Once the digital switch is made 100%, are stations going to increase the power of digital broadcasts?
All my televisions in my house are hooked up to cable, so no problems there. For outside use I have a neat little portable TV made by Insignia that has a digital tuner. I’ve had this set for over a year. Really slick. Has a built in rechargeable battery, remote, flat screen, stereo sound, yet it’s smaller than the average text book. The picture and sound from both analog and digital channels is awesome.
However, the digital channels are making me crazy.
Unlike analog broadcasts if you don’t have a full signal with digital you don’t get anything. Not even a fuzzy picture. The digital channels are driving me nuts. I have to adjust the antennae for every other channel. And I’ll be watching a digital channel and all of a sudden the picture will freeze up or going into a weird digital scramble.
Are digital broadcasts that fussy? Would increasing power help this?
You may notice an improvement after June 12th but digital signals are fussier than analog. More or less it’s an all or nothing type deal. Also buildings and trees play havoc in cities. Like I live in Chicago on the NW side only 3 miles from Sears Tower, and I can’t get any digital signals, though I get 16 analog channels.
Some people are just gonna lose it all. Some may gain TV stations.
But after June 12 some stations may increase power.
Try looking at RabbitEars (dot) Info and see what market you’re on and look to see what will happen in your market after June 12th.
One of the channels I get has been saying that after the switch, they will be operating on their new channel, at reduced power, using their auxiliary antenna, until sometime in August. Presumably, they’ll switch to their primary transmitter at higher power at that time. So things will be in flux for the near future.
That seems to be the case in most areas - once the old transmitters for analog TV are dismantled, they’ll be able to run the digital transmitters at full power.
You can get poor digital signals and still get some picture. It’s called artifacting when the picture does this and looks like this.
Eventually, if the signal is too messed up, the TV blanks the picture. At what threshold the tuner gives up I have no idea…may be different for different sets or there may be some standard.
I would call that picture break-up rather than artefacting. Artefacts are the visible picture defects due to digital compression, and you will see them even with a perfect signal, when the bitrate is not high enough for the content of the video.
And when it happens not only is there no sound, it is almost always eventually followed by a complete loss of signal.
What I’m seeing here and in my research is that it has to do with the digital signal and not my tv set. I’m glad. I’d hate to have to disparage this little gem.
Most TV station are in fact running at full power now and are chosing to stay on their digital channel but you won’t know till after June 12th.
One thing to remember some stations are changing channels on June 12th. You won’t notice because of PSIP which allows virtual channels. For instance, on June 12th at 11:30am WLS-TV Chicago is on Channel 52. After 12 noon WLS Chicago will leave channel 52 and switch to Channel 7. So this means they will go from UHF to VHF. This is because Channels 52 through 69 are being taken away from TV and given to other things.
Not all stations in the same markets will switch to digital at the same time. Even in the same market. The FCC said that all analog stations (with some minor exceptions) will lose their analog license at 11:59pm on June 12th.
So stations have to switch over BEFORE that time. But when they do is up to the individual station. So even if you rescan your tuner on June 12th. Make sure to give it another scan on June 13th as well.
Plus stations will not necessarily be broadcasting in digital. They will be relaying their signal to another station that will actually be broadcasting digitally.
Nothing amusing about it. When it’s sitting on my table in the back yard and I’m laying back in a reclining lawn chair I don’t want to have to sit up to change the channel. The set has all the features of a full size flat screen set, it just has a 7 inch screen rather than 40.
One of our local stations announced that they’re only running at half power, and will boost their signal sometime around July 1. I’m guessing it has something to do with equipment that has to be installed or retuned after they shut off the analog broadcast.
