ROAD TRIP REPORT - DTV Report from Central FLA

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 24 Apr 2009 at 14:33, John Bolduc wrote:

> Antenna point towards Orlando Transmitter site.  Tampa was received
> almost directly off the backside. Antenna direction never adjusted.
> 
> Gainesville 5-DT and 20-DT came in just fine. No sign of Jacskonville,
> Miami or Fort Meyers.

Although I have cable TV, I thought it might be useful to still be 
able to get over-the-air TV, in case of a cable outage, or if I want 
to watch one show on cable while taping another off-the-air. And, 
with the government-provided coupons, they were cheap enough.  So I 
got two DTV converters and can report some results.  

On one TV, I can get pretty good reception, though certain channels 
seem to keep breaking up, and a message appears on the screen saying 
"bad or nonexistent signal."  When a good signal is present, the 
picture is crystal clear, without all the ghosts and snow that we are 
prone to in Brookline.  When it isn't, it can be much less watchable 
than one with ghosts.

For some reason, the one on my diningroom TV is unable to find 
channel 4, though it finds 2 and 5 fine.  Why there should be that 
much difference, when the stations are all on the same tower, I don't 
understand.

I also have a small hand-sized TV that I got in a yard sale for $20 a 
few years ago.  I use it mainly to watch Jay Leno's monolog while in 
my study at my computer.  It doesn't have a conventional antenna 
connection, but has a jack for an external antenna which is similar 
to a transistor-radio earphone jack.  I found an old piece of cable 
TV cable and soldered an earphone plug on one end.  Connecting the 
other end to the converter box and plugging this end into the TV, I 
get digital TV on that mini-TV, which I was afraid would no longer be 
useable after the changeover.  So I'm going to set up one of the 
converter boxes in my study to use with that TV.

My girlfriend has a couple of old black-and-white TVs.  I'm going to 
install her DTV converters on them tomorrow.  Stay  tuned.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004           	         http://www.attorneyross.com