The old man at our local Radio Shack tells me no one can use an antenna anymore, that I must have satellite or cable or some such.
He is full of shit
If true, I wonder precisely what it is I have next to my TV that permits me to receive various over-the air-channels via the simple expedient of orienting it in the right direction.
The radio dude may be going on about how cable boxes support analog TV’s that can no longer pick up digital over-the-air stations, antenna or not.
Yeah, that’s bunk. Remember the whole controversy over those $40 coupons the government was handing out so people could buy converter boxes? Those boxes are made specifically so any old TV can watch over-the-air broadcasts now. I don’t have cable or satellite and I can get CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS and FOX, plus digital “substations” that didn’t exist before digital broadcasting.
You should check out http://www.dtvtransition.org/ to get a good overview of the technology and what you’ll need to watch TV with an antenna now.
If he works at Radio Shack, his job is to sell mobile phones. Apparently that’s all the knowledge they require.
I stopped listening to people at Radio Shack 15 years ago when one told me it would cost $150 to replace a keyboard fuse that another store sold me for 5 cents.
That is soooo pathetic. Anybody that works in the consumer electronics business for more than 5 minutes should know that the whole system was set up from the get-go for over-the-air digital transmission.
I’ll rate your experience as worse than mine when I was shopping for an iPhone. I went into an AT&T store and was told by some stupid, rude, disinterested “expert” that I had to sync the thing through a Window program to make it work with my Mac. I walked out and went to the Apple store that had knowledgeable, courteous, helpful employees that affirmed my suspicion that the AT&T guy was FOS.
The RS guy was partially right. You can’t use an antenna with an analog TV, unless you have a cable or satellite receiver or a converter box.
The new digital TVs work fine with an antenna.
You can add an antenna on your converter box though. My old “spare TV” gets about 6 channels with the box alone and like 16 with the box and the added digital antenna. I believe the antenna set me back like $20 which beats the crap out of cable bills IMHO.
Actually as far as I’m concerned he is right. Over-the-air reception of digital TV is absolute shit, to the point that (at least in my area) it’s unwatchable.
The thing is unlike with analog, where you could get a fuzzy signal, with digital either you get the signal or you don’t. So frequently while I am watching the entire feed cuts out to black (sound, picture, everything) for several seconds at a time. This happens a few times per minute. It’s garbage.
Of course, YMMV based on your location and how good your antenna is. But I live in Los Angeles, so it’s not like I’m out in the boonies or anything.
You have a bad antenna. Or bad connections. Or something.
In an area like LA, you should be able to receive a ton of signals, unless you are located in the basement of a mine. Get yourself a map from http://www.tvfool.com.
I have cable (rural Midwest location), but I have been experimenting with homemade antennas connected through a D/A box. Despite the fact that my “playroom” is in the basement, when I want to watch a channel that I can actually receive, the picture is much better through the antenna and converter than through the cable.
shrug it’s combination UHF/VHF and it may be cheap but it should work. And I know I’m not the only one less than impressed with over-the-air reception of digital TV.
The Radio Shack guy is full of crap.
We have an analog TV with a converter box. We get reception. We even us our old analog antenna.
Digital TV via antenna works very well once you find the right antenna location. It can be very sensitive, with a difference of a few inches in height being the difference between perfect and nothing. My wife spent several days experimenting to find the best spot for out antenna.
The absolute best place was on a kitchen chair in the middle of the driveway, lol. It was better than high up on the roof. We settled for a spot on a post in the yard.
The digital TV signal doesn’t seem to travel as far, or is much more directionally sensitive IMHO, but the old antenna seems to work. There are new ‘digital’ TV antennas which are more compact and seem to look nicer/neater, but I’ve heard that the old style antennas work better then the compact ones.
Inspired by some of the initial responses above I went looking and I found an FCC signal strength chart for my zip code. According to our government, with an antenna 30 feet above ground, I can get a “moderate” signel for one channel and a “weak” signal for two more. And that is it. No others.
Perhaps the old man at Radio Shack was speaking of practically rather than offering a technical opinion.
I was thinking the guy at Radio Shack was being sarcastic. 
I live in Chicago 3 miles NW of Willis (Sears) Tower and I went from 16 analog stations to ZERO digital TV station.
Remember there is no such thing as a digital TV antenna. The exact same electromagnetic spectrum is used. It’s not the waves that changed, but HOW the waves are being broadcast.
There are numerous issues with DTV. First of all most, but certainly not all, TV stations are now on UHF (Channels 14 - 51) (BTW Channels 51 - 69 were taken away from TV). So you may need a UHF antenna. These are called Silver Sensors (not all but that is the common brand name). A thing called PSIP allows for a virtual channel and other programming info.
So like in Chicago, WGN-TV Channel 9 used to be on VHF. Now WGN-TV is on Channel 19 and through the use of PSIP, it has a virtual channel of Channel 9. So if you tune in channel 19 on your digital TV, it’ll convert it for you to channel 9. This was done so that TV stations wouldn’t have to rebrand.
The second major issues is the FCC severely underestimated the amount of power DTV would need to replicatd analog service. DTV for instance, doesn’t penetrate buildings well at all. This accounts for my not getting any DTV.
This power issue is also because the FCC allowed TV stations to pick and choose their channel. It is much cheaper to broadcast on VHF than UHF, but UHF is better for DTV, so many stations chose to go back VHF.
Now here is where the problem arose. The FCC said, if a TV station chooses to stay on it’s digital channel it’s protected. That means any interference will not be tolerated. BUT the FCC said, if a station elects to go back to its analog channel or choose another channel it must accept interference and change it’s power and broadcast transmitter not to interfere.
So for instance, WGN-TV was on channel 9 for analog and channel 19 for digital. WGN chose to remain on channel 19. This means any other station broadcasting on channel 19 or co-channels that causes interference, must adjust their signals 'cause WGN on channel 19 is protected.
Now if WGN had chose to go back to channel 9, it would’ve been much cheaper to broadcast but they would’ve lost protection. In otherwords if they had went back to channel 9 they would’ve had much less power and had to use a directional antenna.
Now a lot of TV stations in small markets where cable and DISH have high penetration didn’t care. They chose to go back to VHF and use little power as most of their subscribers get the signal via cable or DISH, so the OTA (over the air) signal counts for little.
Now others didn’t have a choice. For instance, WLS-TV Channel 7 in Chicago had its digital channel on 52. Remember I told you channels 52 - 69 were taken away from TV and will be given to other things, such as cell phones. So WLS had to go back to channel 7. This was a disaster. So WLS applied to move its digital signal to channel 44.
This isn’t necessarily good since WLS will have to modify it’s signal on channel 44 so it doesn’t interfere with other channel 44’s in the area or other co-adjacent signals.
BTW unlike analog DTV stations can be next to each other if they are located at the same antenna farm or very close. In Chicago all but two TV station broadcast from Willis (Sears) Tower so they can do this.
So you can see this transition was very poorly planned. Also the FCC maps do not take in account terrain or directional signal strength. A TV station for example can broadcast full power to the north and 1% power to the south. But the FCC and other sites do not take any of this into account, so the sites often are not much value, if the TV station doesn’t broadcast a full 360º signal with flat terrain
Ref **janeslogin **…
Would you care to share where you found this “FCC signal strength chart”? The rest of us might like to lookup our zip codes too. 
You can try this one:
That’s not very accurate. It doesn’t list a couple of stations I can get even in the basement. Give http://www.tvfool.com a shot. It will even list stations that you stand a very small chance of receiving.