Rural DTV - surprising

[Dan.Strassberg]

Haven't you noticed that the first part of the DTV program to
disappear is almost always the audio? This is a symption of a flawed
design--not in your set but in the basic design of the system. Losing
the picture is almost never as serious as losing the sound because the
sound contains more of the information that you need to follow the
program. The sound needs to be more robust, even if making it so would
somewhat degrade the reliability of the picture. I'm convinced that
the geniuses who designed the system figured that over-the-air
reception was unimportnat because everybody would have cable or
satellite TV. Sorry, but I refuse to spend the $1000/year on cable.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Allen" <gallen2@nescaum.org>
To: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 12:24 PM
Subject: Rural DTV - surprising


>I thought I'd add this to the current thread on DTV.
>
> In Antrim NH, on US 202 about 65 miles NW of the Needham towers,
> we've never been able to get more than 2-3 ugly fuzzy ghosty analog
> pics over the years even with big outdoor antennas, since this
> location is on the east side of Gregg Lake, with a 300' hill
> directly behind me.  That blocks everything from 0 to 180 deg
> direction pretty completely, including all Boston TV signals.
>
> This summer, I thought I'd see if DTV did any better.  Using a
> channel master cm-7000 converter box [~$80 before coupon] I was able
> to get great pics most of the time from Ch. 2-4-5 and even 68 with
> only modest fiddling of my $50 Terk HDTV antenna [which has a
> powered rf-amp as part of the package].  Ch 7 was there part of the
> time, but more not than there.
>
> Here's the strange part.  Boston channels only came in when the
> antenna was pointed just about due west, across the lake [~1200 ft
> wide]; the other side of the lake also has a hill, and the only
> signals I got were presumably bouncing off the hill across the lake.
> This is also what we found with analog TV over the years, but
> because it's digital, the pic is perfect [when it's there at all].
>
> So -- for those who say rural DTV coverage is likely to be worse
> than analog, that is not always the case --- certainly not here.  We
> now get these Boston channels, and several others from NH and VT.
> An amazing improvement over analog, and only using a small indoor
> [amplified] antenna looking out a first floor window.  Perahps we're
> just lucky we have a hill for the signals to bounce off of...
>    -- George
>