On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 11:43 PM, John Duncan Yoyo <johnduncany...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty close to where you were in Vienna. When the switch over happened > we lost the OTA digital signals for 5, 7 and 9. Now 7 is solid, 5 is > spotty and 9 is non-existent on my brand new HDTV. Digital TV tuners are all over the place in terms of sensitivity and being able to provide for high quality images. The only way for a consumer to find out how well any set will be able to receive broadcasts is to read up on user reports. No manufacturer that I know of provides any info about their tuner section. They overemphasize such things as contrast ratio, LCD response times, viewing angle, how slim and sleek the set is, leaving out the most important aspect of them all which is how well the set receives and displays the TV signal. One set I have can get no more than around half of the channels I can receive on another, and with both using the same antenna system. If you cannot even receive the station to begin with, all that stuff about viewing angles and contrast ratio is pretty meaningless. Additionally, and from what I found out in my quest for information about what sets have the best tuners, it appears as though the price of the set has little bearing on the issue, and neither does the brand name, although some brands appear to use better tuners than do other brands. Not surprisingly, some of the more popular and recognizable brands seem to have the worst tuner sections even though the quality of their display may be somewhat better. One TV brand stood out in stark contrast to all the others in the online research I did on tuner sections, and I needed to do that research given how far I live from station transmitters. Toshiba was, by far, the most mentioned brand when it came to tuner quality and sensitivity. In fact, Toshiba was the one and only brand that I ever came across where users would typically praise the tuner when writing reviews. I read not a single review of any other brand of TV set where specific mention was made about how excellent the tuner was. Most reviews that even mentioned tuners, and they were very few in number, would use terms such as "adequate" or "works okay" or "typical sensitivity." User reviews that compared one set to another always said that Toshiba came out on top in tuner sensitivity. Strangely, when converter boxes became available, tuner sensitivity was a much reviewed aspect of those devices. I suppose that was because at the time of the transition, it was assumed that viewers would expect the ability to get all the stations they had become accustomed to receiving. When I got my converter box, I made sure that I got the one that had the highest rated tuner section. The Toshiba set that I eventually bought after moving out to Fauquier County clearly matches the tuner sensitivity of that converter box, and appears to somewhat exceed it. I still use that converter box with one older analog set, and on the same antenna system, the Toshiba set gets every station the box receives, and often a bit more. > I had been using a simple bow tie antenna and a digital tuner box with the > antenna laying behind the TV now I have a better antenna which is amplified > in my house slightly above where the bow tie was. I will put up an external > antenna eventually but It is a back up. An external antenna is the way to go because at the frequencies these TV signal use, they do not have a lot of ability to penetrate solid surfaces such as walls, and especially the stations that employ UHF frequencies. Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
