Picture and sound problems with digital TV

[vchimpanzee]

If the station broadcasting their digital signal on the VHF band then there will be issues.

So far I don't have one like that, but I will soon. I'm dreading it. I have an antenna I can set up for VHF (I think; I haven't opened it). But I am limited as to where I can put it. I have a 45 dB antenna now and it occasionally has pixilation problems. On one channel which I am told it's not at full power, I started having frequent pixilation a few weeks ago. The other one was the strongest indoor one I could find without going all over. It looked good, but it's 22 dB. So I'd better put it in the same room with the 45 dB antenna if I hope for anything.

The worst thing is I want to tape off this channel and no longer have a VCR available capable of being set in advance to do it. One is committed to cable and the other is taping another digital channel at the same time. Neither of these channels is on cable. I live closer to the digital channels that aren't on cable than to the channels that are on cable. It's a quirk, but one I benefit from.

 

[kenglish]

If the station broadcasting their digital signal on the VHF band then there will be issues.

One thing to remember, if you are using a UHF-only antenna, is that the VHF reception is going to be inferior on it.
The high-band VHF (7-13) channels will usually peak at about 60 degrees off-axis. And, there will usually be unpredictable sidelobes, so you may get bad multipath problems.
Plus, the antenna may have very strange return-loss characteristics at these channels, so the antenna and transmission line may have contribute reflections (multipath) of their own.

 

[vchimpanzee]

If the station broadcasting their digital signal on the VHF band then there will be issues.

One thing to remember, if you are using a UHF-only antenna, is that the VHF reception is going to be inferior on it.
The high-band VHF (7-13) channels will usually peak at about 60 degrees off-axis. And, there will usually be unpredictable sidelobes, so you may get bad multipath problems.
Plus, the antenna may have very strange return-loss characteristics at these channels, so the antenna and transmission line may have contribute reflections (multipath) of their own.

I haven't set up the new antenna yet. And I'm about ready to give up on the TV that has a VHS cassette stuck in it. It's really stuck. So if I want to tape, I'll have to do it manually. But I can't do anything really until after June 12, since the station won't be at channel 8 until then.

I don't even know what type antenna I have. The one I'm using has a VHF setting, but I don't want to mess up my UHF.

Getting back to the original topic, I could hardly hear the sound on this one movie the other night. I don't know what was wrong. The sound was fine during the commercials, which leads me to believe it was a network or station problem and not a problem with my signal. I turned up the volume some, but if it's not a problem all the time, I don't want to end up with everything loud, especially if it'll be with the hissing. On another topic I got a clue as to the nature of that hissing.

 

[vchimpanzee]

One more thing: this could be digital-related but it was on cable.

It seems a lot of network programs look jerky these days. By that I mean you can see the individual frames, whereas it's supposed to move so fast it looks like they're moving.

 

[nightfly61]

One more thing: this could be digital-related but it was on cable.

It seems a lot of network programs look jerky these days. By that I mean you can see the individual frames, whereas it's supposed to move so fast it looks like they're moving.

I get that too-like a stuttered Youtube video. ION is the worst for this sometimes.
Another annoyance is this: We just bought a new Vizio HDTV in February & had no cable-just the small antenna out the window and (unless it was windy) picked up the Retro TV Network from WXYZ, Detroit's 7.2 channel. Now that we have cable if I want RTN I have to disable the cable & fiddle w/ the antenna. Here's the wordt part though...WNWO in Toledo is one of our cable channels and DO CARRY RTN (WNWO DT2 24.2) but we still don't get that secondary channel. I wonder if we'll get this channel after the digital switchover?