DTV

[DIRTROAD]

I had to relocate my antenna from inside my attic where it worked just fine to outside on the chimney. The result was less channels than before, but that's ok cause there's not much worth watching anymore.


I have noticed here locally that TV stations are filling time slots with their own original programming rather than buying the sindicated sitcoms and airing them. Anyone else notice this????

 

[KB9UDE]

I have noticed the same thing about local stations here. Some stations I have never seen them do anything live are now doing as much as the other stations...

I had to relocate my antenna from inside my attic where it worked just fine to outside on the chimney. The result was less channels than before, but that's ok cause there's not much worth watching anymore.


I have noticed here locally that TV stations are filling time slots with their own original programming rather than buying the sindicated sitcoms and airing them. Anyone else notice this????

 

[scgargoyle]

Something that's not getting much discussion is what happens to DTV when the power goes out? Here in hurricane country, it's important to be able to watch the progress of a storm when the power is out. There are very few portable DTV's as of yet, and they don't work all that well if the cable is out. I bought a 7" for our kitchen, and got very little with the built-in antenna. A bigger set of rabbit ears wasn't any better. I then bought a DB4 UHF antenna, and even that didn't help much in the house. Once I moved the antenna to the attic, we now get about 30 channels. So in the event of a power outage, we're still covered. I had planned to bring the little set on camping trips, but unless we camp right under the antenna, it probably won't work. We are only 10-15 miles from the local antenna farms for the networks, over flat ground, but we don't get much without a 'real' antenna. Bottom line- if you don't want to pony up for cable or Dish, good luck.

I also predict the day will come when analog radio is phased out as well.

 

[Skyco]

First, no cell service is going to use any of the vacated TV spectrum, as cell has pretty much moved "up" in frequency. The old analogue 800mhz band is pretty much unused for now

Second, I don't know what kind of power you intend to run on these imagined 700mhz broadband towers, but there are NO services in this frequency range that can get anywhere near the 30-50 mile radius that you imagine. ****, you'd be lucky to get that kind of coverage with high gain, directional antennas on a point to point link

Whoa a lot of misinformation above-
Most of the major cell companies bought 700 MHz spectrum which is the vacated tv spectrum and do indeed plan on using it to bring new phone/data services.
The "old" analog 800 MHz band is one of the two bands the digital cell service is on so those frequencies are far from "unused".
The tv stations covered just fine out past 30-50 miles on the 700 MHz band so the blanket statement about coverage being bad there is also untrue. TV receivers really stink sensitivity wise so a good communications/two-way/cellphone receiver can pick up the signal much much farther than a tv.