Dear Folks,
As a result of my attendance at the Winter SWL fest, which by the way was a
great social and learning experience, I came back with lots more knowledge
about the switch to digital OTA television reception. Most of the info was
gotten from the discussions in the hospitality room on Friday night. This
helped me in my switch to digital OTA TV.
Well, yesterday I bought a Digital Stream DTX9900 converter box from Radio
Shack and was able to use my $40 government coupon, so it came out to about 19
dollars plus tax. I checked out WalMart's box first, ten bucks cheaper but the
reviews weren't so good. Set up is relatively easy; attach your antenna cable
to the box, and attach the box output to the TV with the supplied cable, plug
it in. The box comes with a remote and batteries. Programming of the remote to
your TV is a snap; just hold the on/off key while tapping the volume control,
and at some point the TV will turn on, and your remote is programmed.
Well, the fun and interesting part was scanning for TV stations. My location
is Western NJ, maybe equidistant from Philly and NYC. As you all know, there
are no more fuzzy or snowy pictures as with analog TV, either the picture is
clear or if the signal is weak then you receive only a pixielated or blank
screen. Somehow I am going to miss those fadey stations, especially during
sporadic E.
My antenna setup is a little out of the ordinary, I have a VHF/UHF antenna in
the attic on a rotor with 2 Archer preamps in line. The attic antenna has
about 4 extra UHF elements that I added a few years ago for better gain. It's
one of the bigger TV antennas that just makes it size-wise in the attic. Not
an inch more clearance from the roof rafters when it turns!
So I started out with the antenna pointed due North, scanned using the DTV
tuner, and it captured and brought into memory the channels it was able to pick
up for a clear picture. I repeated this for 8 different beam positions to
capture New York City, Philadelphia, and Allentown area stations. As it
captures more channels, it adds them to the list, even though some may be
redundant. The rotor control was smoking hot by time I was done.
Now, the DTV tuner does have an on-screen bar-type signal strength indicator
which is needed if you are in a fringe area, just turn the beam until the
signal is strong enough ("in the green"), then the picture will appear. Weak
signals will result in pixielated or partial sporadic video, much like what
satellite TV experiences during thunderstorms. I am just wondering how us TV
DX'ers will be able to continue the hobby with the new digital signals.
Interestingly, most DTV stations now have 2 or more digital channels running
simultaneously. E.g., Channel 4 might now consist of 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 etc. 4.1
may be the normal broadcast, while 4.2 might be local weather, or a completely
different set of programs. Some of these extra channels are in different
languages, some are 24/7 home shopping, some are weather, hip-hop music,
religious, and some, like channel 25 are live camera shots of different parts
of the Big Apple. Kind of reminds me of when UHF was young and all kinds of
new interesting stuff could be seen.
Another nice feature of the new digital channels, at least in this area, is
that you now just press a button on the remote to get the television program
guide. And, you can press an INFO button to get information for that program.
Close captioning also works fine.
So, if you live in a fringe area like me, you'll have to turn the beam more
often if you want to get the full complement of channels, but I must say the
picture quality is improved, especially with weaker stations.
Not all the channels are digital yet, as judged by my converter box. The
only thing I am trying to figure out is when the switchover is complete, will a
UHF antenna alone be sufficient? From what I have heard, some VHF stations may
stay at the VHF portion, some will migrate to UHF. If a majority of stations
in my viewing area go to UHF, then next thing is to replace the attic antenna
with a higher gain UHF antenna. Might even put it outside if I can find room
at the antenna farm
Hope this information helps anyone out there making the switch. Any comments
and ideas are welcome.
Thanks and 73's
Mario Filippi
---------------------------------
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