Am I that Lucky?

[staticMHZ]

It is said that ATSC was a bad choice for digital because of multipath and poor building penetration in fringe areas.

[Piggie]

Originally Posted by staticMHZ

It is said that ATSC was a bad choice for digital because of multipath and poor building penetration in fringe areas.

Good point, not camparing apples to apples with DVB-T to ATSC. They use 8 MHz wide UHF channels and different ways of encoding that give them 24 mbps or more. They use streams instead of one stream that gives them better multipath (ATSC M/H took a lesson to this). Also like I mentioned and someone else they use fewer towers so you point at one direction.

[Eureka]

Originally Posted by staticMHZ

It is said that ATSC was a bad choice for digital because of multipath and poor building penetration in fringe areas.

UHF penetrates buildings just fine. VHF does not.

The reception below is with only the unamplified indoor loop antenna seen to the right of the monitor. The transmitter is in Fordland, MO, ~70miles away. I get all the other Springfield UHFs with this loop antenna, but I do not get the KOLR 10, the lone VHF, with any indoor dipole antenna I've tried. And I've tried many of them, extended to many different lengths.

I also get another market's UHFs, with transmitters located ~45 miles away in another direction, with unamp'd indoor antennas, no problem. I cannot get the lone VHF station in that market (KAFT 9), with any indoor antenna.

In my case, UHF ATSC works perfectly. VHF, however, does not.

YMMV

[Piggie]

Mileage varies for sure. Every case is a case study to be sure one is comparing apples to apples. Please I am not picking, but trying to raise a point that many lurkers and others miss understand. If you make a definite statement, then follow it YMMV, people still take it as gospel even though really it also their fault for how they read things. We are all guilty, but I like to try and stay within stating in text that it's not the same for everyone.

I have been in the business my entire life and absolutes don't apply. Though if king of the FCC, VHF would be gone and we would have kept at least half the UHF channels in the 700 MHz auctions.

[Aaron62]

Originally Posted by Piggie

I have been in the business my entire life and absolutes don't apply. Though if king of the FCC, VHF would be gone and we would have kept at least half the UHF channels in the 700 MHz auctions.

But what about crowded markets like LA? If all of our VHF stations wanted to convert to UHF, there wouldn't be enough room would there?