Will a rabbit-ears-antenna-style TV get clearer reception with an HDTV converter box?

[bordelond]

@whitetho

I think the tuners in the old days were much better than the ones you get today, since most TVs will be hooked up to cable. I have a 25 year-old balck-and-white portable that picks up many more over-the-air signals than a recently bought Walmart special, whick works fine with cable signals.

I think you’re on to something there. I wonder what tedchnically is different about new tuners in WalMart-special TVs compared to the tuners in 1980-vintage sets?

Also, I do remember the prevalence of rooftop antennae in the suburbs. I assume these were on top of most residential buildings in large cities, too.

[mks57]

@bordelond

So people were used to the lousy reception for 30 years, or was something different?

External antennas were the norm, whether on the roof of a single-family home or part of a master antenna system in an apartment building. When the FCC programmed their computers to simulate and predict digital TV coverage areas, they assumed that the standard receiving antenna was on a 30’ mast. I used to have a connection to a master antenna system in my old apartment. It disappeared when the cable company wired the building for cable. Coincidence? Ha.

[elmwood]

@bordelond

Something as snowy and crappy as modern-day “apartment” reception would seem to have had a hard time catching on – TV IRL, of course, came on like gangbusters. So people were used to the lousy reception for 30 years, or was something different?

I’ll third rooftop antennas.

Before my parents got cable in 1973 (!), we had rabbit ears on the living room television. Reception was … well, iffy. The five (at the time) stations in Buffalo came in okay with some tweaking, there were a couple of snowy stations from Toronto, and that was it. My grandparents had a rooftop antenna, and one time, when they were in another room, I did some exploring with it. (Adults of the time seemed to consider antenna rotor controls as delicate instruments that would break the moment a child touched it, much like thermostats and power windows. But I digress.) Anyhow, I received five Buffalo stations, four from Rochester, three from Erie, four from Toronto, one from Hamilton, and a bunch from various smaller cities in Ontario, all crystal clear.

It might not seem like much of a point to receive four different ABC affiliates, but each station had different syndicated programming, and there was a good chance a popular syndicated show didn’t air in your market. If you liked Phil Donahue, but the show wasn’t on any local stations, you aimed the rooftop antenna at the city 100 miles away and watched it on one of the stations there. Remember, at the time, large-ish cities only had four or five television stations, independent stations were sill a new phenomenon, and they filled a lot of their airtime with old B movies and reruns of sitcoms from the 1950s and early 1960s.

[elmwood]

@bordelond

I think you’re on to something there. I wonder what tedchnically is different about new tuners in WalMart-special TVs compared to the tuners in 1980-vintage sets?

Electronic PLL tuning versus mechanical tuning. Mechanical tuners aren’t necessarily more sensitive, though. Modern analog televisions tend to squelch out and bluescreen instead of display weak signals, while older analog sets will display the snow-filled signal.