One thing to look at is the receiver portion of the converter. In general, I think older TV receivers had better reception capability because it was so important with everyone using an antenna. With the advent of cable, the manufacturers were able to cut back on the quality of the receiver and happily did so. I imagine shortcuts have been made on the converter boxes as well. Not sure where you can compare converter box receiver strengths.
The second issue is the age and condition of the antenna. Don't know your specifics but if you are able to get a lot of analog channels, a decent UHF/VHFantenna should be able to do about the same. The newer it is, the better the connections between the vanes and ribs. You'll have to look on the antennaweb.org site for the actual frequencies of the channels you want to watch, and then match your antenna accordingly. Keep in mind that the frequencies might change from UHF to VHF at the stations discretion, come June. As a rule, VHF signals are better than UHF when it comes to getting the signal to your house, so that might help there. If you are going to go to the trouble of putting up the antenna, you'll want to install an amplifier. Given the difficulty of the installation, it will be easier this way. You can always not use it. However, as an installer once told me, "if the signal isn't there, it can't be amplified". Richard P. > I am in sNJ 08320 and have a 40' tower with an uhf/vhf antenna on there > pointed toward Philadelphia to coaxial cable to an amplifier to more coaxial > cable to a splitter/secondary-amplifier to a 1984 1984 Sony kv25-xbr tube > set which, with over-the-air gave such good picture/sound people would ask > if we already got a HDTV. I bought the converters (actually 4 different > ones) and am getting just a couple of channels. I took one to my sis's > house in LI, NY about 20 miles east of NYC and she got about 50 channels. I > went on antennaweb and it says I should get almost nothing. People nearby > report they are getting plenty of channels. I have gotten cheap internet > via Comcast which came with free basic TV for a year. The tower is pretty > much in the clear and this is not a valley (sNJ is flat). My antenna has > some lost vanes ...it was a good one when I got it. Nobody around here > installs TV antennae. I have a tree trimmer who will do the articulated > bucket thing and put up an antenna for me, but then there is the question of > 1-signal strength, 2-will I get anything more after all the expense? I sure > would like to avoid paying for TV if possible; I already don't want to see > it for free, for the most part. Where is the problem here? 1-antenna, > 2-amplifier, 3-secondary-amplifier 4-the boogie man? ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
