Gee, what reason could it be…the guy from the La Quinta didn’t install it right? The instructions from AOL Instant Messenger are incomplete?
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Iger floats possibility of Disney selling ABC
- Thread starter michael hagerty
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They worked perfectly for the channels they could receive, at first. They still do sometimes.
I don't have an explanation. It might be the weather.
Even worse is what happens to people with dishes if there is a dispute that causes them not to be able to get the channel.
Now I've heard it said people don't know they can just get an antenna and watch. If they have to have a dish, chances are they're not where that will work, or it might be more complicated than that. It's not easy to get an outdoor antenna installed.
The same thing can happen with cable but it has never happened to me. It has almost happened. If you are where cable is available there's a better chance an antenna will work.
Now I've heard it said people don't know they can just get an antenna and watch. If they have to have a dish, chances are they're not where that will work, or it might be more complicated than that. It's not easy to get an outdoor antenna installed.
The same thing can happen with cable but it has never happened to me. It has almost happened. If you are where cable is available there's a better chance an antenna will work.
And I'd be willing to bet, that they are also too cheap, and either install antennas in their attics, still trying to use old-fashioned rabbit ear antennas, or those stick-on antennas as seen in Walmart. None of that has anything to do with the reliability of DTV signals, but more that certain viewers can't be bothered to do what it takes to receive free OTA TV.
I've been in the TV business for a long time and went through the DTV transition in 2009. You couldn't be more wrong. It absolutely does matter what "some people do". It's not the DTV station's responsibility when a handful of extraordinarily frugal, or lazy viewers can't be bothered to research, then install proper reception equipment.
David and I walked you through what is needed to install an antenna on your home. I even linked models, vendors, and pricing. I even included a list of installers located in your city. Instead, all you do is whine and blame others because you personally can't be bothered to do a proper installation. Again, none of this is the TV station's responsibility.
The people with real problems can't do anything to solve those problems.
Other countries have a different type of digital TV that doesn't have as many problems for people a long way from the tower.
Or sometimes it's not even a long way from the tower. There are multipath problems, whatever that is.
And you can't solve problems with terrain.
I know what advice people here have given me. One of these days I will feel comfortable following the advice. Right now I'm not comfortable. I have a tree that needs cutting down and the man hasn't said when he will do it. Maybe after that, but there are other trees.
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The primary problem here is not one of a physical nature such as terrain or geography, that much seems abundantly clear.
Because of the laws of physics? Or because they can't be bothered?
8VSB (US Standard) and COFDM (Euro standard) are received the same way. I live 64 miles as the crow flies from Washington D.C. stations. I can receive OTA all the DC stations to the North, and even Baltimore stations North of DC.
There are many ways to solve multipath. I've even shown people who live close to the core of channels they want to watch, is to un-bend a paperclip and stick it into the F-connector on the back of their TV rather than the coax. Problem solved!
That's true, but it was actually worse with analog TV back in the day.
Well, you could be right in some cases, but it sounds to me like they've tried everything.
I've read that the stations in other countries still have watchable signals even when the reception isn't perfect.
That's great for you.
That's good.
Could be.
Yup, WBD had a total market cap of $31.5 Billion at closing today (7/21).
The geniuses who thought this merger was a good idea shouldn't be allowed to own a TV set (much less a network) ever again.
The laws of physics are the same everywhere. This is not an episode of Star Trek.
Every nation has different terrains in different places, The TV bands are about the same.
The implementation of digital under any standard faces the same wave propagation. Don’t try to blame the US system for your penny- pinching.
But somehow people are able to watch the signal under less than ideal conditions in other countries. I don't remember if that was stated on this site or another one, but people have been saying they wish this country had used that standard.
Some of the different digital systems are more robust than ATSC 1.0, with better error correction, and fewer issues with multipath. These problems are dealt with under ATSC 3.0.
Note that ATSC is used in very few countries other than the U.S. Latin America is mostly ISDB-T with a little DVB-T. The rest of the world is mostly DVB-T, with China and a few others using DTMB.
Digital television - Wikipedia
Have you ever lived outside the US?
Here's another tip: Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
Back on topic ... speculation that the NFL and/or NBA might become part-owners of ESPN. Whatever journalism is still done there would be in serious jeopardy, I would think.
www.theverge.com
Disney’s new vision for ESPN might include part ownership by the NBA, NFL
The NBA and NFL might be the “strategic partners” Iger is looking for.
www.theverge.com
I've had firsthand experience with DVB-T2 in Europe, and it's impressively robust compared to our ATSC 1.0 signals. The little mag-mount telescoping antenna that came with the Hauppauge dongle I bought for my laptop produced a perfect signal right out of the box inside hotel rooms in Frankfurt and London, conditions that would require a much better antenna and much more careful placement in similar locations in the US.
"Put up a rooftop antenna" is a nonstarter for anyone who lives somewhere other than a single family home, and that's a very significant percentage of the potential viewing audience.
And the US "each station has its own transmitter site" system that mixes VHF and UHF leaves a lot of areas without full service, in some cases even if a viewer has the knowledge, finances and ability to do a rooftop antenna. Want to watch NBC or PBS in Ithaca NY, an affluent college town? There's no OTA signal that gets down in the city, and ABC and CBS are on an iffy translator.
Even markets 1 and 2 have issues - the NYC OTA signals simply do not reach all the way north up the Hudson Valley to places like Poughkeepsie or Woodstock or Monticello that are part of the market. Doesn't matter how much antenna you put up - either there's no RF to receive because of terrain and distance, or your desired NYC signal is co-channel to Albany or Hartford or Binghamton and won't ever decode. Same with the LA market's sprawl up into the Owens Valley.
Then there are "markets" like Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville that are FCC creations based mostly on cable penetration. Not one of the stations in that "market" has a usable OTA signal across all three of the core cities, never mind places like Anderson SC that are also nominally part of the market.
I've watched a lot of OTA DTV in a lot of spots in a lot of markets. It's an extremely mixed bag.
"Put up a rooftop antenna" is a nonstarter for anyone who lives somewhere other than a single family home, and that's a very significant percentage of the potential viewing audience.
And the US "each station has its own transmitter site" system that mixes VHF and UHF leaves a lot of areas without full service, in some cases even if a viewer has the knowledge, finances and ability to do a rooftop antenna. Want to watch NBC or PBS in Ithaca NY, an affluent college town? There's no OTA signal that gets down in the city, and ABC and CBS are on an iffy translator.
Even markets 1 and 2 have issues - the NYC OTA signals simply do not reach all the way north up the Hudson Valley to places like Poughkeepsie or Woodstock or Monticello that are part of the market. Doesn't matter how much antenna you put up - either there's no RF to receive because of terrain and distance, or your desired NYC signal is co-channel to Albany or Hartford or Binghamton and won't ever decode. Same with the LA market's sprawl up into the Owens Valley.
Then there are "markets" like Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville that are FCC creations based mostly on cable penetration. Not one of the stations in that "market" has a usable OTA signal across all three of the core cities, never mind places like Anderson SC that are also nominally part of the market.
I've watched a lot of OTA DTV in a lot of spots in a lot of markets. It's an extremely mixed bag.
And all the markets are based on watching the station, not watching them over the air. TV markets were defined back in the 50's as channels rolled out in the larger cities while surrounding areas put up those 50' towers we used to see in rural areas, complete with a rotor! In some places, community antennas were put "up on the hill" and signals boosted and sent down to the town. Thus we got TV markets that covered areas that might have been as much as 200 miles from actual stations.
Once a system like that is created and advertisers look at "areas of dominant influence" of TV stations rather than actual, RF based TV station coverage, it's really hard to redefine markets. The stations in larger markets don't want to have the ratings service(s) take away their non-RF coverage areas and they have greater influence than small market TV stations that have sprung up more recently.
Why was ATSC 1.0 picked for the US rather than one of the systems used in the rest of the world?
Largely national pride. None of the "foreign" formats were ever considered. A Japanese firm (Hitachi) demonstrated high definition TV at the NAB Show in 1987, which directly led to launching the ATSC committee. The documentation comes from pp 525-534 of this archive on David's web site: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archi...ineering-Proceedings/NAB-Proceedings-1987.pdf
That was partly because the Zenith and its partners submitted ATSC to the FCC in 1995, and the FCC gave its blessing to ATSC in 1996. The DVB-T standard didn't exist in 1995, so it could not really be considered.
ATSC was developed primarily by Zenith in Chicago. Which has some of the flattest terrain in the US. And that choice to develop in flat land probably led to some of the terrain problems ATSC still has today.
Do they have a Motel 6 and dial-up internet?
So, in a sense, the Chimp is correct in saying that the systems in use in other countries may make equivalent power and height comparisons seem unfavorable to the "home team".
Bad things adopted to satisfy national pride also have given us AM stereo in the 80's and AM HD stereo two decades later. It's interesting that nearly no other countries adopted those... and even if approved, they never got broad acceptance or usage.
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