K
kenglish
Guest
Well, last week was interesting.
Senator Orrin Hatch's office set up some seminars on the DTV Transition.
I wish we had been given some advance warning, but our engineering department only learned of it on Monday, and the first seminar was on Tuesday. We would have liked to have done a site survey beforehand, since it turns out that nearly all Government buildings have Cable TV. (I would suggest that stations install a decent antenna on any building where they expect to do much with OTA...hotel ballrooms for election night reporting, exhibition centers where the sales people do their marketing trade shows, etc).
The first seminar was in Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City. It took about an hour to find a good signal and erect an antenna....a small UHF Yagi on a 25-foot WilBurt Hurry-Up mast. We were behind several big buildings, but got a reliable signal once we were above street-level traffic. We had about 80-90 people. Mostly elderly, but a few "children" of the elderly as well, checking things out for their parents and neighbors. The biggest questions were about antennas..."what is UHF?" and, "will rabbit ears still work?". We had a few people with problems of not receiving UHF, or not receiving all of the current UHF analogs. Several people wanted to know what Cable was going to do, but we had to defer those to "your service provider".
Second day, we were in Salt Lake City, at a county Seniors' Rec Center. We had about 120 people. Several younger ones were a bit hostile about the environmental issues ("Why do we have to fill up the landfills with perfectly good TV sets?"). A couple of people wanted to know when stations were going to "get off your butts and go full power", since their converters said "Weak Signal", and the 1-800-support CSRs were telling them that "most stations aren't running anything but low-power signals until next year", and other such tales. One older guy, who lives near (but lower than) our transmitters, insisted that we were "cheating", so the boss told us to check out his house. We found that he had a useable signal on his rabbit ears (with UHF loop), but it was not peaked properly. We tweaked a bit on one of the stations that had already been scanned in, then scanned and found all ten stations (22 channels). His bedroom TV was another story....old, broken VHF Rabbit Ears, with a piece of lamp cord spliced (twisted) on to the twinlead. The wires were even touching on the transformer, so I think most of his analog signals were just OTA ingress thru the TV set's cabinet. I suspect there are many people with similar setups.
We put the converter on top of the set, where the twinlead would reach, eliminated the lamp cord, and got useable signals on all but one station. He was going to tie the antenna rods up with string and a thumbtack until he can get to Radio Shack. I suggested he try the cheapest pair of rabbit ears with UHF loop, then try Silver Sensor antennas if needed. Outside his house, we had useable signals on the analyzer. I think, even in the shadow area under the mountaintop towers, most people could drive a couple of sets with a two-bay UHF bowtie outside.
Many people had heard that RCA had a bad run of converters, so they brought theirs with them. We tested them, using them as demonstrations. Truth is, we were mobbed after the official presentation was over. Someone even brought a battery-operated portable TV, wanting to know if they would still work.
Thursday was Provo. Third floor of the Courthouse. What we thought would be tough, was actually an easy shot. Even with only 30 minutes of setup time alloted, we got a signal from our roof antenna (fortunately, old buildings have windows that open, so we dropped a cable down from the roof), and got things set up. Some stations even came in OK via a Silver Sensor on the table. We had about 50-60 people, about 2/3 were older folks. Most wanted to know about antennas. A few still had questions about Cable or Satellite. Most people down there have attic or rooftop antennas already.
If you do these, be prepared with a list of stations, their current status, and what channels they will broadcast from (including their transmission sites). Some photos (with some kind of size reference...people, or a yardstick in the picture) of various antennas would be nice. The marketing folks brought copies of the official NAB brochures, and copies of the CECB (Coupon-Eligible Converter Box) program forms....most folks said they don't have internet access. We also gave out cards with the toll-free number and the website address.
We've been buying samples of the locally-available converters to evaluate. So, we took about 8-10 of those with us. We hooked up only one of them, using the video/audio outputs and an RF splitter on the input, so as to simulate an "analog bypass" situation. Some people wanted to know about the "bypass problem", but many said they only cared about keeping their major stations (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX), and didn't care about any LPTV or independents (other than the station that carries the Utah Jazz). We had an LCD HDTV hooked up for comparison.
Now, if we just had some "known-good" antenna installers to refer people to....
I've been telling them to call TV repair shops, and ask to speak to the oldest tech they have there. Otherwise, many places will just tell them they have to subscribe to satellite. Seems like many techs have no antenna experience at all.
Senator Orrin Hatch's office set up some seminars on the DTV Transition.
I wish we had been given some advance warning, but our engineering department only learned of it on Monday, and the first seminar was on Tuesday. We would have liked to have done a site survey beforehand, since it turns out that nearly all Government buildings have Cable TV. (I would suggest that stations install a decent antenna on any building where they expect to do much with OTA...hotel ballrooms for election night reporting, exhibition centers where the sales people do their marketing trade shows, etc).
The first seminar was in Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City. It took about an hour to find a good signal and erect an antenna....a small UHF Yagi on a 25-foot WilBurt Hurry-Up mast. We were behind several big buildings, but got a reliable signal once we were above street-level traffic. We had about 80-90 people. Mostly elderly, but a few "children" of the elderly as well, checking things out for their parents and neighbors. The biggest questions were about antennas..."what is UHF?" and, "will rabbit ears still work?". We had a few people with problems of not receiving UHF, or not receiving all of the current UHF analogs. Several people wanted to know what Cable was going to do, but we had to defer those to "your service provider".
Second day, we were in Salt Lake City, at a county Seniors' Rec Center. We had about 120 people. Several younger ones were a bit hostile about the environmental issues ("Why do we have to fill up the landfills with perfectly good TV sets?"). A couple of people wanted to know when stations were going to "get off your butts and go full power", since their converters said "Weak Signal", and the 1-800-support CSRs were telling them that "most stations aren't running anything but low-power signals until next year", and other such tales. One older guy, who lives near (but lower than) our transmitters, insisted that we were "cheating", so the boss told us to check out his house. We found that he had a useable signal on his rabbit ears (with UHF loop), but it was not peaked properly. We tweaked a bit on one of the stations that had already been scanned in, then scanned and found all ten stations (22 channels). His bedroom TV was another story....old, broken VHF Rabbit Ears, with a piece of lamp cord spliced (twisted) on to the twinlead. The wires were even touching on the transformer, so I think most of his analog signals were just OTA ingress thru the TV set's cabinet. I suspect there are many people with similar setups.
We put the converter on top of the set, where the twinlead would reach, eliminated the lamp cord, and got useable signals on all but one station. He was going to tie the antenna rods up with string and a thumbtack until he can get to Radio Shack. I suggested he try the cheapest pair of rabbit ears with UHF loop, then try Silver Sensor antennas if needed. Outside his house, we had useable signals on the analyzer. I think, even in the shadow area under the mountaintop towers, most people could drive a couple of sets with a two-bay UHF bowtie outside.
Many people had heard that RCA had a bad run of converters, so they brought theirs with them. We tested them, using them as demonstrations. Truth is, we were mobbed after the official presentation was over. Someone even brought a battery-operated portable TV, wanting to know if they would still work.
Thursday was Provo. Third floor of the Courthouse. What we thought would be tough, was actually an easy shot. Even with only 30 minutes of setup time alloted, we got a signal from our roof antenna (fortunately, old buildings have windows that open, so we dropped a cable down from the roof), and got things set up. Some stations even came in OK via a Silver Sensor on the table. We had about 50-60 people, about 2/3 were older folks. Most wanted to know about antennas. A few still had questions about Cable or Satellite. Most people down there have attic or rooftop antennas already.
If you do these, be prepared with a list of stations, their current status, and what channels they will broadcast from (including their transmission sites). Some photos (with some kind of size reference...people, or a yardstick in the picture) of various antennas would be nice. The marketing folks brought copies of the official NAB brochures, and copies of the CECB (Coupon-Eligible Converter Box) program forms....most folks said they don't have internet access. We also gave out cards with the toll-free number and the website address.
We've been buying samples of the locally-available converters to evaluate. So, we took about 8-10 of those with us. We hooked up only one of them, using the video/audio outputs and an RF splitter on the input, so as to simulate an "analog bypass" situation. Some people wanted to know about the "bypass problem", but many said they only cared about keeping their major stations (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX), and didn't care about any LPTV or independents (other than the station that carries the Utah Jazz). We had an LCD HDTV hooked up for comparison.
Now, if we just had some "known-good" antenna installers to refer people to....
I've been telling them to call TV repair shops, and ask to speak to the oldest tech they have there. Otherwise, many places will just tell them they have to subscribe to satellite. Seems like many techs have no antenna experience at all.