Happy (2nd) Anniversary, DTV!

[Joey1986]

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned this! It was on this day, in 2009, when full-power analog TV ceased to exist. Have any more of the bugs been worked out since then, such as inability to get OTA signals that were perfectly fine in analog?

 

[gregg75]

To quote Rosevelt "This day will go down in INFAMY".

Many already think it was a mistake. In 2025 most will probably think WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
You just don't take something that's been around for years, working fine, and tinker with it.

 

[gregg75]

Now that I've woke up and had my coffee, make that
Roosevelt "This day will live on in INFAMY."

 

[FreddyE1977]

To quote Rosevelt "This day will go down in INFAMY".

Many already think it was a mistake. In 2025 most will probably think WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
You just don't take something that's been around for years, working fine, and tinker with it.

...and who would take something that has worked perfectly fine for decades and try to tinker with it?

As the Wayans Brothers used to say, The GUB'MINT!

 

[Markxxx]

And I still can't get OTA TV in my flat. And when I leave I still can't get WBBM CBS (RF 12) regardless of where I am. But on the plus side I ain't missed it much at all

 

[carolinaradio]

I love DTV. I love the improved picture quality and the subchannels that would not exist if it weren't for it. Those beat anything on cable.

 

[flashback]

the real beneficaries of DTV have to be cable and satalite tv.

i got so tired of fighting to get a consistant good signal on over the air television i got cable again.

if i could have had consistant good tv signals on over the air tv i would not have gotten cable.

i have said before and will say it now.if cable and satalite were not so predominant and most people watched over the air television DTV would not have been accepted.


since most people have cable and satalite the problems of DTV are not even visible to most people.

 

[KeyTimes950]

Actually, there can be problems even with cable, as I found out not so long ago. Also, if a cable system does not desire to put someone on its list, such as WBGN and its subchannels or WPCB's Bible Discovery Network in Pittsburgh, neither of which Comcast carries, that makes the rabbit ears still a vital part of the viewing component.

There is some good stuff on the subchannels. WPXI's flip to ME-TV from Retro seems to be a good move. WTAE's use of This TV also is a plus. And WQED's use of the PBS Create channel and its own Rick Sebak rehash channel, er, The Neighborhood Channel, is worth the time and effort. (I know and like Rick, so I don't mind the rehashes ... it provided a pleasant surprise for my mother-in-law last weekend when I could show her a documentary focused on her home region.)

I miss the weather channels WTAE and WPXI used to offer. I'm not into music videos so I don't go to WPGH's Country or WPMY's Cool TV subchannels (or is that the other way around, they're both Sinclair stations). All in all, digital as a subchannel source has worked better on TV than HD has on radio (at least so far).

It is a weird world. I'm right between the WTAE Elizabeth Township and Oakland towers, so I get both RF 51 and RF 22 over the air. On the other hand, KDKA didn't need a subchannel, it has WPCW.

 

[MCNDRWS]

Great picture and sound quality ... Except for when it rains ...Or the wind blows ... or ...

 

[landtuna]

DTV has driven me to the Internet. I see that as a failure for broadcast TV.

 

[gregg75]

The only benefits I see are the sub channels and clearer picture which somebody already said.

But this having to get up and move your antenna around.............somebody's got to invent a
better and more powerful indoor antenna for DTV.

 

[fybush]

There's a significant amount of selection bias gong on at these forums: it's understandable that we hear a lot from guys like landtuna and Dave who have problems with DTV reception, but relatively little from those of us who've had good DTV experiences. Happy viewers don't complain, after all. (And on the professional level, the work we put into DTV education at WXXI in Rochester seems to have paid off: the vast majority of our OTA viewers have managed to keep getting our signals, and anecdotally we're hearing about an increasing number of them ditching cable, especially given that we can now offer them three channels of programming instead of one.)

My personal experiences here at home in Rochester have been very good as well. Like many Rochester viewers, I'm so close to the local TV tower farm (less than a mile) that analog reception was always questionable here - plenty of RF, but gobs of multipath along with it. Once I figured out how to sufficiently attenuate the signals reaching my TVs, I've replaced five ghosty analog signals with ten solid, clean digital signals, including over-the-air CW that we didn't get in the analog era. (My upstate NY neighbors in places like Elmira and Watertown have done even better in the digital era, getting local OTA CBS, Fox, PBS and CW service they didn't enjoy in the analog years.)

I travel a lot, and aircheck local TV as I go, and so I've had the chance to watch local DTV signals all over the country in the last few years. There are certainly problem spots out there - the combination of VHF signals and the Las Vegas Strip comes to mind as a particularly bad one, and the Vs in Los Angeles are pretty rough, too - but I have a big pile of DVDs here that will testify that in most parts of the country where I've been traveling, the combination of a decent antenna (I travel with the Terk HDTVi) and a decent receiver yields pictures that are of a much higher quality than my traveling OTA reception in the analog days - or of the hotel cable, which I now largely ignore as I travel. (There are exceptions, of course: I spent a night in Winslow, Arizona this past spring, and without cable there'd be no TV there at all; on the flipside, I was in Santa Fe, NM a few nights before that, and was watching nice solid pictures from even the LPTVs on Albuquerque's Sandia Crest, 60 miles away.)

And for those of us willing (and able) to bother with external antennas, DTV has been a boon in another way: I could always see most of the Buffalo (65 miles west) and Syracuse (70 miles east) signals from here in Rochester, but only through a haze of snow and ignition noise. With DTV and the move to UHF, those signals aren't always in 100%, but when they are (90-95% for most of them), they provide clear HD pictures that make a nice alternative to my local affiliates when they're preempting network fare.

None of this is meant to minimize the very real problems that some viewers are having with reception...just to point out that there are lots of other DTV stories out there that don't get discussed much on these forums.

 

[KeyTimes950]

There's a significant amount of selection bias gong on at these forums: it's understandable that we hear a lot from guys like landtuna and Dave who have problems with DTV reception, but relatively little from those of us who've had good DTV experiences. Happy viewers don't complain, after all. (And on the professional level, the work we put into DTV education at WXXI in Rochester seems to have paid off: the vast majority of our OTA viewers have managed to keep getting our signals, and anecdotally we're hearing about an increasing number of them ditching cable, especially given that we can now offer them three channels of programming instead of one.)
And for those of us willing (and able) to bother with external antennas, DTV has been a boon in another way: I could always see most of the Buffalo (65 miles west) and Syracuse (70 miles east) signals from here in Rochester, but only through a haze of snow and ignition noise. With DTV and the move to UHF, those signals aren't always in 100%, but when they are (90-95% for most of them), they provide clear HD pictures that make a nice alternative to my local affiliates when they're preempting network fare.

Thank you, Scott. It inspires me to make another bid for those out-of-town stations, though it still will involve my rabbit ears. I'm not quite in a position to erect an outdoor antenna. Actually, I do get signal from several stations that could come in with a better antenna, including WJAC-TV in Johnstown. Still, it is a different world than analog was, with different challenges. I like what I can get, and hope I can do better.

 

[fybush]

The difference between even the best indoor antenna and a fairly lousy outdoor antenna is like night and day. I don't get even a trace of the Buffalo or Syracuse signals indoors, even when they're locked in solid with the rooftop antenna. (This was true in the analog era as well.)

The only exception is ion's WPXJ (RF23), which is a rimshot to both Buffalo and Syracuse from a site about 30 miles away from me. It's usable on an indoor antenna with some work; it's a local with the outdoor antenna.

 

[flashback]

i live in an apartment so an outdoor antenna is not an option.there isnt much room to move the antena the way things are set up.i could make room but i don``t feel like rearanging the whole apartment to arrange it so i do.

even if i could i wouldn`t want to have to get up and move the antena all the time.i didn`t have to do that with over the air analog tv.

my point is if they were going to change the technology for tv broadcasts it should be very much more dependable then DTV is.

 

[LibertyNT]

in DFW I've had little trouble with DTV
Despite being some 40+ miles away from
Cedar Hill, an Indoor antenna works just fine.

Even WFAA on VHF 8 comes in.
Although KFWD on 9 doesn't come in at all. (used to be on 52 and came in great)

Most stations in DFW are on UHF,
CBS 11 received so many complaints after the switch they moved back to their UHF Channel.

I also have an attic antenna that receives all the stations along with the LPTVs

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Odd enough, Canada chose to wait two years.
August 31, 2011 will be the changeover date there.
I guess Canada just wanted the States to be the Ginnie pig for two years first.

 

[Bob E. Nelson]

Although KFWD on 9 doesn't come in at all. (used to be on 52 and came in great)

KFWD...my favorite whipping boy!

They're running a mere 13 kW on RF-9 (albeit at 1791' HAAT) and are plagued by co-channel QRM from KCEN just a scant 92 miles to the south from the Temple-Waco market. They have a CP for an increase to 55 kW that's very unlikely to be ever built (and I won't reveal my source -- but it's about as good as it can get).

The sad thing is that KFWD was running a very potent 375 kW on RF-51 at 1788' pre-transition. And they could have kept that superb facility but they negotiated for channel 9 with a fallback to channel 51 if the agreement was disapproved. Clearly, the fallback position was far better than what they wanted...and, unfortunately, got.

I generally make it a habit (due to my late hours) to catch the WFAA news replay on KFWD. Now that summer tropo conditions are acting up, it's a roll of the dice each night whether KFWD will be there or will get clobbered by their co-channel companion.

 

[Bob E. Nelson]

Odd enough, Canada chose to wait two years.
August 31, 2011 will be the changeover date there.
I guess Canada just wanted the States to be the Ginnie pig for two years first.

Visit the Canadian Digital Home forum (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=40900) for interesting discussions about the upcoming transition there. I was rather surprised that over-the-air viewing is apparently less popular in Canada than it is here in the US.

I would have thought that their government regulations would have mandated OTA service be universal. In fact, in some good sized markets (London, ON), the CBC will have no DTV after the big date:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=138276

 

[vchimpanzee]

I mostly watch cable.

Even the stations that did well can't be counted on for some reason.

Last night the most dependable of the stations messed up so much I had to switch over to cable for the Tonys. I was afraid they had Miss USA on NBC, though I could have found out for sure by checking the listings. I just figured I'd have to watch the Tonys on the digital station. When I checked TiVo in order to record the pageant, it wasn't listed.

On the other hand, most of the glitches came during Neil Patrick Harris' attempts at humor. As Martha Stewart says, that's a good thing.