the government wants us to pay for TV

This whole transition is a ploy to get more people to pay for TV. The reception is so bad that most cant even watch. Anytime the wind blows mine goes out. The analog signal would still be viewable in a storm but the digital signal cannot take this. The people who rely on the EBS to avoid severe weather would more than likley never hear their instructions. In my opinion the digital transition is a gigantic waste of money in a time where we all should be counting our nickles.The FCC needs to wake up and listen to the people. At least give us a choice.

Man I disagree and agree with you 100%.

Disagree about the transition being a waste because it needed to happen eventually. Digital signals are much more efficient than analog. If you don't have a TV capable of HD, then your missing out on about half of the benefits DTV has over analog.

Agree with you about the reception problems. I do think that digital signals are a huge pain in the rear to pick up. I've had trouble with different family members getting flaky reception after they connected their converter boxes (well actually I helped them do that) but when you get everything set up right and a clear picture, it's worth the upgrade.

What exactly are you asking with the poll?

Originally Posted by Aaron62

Man I disagree and agree with you 100%.

Disagree about the transition being a waste because it needed to happen eventually. Digital signals are much more efficient than analog. If you don't have a TV capable of HD, then your missing out on about half of the benefits DTV has over analog.

Agree with you about the reception problems. I do think that digital signals are a huge pain in the rear to pick up. I've had trouble with different family members getting flaky reception after they connected their converter boxes (well actually I helped them do that) but when you get everything set up right and a clear picture, it's worth the upgrade.

The clearer picture is a benefit, except that the signal is not as reliable. With the analog you could get a decent picture and even watch channels with static. The new digital "static" is like watching a skipping DVD. Even with the best anttena the "static" is still there, especialy when the wind picks up. The only time I generally watch TV is when the weather is bad and it's almost impossible to watch anything at all. P.S. the poll is which are you for.

Originally Posted by 1mercury1

This whole transition is a ploy to get more people to pay for TV.

The clearer picture is a benefit, except that the signal is not as reliable. With the analog you could get a decent picture and even watch channels with static. The new digital "static" is like watching a skipping DVD. Even with the best anttena the "static" is still there, especialy when the wind picks up. The only time I generally watch TV is when the weather is bad and it's almost impossible to watch anything at all. P.S. the poll is which are you for.

A ploy? maybe...but the transition to digital does offer advantages

- free up broadcast spectrum for public safety communications
- parts of spectrum has been auctioned to companies for improved and broader wireless services
- improved picture
- improved sound
- multicasting
- future interactive services and data streams

If you're using your TV for weather only, why not skip the transition altogether and use your computer for weather updates?

Originally Posted by Boo-Ray

A ploy? maybe...but the transition to digital does offer advantages

- free up broadcast spectrum for public safety communications
- parts of spectrum has been auctioned to companies for improved and broader wireless services
- improved picture
- improved sound
- multicasting
- future interactive services and data streams

If you're using your TV for weather only, why not skip the transition altogether and use your computer for weather updates?

You just dont get it !!! I dont watch the weather I watch TV when the weather is bad and when the weather is bad the digital signal deteriorates to the point that you cannot stand to watch, let alone use any of the features you have been so kind to point out Captian Obvious. Next time read whats been written.

then you need to look at tvfool.com see where tour transmitters are on which band they are broadcasting UHF or VHF then pick a good antenna to start a UHF VHF combo antenna is weak on the UHF side so you will get a crappy signal if you need UHF get a UHF antenna and point it to the transmitters and you should improve t your reception antennas are good for about 10 years and then they start to loose signal gathering strength, this wasn't as noticeable on analog but digital is non forgiving.

The wind shouldn't and won't affect your reception unless there is something else wrong. If we had your location and particulars, I wonder if we couldn't work it out to where you get a stable signal? I can understand your frustration. Crappy reception would frustrate me too. My OTA DTV is picture perfect. We get 75 mph winds up here and it doesn't affect my signal at all. OTA DTV is clearer than cable or analog OTA. I wouldn't trade my DTV for anything. Let us know if you think there's anything we can do to get you up and going.

Originally Posted by 1mercury1

This whole transition is a ploy to get more people to pay for TV. The reception is so bad that most cant even watch. Anytime the wind blows mine goes out. The analog signal would still be viewable in a storm but the digital signal cannot take this. The people who rely on the EBS to avoid severe weather would more than likley never hear their instructions. In my opinion the digital transition is a gigantic waste of money in a time where we all should be counting our nickles.The FCC needs to wake up and listen to the people. At least give us a choice.

If you're surrounded by trees, wind CAN affect your reception as the trees move around and change the reflections of the signals off the leaves. I think having a good outdoor antenna arrests this in many cases, as I do not have wind problems despite having a lot of oak trees around my house.

- Trip

What I agree with is that it's putting a lot of people on the ropes, people who can't afford to pay for cable or fancy converter boxes. There's no option. There are probably a lot of citizens who aren't going to have TV now at all. Frankly, I may be one of them. I'm struggling to survive financially. I'm a hair away from pulling the plug on cable, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a converter box or not, assuming I can even find one (see my post about Out of Converter Boxes). There's no real accounting for people in difficult places for reception or those in financial difficulties. I've also long been frustrated by cable putting so much into HD. It's not fair to the rest of us. I don't have an HD TV. I can't afford it. I have a very nice 52 inch TV that's fading but still works. I bought it when life was good to me financially. Now it's not. I don't have money for a new one of any size. And I know I'm not even the bottom of the barrel. People are hurting and 2009 isn't the year to be putting the screws to us.

I'll agree that it definetly is much more of a challenge to get it to work reliably. The FCC did alot of their testing with outdoor antennas rather then little set top rabbit ears. Was there some special lobbying interest from the cable companies going on? Probably. The sad truth is that there are alot of viewers out there that could always get a reliable, snowy, and pretty much watchable analog signal (including on the fringe) whilst with a digital converter box they get less and less or even nothing at all.

People who live roughly 30-35 miles away and on the fringe borderline could always put up with fuzzy analog channels with a basic rabbit ear antenna but now they'll have to get something out on the roof and up to continue recieving their local stations or just get cable.

Most of digital is on the UHF band and we all know how worse UHF is with bending around obstacles, hills, and mountains. If you don't have LOS it's even worse. You may find yourself in a dead zone even with analog. This spells trouble for people who don't have a direct and clear line of sight to the transmitters. With analog, even though you didn't have LOS, you could still get a bunch of watchable channels. With digital you'll get spotty service or possibly nothing at all!

But, for as many people that are having problems, I'm sure there are twice as many that now have great reception with alot of extra channels to choose from.

With analog, you could get lots of channels that are really fuzzy and grainy, yet, the sound is uninterrupted and you can still see and hear what's on.

With digital, there IS NO MIDDLE GROUND. You either get enough signal over the threshold for a picture or you get pixelation because the tuner can't get enough information to decode it.

It's up to you if you wanna do something about it. Get a better antenna. That's all you need to do.

What antenna do you have now?

Have you tried aiming it and moving it around?

Anything at all?

I'll admit i'm in a dead zone for DTV but I get about 9 channels all clear and reliable and when the transition takes place I might get more when everyone goes full power.

It's your choice buddy.

Originally Posted by Orrymain

What I agree with is that it's putting a lot of people on the ropes, people who can't afford to pay for cable or fancy converter boxes. There's no option. There are probably a lot of citizens who aren't going to have TV now at all. Frankly, I may be one of them. I'm struggling to survive financially. I'm a hair away from pulling the plug on cable, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a converter box or not, assuming I can even find one (see my post about Out of Converter Boxes). There's no real accounting for people in difficult places for reception or those in financial difficulties. I've also long been frustrated by cable putting so much into HD. It's not fair to the rest of us. I don't have an HD TV. I can't afford it. I have a very nice 52 inch TV that's fading but still works. I bought it when life was good to me financially. Now it's not. I don't have money for a new one of any size. And I know I'm not even the bottom of the barrel. People are hurting and 2009 isn't the year to be putting the screws to us.

You make a great point and you are exactly right.A lot of people wont have TV at all. My biggest thing is that even with the coupons The transition cost me over $150, money I could have spent elsewhere. And I'm cheap, I just quoted a job to install an antenna for a little old lady and I couldn't get it because she didn't even have the money for the antenna she required let alone the installation. The lady is planning on going without. Some people in this country need thier money to survive so why try and fix something thats not broke.

Originally Posted by staticMHZ

I'll agree that it definetly is much more of a challenge to get it to work reliably. The FCC did alot of their testing with outdoor antennas rather then little set top rabbit ears. Was there some special lobbying interest from the cable companies going on? Probably. The sad truth is that there are alot of viewers out there that could always get a reliable, snowy, and pretty much watchable analog signal (including on the fringe) whilst with a digital converter box they get less and less or even nothing at all.

People who live roughly 30-35 miles away and on the fringe borderline could always put up with fuzzy analog channels with a basic rabbit ear antenna but now they'll have to get something out on the roof and up to continue recieving their local stations or just get cable.

Most of digital is on the UHF band and we all know how worse UHF is with bending around obstacles, hills, and mountains. If you don't have LOS it's even worse. You may find yourself in a dead zone even with analog. This spells trouble for people who don't have a direct and clear line of sight to the transmitters. With analog, even though you didn't have LOS, you could still get a bunch of watchable channels. With digital you'll get spotty service or possibly nothing at all!

But, for as many people that are having problems, I'm sure there are twice as many that now have great reception with alot of extra channels to choose from.

With analog, you could get lots of channels that are really fuzzy and grainy, yet, the sound is uninterrupted and you can still see and hear what's on.

With digital, there IS NO MIDDLE GROUND. You either get enough signal over the threshold for a picture or you get pixelation because the tuner can't get enough information to decode it.

It's up to you if you wanna do something about it. Get a better antenna. That's all you need to do.

What antenna do you have now?

Have you tried aiming it and moving it around?

Anything at all?

I'll admit i'm in a dead zone for DTV but I get about 9 channels all clear and reliable and when the transition takes place I might get more when everyone goes full power.

It's your choice buddy.

I did get a better antenna, twice and the only difference between my $20 rabbit ears and my $70 dollar roof mounted powered antenna is about 50 bucks. The results are the same the wind blows and the picture goes out. I have some tall pine trees around my house, but I also live on a lake so LOS is probably not an issue. I am in what you would call a fring area(more than 30 miles to the nearest transmitter), but It shouldn't be this difficult. It is supposed to be better than analog but has yet to be proven in my eyes.

wheres your tv fool plot?

Originally Posted by staticMHZ

wheres your tv fool plot?

already checked it doesnt help me

Originally Posted by 1mercury1

already checked it doesnt help me

The way you jumped boo-ray's ship for giving you reasons why the transition is good makes me a bit apprehensive to want to help you. The fact that you won't give your TVFool plot makes it downright impossible to diagnose your reception problems.

TVFool may not help you but it helps other people figure out what your situation is. It gives clues on your location and could help other knowledgeable people to figure out if there's some unique problem that can be worked around or something. For example, I've run into lots of people having trouble with certain stations that have known transmission issues that are no fault of the person having trouble. That's probably not the case for you, but it's just one example of getting an answer where you might think no answer would come of it.

- Trip

There are many people who just want to complain, rather than want to be helped.

Originally Posted by Orrymain

People are hurting and 2009 isn't the year to be putting the screws to us.

People are hurting. This was not something they dreamed up at the last minute. The DTV transition has roots all the way back to 1996. The date for analog cut off at my last count (correct me if wrong), is 3. It's been extended several years. The stations can't just say ok, we will run both analog and digital another few years until the economy gets better. It's costs tens of thousands to keep an analog transmitter on the air. They are hurting as well. This is why so many of the PBS stations switched at the other less advertised transition date in April, they needed to cut costs and turn off the second transmitter.

The problem was no one talked about until about a year ago. There have been long long long discussions on many forums about whose fault this was, not really wanting to go there again. But the FCC and your local station always coming to the top of the list that should have been talking about it sooner. One big mistake was they keep talking about a drop dead date. This made little sense since most of them had digital running by late 2006, and didn't inform people they could go ahead and transition. The other problem is no one talked antennas until lately and are still doing a terrible job.

Then there is the "Secret DTV Transition", that is not required to run a PSA. It's the stations that are already digital but changing channels. Not bad if it's in the same band, but a lot of them are moving from UHF to VHF. This is going to cause a lot of people with what they though was a good setup less one channel (that moved to VHF). To add to that there was a presumption early in DTV that VHF didn't much power at all. Wrong answer.

So I predict there will be a huge mess in towns come June 13th, where some stations went from 500 to 1000 KW on UHF to 20KW on VHF. The range despite all the maps, math and science will not be the same. It will be less. The cut off power predicted by many and I agree is any stations flash cutting to VHF that is not 40 KW or more will get slammed with complaints.

Fortunately here at the 11:45 hour of the transition, this is finally becoming apparent to a lot of stations from seeing the results of other stations that flash cut early to VHF. Now they are scrambling to apply for more power.

Originally Posted by 1mercury1

You make a great point and you are exactly right.A lot of people wont have TV at all. My biggest thing is that even with the coupons The transition cost me over $150, money I could have spent elsewhere. And I'm cheap, I just quoted a job to install an antenna for a little old lady and I couldn't get it because she didn't even have the money for the antenna she required let alone the installation. The lady is planning on going without. Some people in this country need thier money to survive so why try and fix something thats not broke.

Los Angeles stations are already warning viewers both OTA and on their websites, that if they live in the fringe foothill/mountain areas outside LA that they will lose ALL OTA reception on June 12th. Well at least the viewers know three weeks ahead of time!