Our local station has been drumming up the story leading to the mandatory switch to digital TV in the US in February of 2009. For those without cable, and have an older television, they will need to get a digital converter box.
OK, I have cable.
However, if I bought one of those boxes and canceled my cable:
Will the quality of my picture be superior to the current non-digital image I get using my rabbit ears antenna (which I have done when cable goes out)?
Will this mean that ALL of the channels I get over the air, through this digital box, be equally good? I mean, theoretically there should be no static or poor reception, right?
Would I need a different box for every television, or just one and hook up all the television to it? And if I use one box, would I be able to get multiple channels (different channel on each television at the same time.)?
Will there be a way to adapt my wireless connection on my laptop to simply watch local television stations broadcast over the air in digital format?
The digital image won’t necessarily be any better, nor will your reception be any better, if you use a converter.
While some say that with a converter, you either get a clear image or nothing at all, there’s a chance that you’ll get a weak signal which will manifest as a lot of visual artifacts.
You’ll need a box for every television. Imagine a single VCR hooked up to all your TVs, you’ll get the same picture on every one.
You’d need an ATSC tuner for your laptop to receive the signals. I have one like this. It’s not the best, and the little antenna they give you has poor reception over the air, but it does work.
I’ve got a box on the tv that’s not hooked into cable. Reception varies from moment to moment on any particular station. If the signal strength weakens enough, the picture degrades and gets choppy. Weak enough and the picture disappears completely. I’m hoping that the signals will get boosted when the stations stop the analog broadcast, but I’m not optimistic. We don’t use the digital yet because there’s no clear advantage and sometimes, the picture just drops out, but the analog is still viewable. You do have to get a box for each tv set. And for the vcr. The picture is slightly better occasionally than what we get over the air, but sometimes, I don’t see any difference. All channels will be clear provided you get a strong enough signal.
My digital TV signal is awful. I live in a big city with tall buildings and while I get some channels on analog beautiful, I only get one digital channel alway, the rest come and go and pixilate a lot. All my DTV channels pixilate during storms, like the old analog set from the 70s used to have trouble during storms.
Rabbit ears are for VHF. You will need a loop or a silver sensor for indoor antenna use or a UHF antenna for outside. Most, but not all digital TV stations are on UHF, but will map to their analog channels. For instance WGN-TV is on digital channel 19 and analog channel 9, but if you type 19 into your remote it’ll map to channel 9. So you need to know the ACTUAL digital channel not the one it maps too.
Digital TV is NOT HDTV. The standard is digital only, it’s up to a station if it wants to broadcast high def.
I was very disapointed in the fact I’ll have to get cable and I only live 3 miles from Sears Tower and I can see it right out my window. But the digital signals can’t get through the surrounding buildings and I can’t put up an outside antenna
When you get the box, it will have instructions on how to program it. Once you do that, the channels will come up automatically (as noted, they will be “mapped” to correspond with the current channels).
I’ve hooked my digital converter to several sizes and ages of TVs. When everything is clicking, the picture is uniformly excellent. When everything is not clicking, the picture and audio break up or disappear completely.
I really don’t want to put up a rooftop antenna. I have cable, I just want to watch TV in the rooms that don’t have cable.
I just hooked up my converter box and Phillips “HDTV” antenna. With the antenna just sitting in my window, I get 42 channels* with decent reception. I guess I must be in some kind of sweet spot.
*like cable, there are only a handful that I’ll ever actually watch