J-Man

I've been fortunate enough to live in an area (San Gabriel Valley foothills east of Los Angeles) where I've had good to excellent analog reception (both UHF and VHF) for the past 22 years with just set-top inexpensive rabbit ear antennas on all of my televisions. I've never felt the need to get cable to improve the quality of my picture.

Here's my TV Fool signal analysis. As you can see, I'm fairly close to the broadcast towers for pretty much all of the L.A. and Orange County stations. This explains my many years of good analog reception. About a year ago, I purchased a DVR that has a digital OTA tuner, and I have been semi-successfully using it from time to time to view and record digital programs. However, it's very inconsistent, especially recently: the reception of digital signals has deteriorated significantly and I can't get consistent reception on more than half the stations in the "green" zone.

Same thing with the converter box I use on another set. Very sporadic and inconsistent reception. For the most part, I've switched back to analog, which of course won't be an option very shortly. I've tried different antennas, moving them around, etc. An outdoor antenna isn't really an option for me, and based on what TVFool shows, I don't see why it should be anyway. I'm getting really frustrated, and I am anticipating greatly reducing my viewing after tomorrow. Maybe I'll end up getting cable, but I don't really think I should have to, based on my location. I'm hoping that maybe some stations will improve their signals after the changeover, or maybe I need to try more antennas, but I'm almost ready to throw in the towel.

1inxs

J-Man, Welcome to the DTVUSA Forum. Don't throw in the towel just yet. I wonder if a lot of the issues you're experiencing are do to the digital transition. I'm getting some of the same issues in my area. They are switching from one frequency to another on a sporadic basis. Have you tried to rescan your boxes after the issues? I would try to scan the boxes on Saturday morning to see what you get. If you still have problems post back and we'll try to help you figure it out. Good Luck!

Piggie

The biggest reason I can see you are having a problem on digital is overload.

Try much less antenna. I guess your cheapie rabbit ears are not amplified. Any antenna amplified would overload in a second.

One way to test for overload, is find a piece of thin solid conductor wire, something like old telephone wire that is 22 to 26 gauge. Cut a piece about 6 inches long and just put that in your antenna input jack in the center.

See if that works. Don't cramp too big a wire in there or it will permanently ruin the antenna input jack.

If 6 inches doesn't work try a foot then 3 feet up to about 5 feet of wire.

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another experiment would be collapse your antennas on your rabbit ears and set them on the floor behind the TV where there is probably less signal.

J-Man

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I was out of town over the weekend (staying with someone who has CABLE!) but when I returned on Monday night, I switched to a very basic VHF/UHF antenna and rescanned. Reception is much improved on one set, and somewhat improved on the other. On the set with the DVR, I get pretty much everything except channel 58 (LA City Schools PBS station). Sometimes I even get 24, the San Bernardino PBS station, the transmitter for which is in the opposite direction from the rest of the L.A. stations. However, reception on some channels, especially 11 and 13, is spotty and pixellated at times. On the non-DVR analog TV, using a similar basic antenna, reception seems to be much more affected by the positioning of the antenna. When I scan, I can never get 100% of the stations, but the missing stations will sometimes come in if I rescan, but then I lose other ones. The converter box I have (RCA) doesn't seem to have an option for manually entering stations (unlike the DVR, which does allow this), so I think I have to rescan every time I want to add a station that wasn't picked up initially. Oh well ...