Are you happy with the new DTV over the air?
After the conversion many have lost the networks they used to watch. Anter over a year of complaining to teh FCC and congress the FCC thinks all they had to do to fix the problem was to advertise more and hand out more cupons. Our complaints have all been ignored.
1) DTV will not work when it rains
2) Range in less than before
3) Signals work somedays and ot others. Some work in teh day and not in the night others work at night and not in the day.
Please post your problems here.
Letter to the Editor: Dissatisfied DTV Customer
SkyReport: Overall, this consumer is not impressed with the new digital OTA TV.
We get fewer “real stations” than before. We can no longer reliably watch the Baltimore stations from our home in the northern Virgina DC suburbs.
My parent’s place in upstate NY went from six reliable analog channels to ONE! The place has a very large outdoor VHF/UHF antenna and a rotator. I am going to have to switch to the most powerful UHF antenna available and add an amplifier. All the channels are UHF. Even then I may not get all the local channels.
As for the new channels….. the commercial stations have added nothing of value. In DC they are running out of date weather “forecasts” and/or weather radar, local new radio interupted with blaring ads, 20+ year old reruns, one channel of unpopular olympic sports, and more paid ads and infomercials.
So far only the public stations have added meaningful new programming. PBS has added popular and good quality kids shows another; added a spanish language network, all are running more channels of public programming from independent producers and one is running 10 subchannels of news and entertainment programming from all over the world.
All in all, the broadcasters and FCC have really, really let us down.
Doug Allis
12 miles west of NYC and I only get Korean and Spanish channels other than NJN. Anyone who understand transmitting over the air will tell you that digital transmissions will not travel as far as analog. This conversion to digital is a total waste of time and is forcing people in rural areas to but cable or satellite in order to view TV. I went from watching over 20 free channels to watching one usable (English speaking) channel. Way to go FCC!!! how much did you get out of this disastrous idea of forcing digital transmissions?? What special interests group was able to gobble up the freed up airwaves? I understand that Amateur Radio operators are now having their frequencies infringed on as well. When all else fails…it’s the amateur radio operators that save the day and the cities and government use these private citizens equipment to communicate.
Digital TV is a TOTAL JOKE!!!
DTV sucks!!!
can not get any of the pbs or cbs stations when it rains
made the vcr totally useless unless you have three different tvs with 3 vcrs!!
I hate it! our government at work
Vickie
I agree that the FCC has really let rural America down. Did they not know that digital signal doesn’t travel as far as analog? DUH!!! Now people of limited income that relied on their free locals off-air for weather coverage are literally in danger. Thanks FCC!!!
For those who are having problems please read the next post. Special action is needed in addidion to a recan.
I have been reading, hearing, seeing about the digital transition with bemused detachment.
I have a life to date cable bill too high to calculate since I got cable for the first time in the late 1970’s. Now with three houses served by Time Warner, Charter and Comcast, we remain cable only everywhere.
I just did an inventory, and collectively we have 24 television sets connected to cable using 16 boxes. All digital flat screen TV’s in use, maybe one or two old ‘tube’ TV’s stuck in the basement, but none in use.
I thought I had my ‘digital transition’ a long time ago.
WELL – I just walked by an old portable 5” TV set I used to use for tailgate parties or would kind of work in a moving car. It suddenly hit me that we have crossed a line, and that technology no longer works.
Sad that if I turned it on, it would pick up no broadcast. Sort of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’
My gripe now is for the interoperability of TV sets and cable boxes.
Do I really need a digital box?
Does it have to be so HUGE?
Can’t Cisco come out with a very slim and modular digital box?
I’d like to strap the thin box to the back of my thin TV, and pull off the digital readout that shows time and channel, and where the remote receiver is located.
Is there no way to get pay television and HD to my TV sets without boxes?
PS – have you seen the built in guide that is included in recent vintage Sony TV sets? It’s really pretty good.
I was part of the first 5 year project of DTV and HDTV with a major TV broadcast network. I have been retired since 2001. I installed a directional antenna about 2 years ago to test the effects of digital vs. analog transmissions at my location. I live in Barnegat, NJ, which is about 70 air miles from NYC (Empire) and 50 air miles from Philadelphia. From my vantage point I could receive all the major network affiliates from Philadelphia and most of the independents. I also could pick up (after rotating the antenna) NYC and a lot of the small independents. The independents were actually sharing spectrum space; probably to ensure their “must show” space on cable systems.
Well, Friday the 12 comes and I notice that the CBS(KYW) affiliate is running a loop on their analog transmitter informing the public what’s happening. They also suggest running the scan feature on the DTVs and convertor boxes. I ran the scan feature on one of the convertors and notice the NBC (WCAU) affiliate had two entries! One worked the other didn’t. Did they change frequency? I also notice that I lost all but one network, namely CBS. The convertor box that got reset only had channel listings for CBS and a lot of PBS stations! The other OTA network channel entries disappeared. The convertor box that didn’t get reset allowed me to view the signal strengths of the lost stations. They were only reading about 10% of signal strength. My guess was that perhaps the other network stations moved their antennas. I went to check alignment and that was not the case.
As I recall the DTV transmitters had to run about 10% ERP of what their analog counter parts ran. I assumed that’s what they were running. I remember studying/testing the waterfall effect. Little did I know it would be outside my door.
If this is the way it’s to be, Philadelphia lost a piece of the OTA market. Cable is okay and I assume those living in the inner cities survived. Was the higher power a tease or was the power lowered just to maintain the “must show” requirements?
If this was my only source of entertainment, I would only have CBS with marginal reception and NBC on occasion and all the PBS stations I care to look at. ABC and FOX are gone. Very little if any signal strength. I seem to recall when Dr. Barnett Sams was working on frequency allocations there was something special about whomever had the lower analog channels.
A note of interest: I was able to receive Empire at night. UHF ducting or whatever – good for HAM radio. Actually in my experimenting I received stations as far north as Binghamton-NY, as far south as Ocean City-Maryland, and as far west as Lancaster-Pa.
Tom Fergus
Since 12:30 PM last Friday, I have received dozens of calls from people who are having off-air signal problems, including several who (incredibly) had absolutely no clue about the digital conversion. However, a majority of the problems occurred with knowledgeable customers who had converter boxes and who did the post-changeover re-scan as directed.
We are encountering situations of complete signal loss from many stations. These signal losses involve different channels, in different locations, and there seems to be no particular pattern. We have fine tuned antennas, added amplifiers on several, but in more than a few of cases we still can’t get a strong enough signal to maintain a picture. In one of these problem situations, we installed an new antenna and amplifier just two weeks ago. Plus, several of these customers have rotors. We find this troubling because in the past our customers had very few unsolvable off-air signal problems.
I would perhaps expect these problems in more rural areas, but these customers are located in relatively flat terrain less than 40 miles from two major cities. I’m curious if anyone else is having similar problems?
Larry Sturgill
ABC Satellite and Sound
Letter to the Editor: Dissatisfied DTV Customer
SkyReport: Overall, this consumer is not impressed with the new digital OTA TV.
We get fewer “real stations” than before. We can no longer reliably watch the Baltimore stations from our home in the northern Virgina DC suburbs.
My parent’s place in upstate NY went from six reliable analog channels to ONE! The place has a very large outdoor VHF/UHF antenna and a rotator. I am going to have to switch to the most powerful UHF antenna available and add an amplifier. All the channels are UHF. Even then I may not get all the local channels.
As for the new channels….. the commercial stations have added nothing of value. In DC they are running out of date weather “forecasts” and/or weather radar, local new radio interupted with blaring ads, 20+ year old reruns, one channel of unpopular olympic sports, and more paid ads and infomercials.
So far only the public stations have added meaningful new programming. PBS has added popular and good quality kids shows another; added a spanish language network, all are running more channels of public programming from independent producers and one is running 10 subchannels of news and entertainment programming from all over the world.
All in all, the broadcasters and FCC have really, really let us down.
Doug Allis