Voice from the stone(d) ages here: One of our tv’s has a rabbit ears antenna. We installed “the box” and have tried to watch using the digital signals. Most of the time, the signal is so weak that the images are half-pixilated, stop action shots, not a flow of information, or there’s no picture or sound at all. So we don’t watch that way - we use the analog pass-through feature. When the stations no longer can broadcast the way they do now, will the signals be stronger? Strong enough to see reliably, or will we have just bought the new system for nothing?
The stations won’t increase broadcast strength. Digital sucks for me, because the stations that have storm live radar die during storms with digital, where as the analog keeps on receiving even if it is fuzzy at times. An emergency radio does not in anyway come close to replacing live doppler radar from the television.
I can’t speak for the USA, but I expect it’s the same as in the UK where the intention is to increase the power of digital transmissions dramatically once analogue is switched off. The only reason they are currently broadcast on low power is to prevent interference on the analogue signal.
Ok, so far the voting results are:
Yes - 1
No - 1
Tie breakers are welcome.
It is G.B. verses U.S.A. so there may be a difference. I expect there may be complaints next year and petitions to increase station power.
I do the voice announcements for our local PBS station. I just MP3ed an announcement that at some date in September the analog VHF signal will be reducing power in anticipation of the digital move in February.
But the announcement didn’t say why.
I’ll email the guy who wrote it and ask if that means they’ll be raising the power of the digital signal.
But even if he says yes, realize that that’s a local answer.
If you still have your internet connection during a storm, there’s good radar to be had. I turn off the TV and use this Nexrad site. It even gives the direction and wind speed of the cells.
A small tornado passed through my little town a few years back. The usually reliable TV weather guy gave us no warning, but my son who was looking at the Nexrad site saw the tornado vortex signal. “Hey ma! Time to go to the basement!”
ETA: My daughter started using a converter box this week. She says their picture comes in better than their neighbors, who have a dish.
It’s a big fat “maybe” that will depend on the stations themselves and their transmitter towers. (And their budgets. The changes to Sutro Tower in San Francisco will cost nearly $2 million.)
Around here, the plan for Sutro Tower is: once the analog transmitters and their transmitting antennas are removed from the tower, they will be able to re-position the digital transmitting antennas to more optimal positions. eg: at the top of the tower, rather than shoehorned into the middle of the tower. This is not going to be a weekend job - projected time to do all of this is 12 to 16 months, so depending on which station’s antenna is last to move, its viewers may not see an improvement until June of 2010.
Part of your problem is the rabbit ears. That’s a VHF antenna and most of the digital stations are on UHF, even if they are still using their old VHF channel number. Get something like the Philips “Silver Sensor”, which is a decent indoors UHF antenna.
I just spent 30 minutes searching for a definitive answer, and the definitive answer is “maybe.”
Some stations are currently broadcasting digital at lower power or with non-optimized equipment. The FCC allowed this to get the stations to at least get partial digital capability before next year’s change.
Whether “some” means 1 percent or 99 percent, and whether it means your specfiic stations will improve, I haven’t the slightest idea.
Meanwhile, if you’re truly using rabbit ears (the antenna with two poles that looks like a V) try getting a very cheap UHF antenna (the one that looks like an O). If your antenna has both, you’ll need a better (or higher) antenna.
If you are in a rural area, there is a chance the analog broadcasts won’t be going away at all. Some rural areas are served by translator towers which receive the broadcast from the big city via microwave, then it is rebroadcast in analog for local reception. These translator stations are not included in the digital-only edict, and will continue to broadcast in analog after the 2/17/09 cutoff date.
They will be going away. The bandwidth is too valuable to let the translators squat on it forever. The difference is that the advertised cutoff date isn’t the cutoff date for every translator.
Agreed, forever is a long time. But they haven’t set date yet, so for the foreseeable future, analog translators are safe.
Even if power is increased, it won’t matter much. Doubling transmit power equates to a 3dB gain in signal. I doubt the FCC would grant many power increases any way due to interference issues. Maybe in rural areas, certainly not in urban areas.
I have just been doing some research into the UK situation and it appears that the increase in power of transmitters will range from three times to twelve times . For instance my local TX will go from 7333 W to 37500 W ERP (a 5 times increase)
For those in the UK who want to check their situation you can go here , enter your post code and it will give switch-over dates and power increases on your transmitter.
Also for UK viewers, many of us will have to retune on digital switch-over day. The frequency of the MUXs will be changing together with the power increases. So you will have to re-scan your digi-boxes.
I will be looking into getting one of these. We have the same problem the OP described on one of the channels we watch the most. During a storm or light winds/rain we lose the signal completly on that channel and it sways on the others.
And you may need a new aerial if the digital Mux frequencies are too far from the analogue ones. The people who planned the switch-over tried to minimise this sort of thing but in some cases it was unavoidable.
If you get, or already have a wide-band aerial you should be OK.
I posed this same question to the engineering staff of a local tv station and received this answer: “ABC HD is broadcasted on Ch 52 and you need a good UHF antenna to receive us. You will have to have the converter box rescan to pick it up our station after you hook the antenna up. ABC HD will move to vhf ch 7 in February when analog ceases. If you receive the analog ABC signal fine then when ABC HD goes to ch 7 you should be okay.” (italics mine). This seems to indicate that there will be no effort to enhance the digital signal in February.
Basically, I think I’m learning that the picture quality will not be any better when we go digital. Those stations that come in fairly well with the antenna will continue to. Those that are hazy or of poor quality will be lost. Some advantage!