Rural DTV - surprising

[Paul B. Walker, Jr.]

Where are you spending $1000  a year on cable?

My cable bill is about $490 a year!

Paul



On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Dan.Strassberg <dan.strassberg@att.net>wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>


-- 
Sincerely,
Paul B. Walker, Jr.
http://www.realradiousa.com
http://www.myspace.com/walkerbroadcasting
walkerbroadcasting@gmail.com