineering practice", but often didn't feel the need to do in the old days.
Things like proper terminations on all cables, high quality connections on cables, better amplifiers with lower noise, and better quality splitters are some of the items. The differences between sets can be due to the way their individual rf tuners are designed...sometimes a set will work better when the other sets in the house are turned on, due to odd frequency mixing in the un-powered tuner of the unused set.
Weird stuff, but it happens.

Charlie Rhodes and a couple of his friends nearly were the "inventors" of TV, and (like many of those smart old farts), never stopped learning. They discovered lots of these weird things. See his old TV Technology columns for some interesting insight:
https://www.tvtechnology.com/search?query=Charles W. Rhodes

 

[fybush]

I travel a lot for work and pleasure. And when I travel, I carry with me equipment to tune in and record local TV. I've been doing this since the early 1990s.

Here's what I've learned from the DTV transition:

In the analog days, when I was hauling two or three VHS VCRs on the road with me (plus a box of blank tapes!), I learned pretty early to call ahead as I was making hotel reservations to determine whether the hotel had the local cable system or some sort of roll-your-own MATV system. Sure, I carried an OTA antenna with me, and a pretty decent one, too - but even right in the window of your typical hotel, you just never had any sort of guarantee that the reception would be clean enough for a good recording. Multipath! Ignition noise on low-VHF! It was a crapshoot, at best, just to get a clean tape of the local news or (back then) the sign-off/sign-on announcements.

Since the DTV transition, I've probably had the opportunity to test out OTA reception in 140-150 of the 200+ DMAs out there. (Biggest one I'm still missing? Memphis.)

My current setup is a Terk HDTVa antenna (no longer in production, as best I can tell, but still available online) feeding a HDHomeRun 4-tuner box, connected by ethernet to my laptop and a hard drive. It's a LOT easier on the luggage weight restrictions than the VCRs were!

Is it perfect everywhere? Absolutely not. Some markets are difficult verging on impossible: when I'm in San Diego, the relatives I'm visiting are up in North County, where OTA reception of NBC, PBS and indie KUSI from Mt. Miguel is essentially nonexistent. Same with NYC, where the free room at my cousin's house is up in Rockland County and there's no outdoor antenna that I'd need for clean reception. The VHF signals in Cleveland always seem to be troublesome no matter where in town I'm staying. There's no one spot where everything in the spread-out Hartford-New Haven market all comes in at once on an indoor antenna, or if there is, I haven't found it. Same for Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo. My buddy in Denver who lives pretty far out to the southeast has trouble getting the Lookout Mountain VHF signals on an indoor antenna unless I position it juuuuuust right, mostly because of distance. The Orlando signals are far enough east of town to be tricky at some of the hotels out by Disney World, to the southwest of Orlando; depending which direction the rooms face in, you might get more of Tampa, as I did a couple of years ago.

But those (and one more, which I'll get to in a second) have been far and away the exception. I'm actually pretty regularly surprised by how often I just plop the antenna somewhere near the window, scan the tuners, and discover that everything I need to record is right there and locked in. No ghosting. No electrical sparklies. Just clean picture and sound and lots of subchannels. (It was pushing 100 streams of video the last time I was in Los Angeles a few months ago, and out by LAX I was even getting the iffy low-band Vs like KWHY/KBEH on 4.) You can get everything in Dallas on not much more than a paper clip in most parts of the metroplex. Small markets like Elmira/Corning, Utica, Watertown that might have had one V and a U and didn't get a full count of major network affiliates? They're all there now, often on just one or two transmitters. And they look pretty good, by and large.

In a lot of places, that indoor antenna even manages to get beyond the local market. Boston in October, when I was staying out by 128 in Newton in sight of the local towers? On the sixth floor of the hotel, that antenna wasn't even right in the window and was still delivering nice clear pictures on the Providence UHF signals, which were only iffy at best back in their analog days. The same, even more so, in reverse from my buddy's spare room on the second floor of his house in East Providence, where I could see nearly all of Boston without even trying. And all of Baltimore, VHFs as well as UHFs, from out near Andrews AFB in the DC suburbs just a few weeks ago.

My point here, if you've read this far, is that I probably have as much experience with the real world of OTA ATSC 1.0 reception in mediocre indoor environments around the country as anyone these days. In 90% or more of those situations, I'd gladly take ATSC over the old analog era. (And in the other 10%, I was probably depending on cable anyway.)

Oh, that last exception? Phoenix. The college friends I stay with when I'm in town live way up north up Cave Creek Rd. outside Loop 101. Their house is typical stucco and lath, and the guest room gives me fits trying to get the VHF signals every time. It's the combination of distance to South Mountain, a Faraday cage of a house, and probably not enough power coming off the mountain. But one time when I stayed with a friend over toward Scottsdale and stuck my antenna on the balcony outside his second-floor condo, 8, 10 and 12 all looked nice and clear - and I was getting a couple of Tucson signals, too. (KTTU, if memory serves.)

Which is to say, I agree that Phoenix is a challenging market - but also that it doesn't represent the majority of DTV markets nationwide that way.

 

[KeithE4]

Oh, that last exception? Phoenix. The college friends I stay with when I'm in town live way up north up Cave Creek Rd. outside Loop 101. Their house is typical stucco and lath, and the guest room gives me fits trying to get the VHF signals every time. It's the combination of distance to South Mountain, a Faraday cage of a house, and probably not enough power coming off the mountain.

Shaw Butte might have been in the way as well, depending on exactly where you were located. But these Faraday houses, which are close to 100% of all single-family homes built in metro Phoenix since the mid '80s, are a nightmare. I live in one in the Usery Mountain foothills in NE Mesa, 25 miles from South Mountain, 400 feet above downtown Phoenix (1500 ft. ASL) and no obstructions other than my trees and the house behind me. My rough measurements of my home-cage are 20 dB loss on AM, 30 dB on the HF ham bands, 40 dB on VHF TV and FM, and back down to about 30 dB on UHF. The full-powered UHFs are fine, but Channels 7 (UHF Class A), 8, 10, and 12 (all roughly 40 kW ERP on their "real" VHF channels) are iffy to nonexistent. Don't take them as gospel, as I don't own any lab-grade field strength equipment. They're based on radios, SDR dongles, and a DTV converter for an analog TV.

But one time when I stayed with a friend over toward Scottsdale and stuck my antenna on the balcony outside his second-floor condo, 8, 10 and 12 all looked nice and clear - and I was getting a couple of Tucson signals, too. (KTTU, if memory serves.)

Scottsdale is far enough east to be able to get a straight line to Tucson, but not so far east that San Tan Mountain blocks the signals, as is the case with me. Back in the '70s, when I lived with my folks near the border of Phoenix and Scottsdale, the Tucson stations came in snowy but viewable.

Which is to say, I agree that Phoenix is a challenging market - but also that it doesn't represent the majority of DTV markets nationwide that way.

Phoenix is rather unique in that there are mountains both around and well inside the metro. I would think that LA is somewhat similar, although Mt. Wilson is much higher than South Mountain, of course.

 

[landtuna]

Keep in mind that the Tucson stations all broadcast from the top of Mount Bigelow in the Santa Catalina range NE of Tucson proper. The towers sit at approximately 8,500 ASL which is roughly 5,000 feet AGL and have a clear shot at most everything south of the White Mountains and the Rim Country in Arizona. There is at least one repeater on the western end of the range which serves the NW section of Tucson and Marana (due to their location below the high ridge on the western end of the Catalina's. People living on the north side of the Catalina's (Oracle, San Manuel) could watch virtually all of the Phoenix VHF stations prior to the digital conversion as well as all but one Tucson station.

 

[dhett]

Keep in mind that the Tucson stations all broadcast from the top of Mount Bigelow in the Santa Catalina range NE of Tucson proper. The towers sit at approximately 8,500 ASL which is roughly 5,000 feet AGL and have a clear shot at most everything south of the White Mountains and the Rim Country in Arizona. There is at least one repeater on the western end of the range which serves the NW section of Tucson and Marana (due to their location below the high ridge on the western end of the Catalina's. People living on the north side of the Catalina's (Oracle, San Manuel) could watch virtually all of the Phoenix VHF stations prior to the digital conversion as well as all but one Tucson station.

Tucson is part of your (and my) problem. ATSC 1.0 digital signals are horribly susceptible to both multipath and co-channel interference. In Phoenix, it affects the LPTV stations. KTVP-LD channel 23.x gets killed by KVOA 4.x (23), KFPB-LD 50.x (25) by KMSB 11.x (25), and KVPA-LD 42.x (34) by KUVE 46.x (34). Two more LPTV stations have construction permits but should be unreceivable at both of our residences: K19JT-D, due to KTTU 18.x (18) and K30MM-D, due to KUAT 6.x (30). In areas where the Tucson signals can't be received, all of the above stations should be fine. All this is due to having an antenna in the attic, as it gets Tucson signals better. When using my laptop with a USB dongle hooked to a ChannelMaster StealthTenna, I don't get the interference from the Tucson stations; I don't have the height necessary to pick up Tucson well.

Incidentally, I'm now experiencing problems with KSAZ RF channel 10 and, at times, KPNX RF channel 12. My assumption is that the problem is not from the transmitter site, as I used to have no problems. Is my batwing antenna going bad? Is there a problem with the connections between my antenna, the splitter, and the two TVs? Is the splitter the problem? Is there some kind of unauthorized co-channel interference on the two channels? Again, I don't have any problem with my laptop setup.

The good news is that ATSC 3.0 is supposed to be much more tolerable to interference.