TV Pirates to spring up?

[trojanrabbit]

Now that most of the VHF band has cleared out, what are the chances that some "community TV" pirates will spring up, like the plethora of FM pirates we have in the Boston area?

 

[Garrett]

It'd be a neat trick. Don't you need to have a taller tower and a lot more power to do that?

 

[trojanrabbit]

I suppose not if your goal is to only cover a neighborhood or two.

 

[Whale]

Put a good stick on a tall building and your signal is going places no?

 

[TexasTom]

The problem is that almost no one would see a neighborhood pirate TV station. Right now, no affordable 8VSB (digital) modulators are available, so any pirate station would almost of necessity be analog.

Viewers who are watching cable or satellite won't see it because they're not going to switch to OTA to receive a pirate TV station -- in fact, few will even know that it exists. As for the OTA viewers, by now we're all watching digital, so how many folks are going to be scanning to find new *analog* channels.

 

[dhett]

Put a good stick on a tall building and your signal is going places no?

No. It's VHF, remember? It ain't goin' nowhere.

 

[DJKraze]

If it's a DIGITAL VHF then it will go nowhere, if it's analog, then it'll get out no problem.

 

[DJKraze]

Wait a minute, what was to stop pirates before? It's not as though a serious pirate with some skills could build something other than channels 2-4 (where most RF modulators, CATV boxes and VHS/DVD outputs would plop a signal and have possibly run that into an amp), and even then, if properly tweaked, even a device with a 2-4 RF output could be workable enough to be picked up in a small area. Not that I advise anyone to do this, it's just it's not really much more difficult with some tech geek to toss together something, I guess most would be pirates would rather be heard than seen or something.