johnnymk

Digital TV problems start to surface

http://www.edn.com/blog/1700000170/p...&rid=587295651

So the broadcast industry took 20 years to come up with the digital TV standard and it sure does not live up to all the hype. I have been using over-the-air digital TV for about two years. As you would expect from anything digital, when it works it is pretty good, but when it screws up it “falls off a cliff” as they point out in this great article. .

I could only pick up about five channels, eight at most. And they were never the same ones. Twist the antenna one way and get ABC and NBC. Turn it another way and get CBS and Fox. I couldn’t get any PBS stations at all, which were the real reason I wanted to get a better signal in the first place.

And this;

A digital signal is affected by practically everything – where your TV set is located in your house, the walls in your house, the number of trees in your yard, how close it is to other electronic devices, birds migrating south in the fall. No kidding. A Washington Post story described how a woman who lived on the 20th floor of an apartment building would lose her signal for a few moments every time a plane landed or took off from Reagan National airport.

And this in a comment:

With my converter box the picture is crystal clear - when I can get it. I tried it for a while and the whole family agreed - snow is better than the picture dropping out completely every few minutes. I tried positioning an antenna all over the outside of my house but with no better luck than the indoor one. We had some success with the front door open and the antenna balanced and pointed in a particular direction but that did not seem like a good long term solution.