Guess you haven't talked to me. Mine's working great here. more channels on rabbit ears than ever.
No, I'm not kidding. What this has got to do with REPEATERS I have no idea though. but I can make a guess or a suggestion that would put it back on-topic: Perhaps (just like in repeaters) buying the cheapest crappiest $40 hunk of junk receiver/converter box from god-knows-where-China, in a plastic non-shielded box, sitting on top of piles of "home entertainment" electronics, and feeding it with crappy feedline or shoddy connectors or old internal wiring that just isn't up to snuff, and the million other things that can affect reception of an RF signal -- isn't the way to go when attempting to receive DTV signals? The ironic thing is that my DTV receiver is in my DISH NETWORK box. Heh. I don't even really NEED it, but it's doing fine and adding a third source for the DVR from rabbit-ears. yup, plain old rabbit-ears, not amplified, not a good antenna for anything, let alone UHF. (The UHF portion is a circular loop. A spectacularly crap-tastic antenna performance-wise, as we all here know from our hobby.) I'm sure if I put an outside antenna on it with some gain, proper feedline, and a rotor to point it, it'd "DX" the Colorado Springs and Cheyenne WY transmitters, no problem at all. Rotor would just be for F/B ratio - might not even need it. point the thing at Cheyenne, and pick up COS off the back side. Consider the source when you're hearing that "people" are having trouble with DTV reception, and ask them if their converter box/receiver cost MORE than the free coupon. Free = you get what you pay for. just like everything else in RF - including repeaters. Someone else pointed out a couple of weeks ago that receiver sensitivity numbers and real-world tests are hard to come by on these things. There's manufacturer numbers, but who believes a manufacturer when they're talking about their own receivers? We're hams. we know how to make a receive antenna system work. but if the receiver is crud. Nate WY0X From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Barry Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 10:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Repeater-Builder] Somewhat OT - How to make HDTV *really* work Virtually everybody I have talked to has had nothing but problems with DTV. Invariably they get fewer channels, and stations that are good to excellent in analog can frequently be unwatchable in digital.
