Anyone having any problems with their digital TV? I've about had enough. I have no channel 11 sound on either TV, parents TV 35 miles away is the same. I have no channel 26 whatsoever. Sporadically 38 comes in once a week even with daily scanning. Digital TV box turns off automatically every 4 hours no matter what. Never thought I'd say this but I'm ready for TV that you have to pay for for. What do they call it, cable? Next I suppose I'll get fuel injection...
The fuel injection will be way more entertaining. Our cable stinks. It spazzes every show. I DVR'd ESPN2 and watched the races later Sunday so I didn't have to deal with our spastic cable. Laura has called numerous times. It supposedly is the "supply line" that feeds our neighborhood that is bad. Good thing we don't rely on the TV for entertainment.
My cable is fine. If you call the hour a week that I get to watch TV "fine". But I really have it for the internet and phone service.
Green Bay must just be better
Tater,
Depending on your brand of converter, there should be menu settings. I can set my box to never turn off. Also I have a setting where you can check your signal strength, then work on your attenna for maximum strength.
My indoor rabbit ears pretty much suck but I have 20 more channels than I use to have. Most of those 20 are useless though.
Main TV's are direct, ADDICTED to Speed channel
Just this weekend at the cabin I experienced how "wonderful" digital tv is. Next time I go up I'm not even turning the tv on. At home I have Dish Network and I love the fact that I can record, pause and rewind tv shows, but if the wife said no more, I wouldn't cry (as long as we would keep the internet).
Sam
We lost channel 11 too and 26 is poor on windy days . I ordred this anntena on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180354812190&ssPageName=MERC_VIC_RSCCK_Pr4_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT&refitem=180373750549&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=StoreCatToStoreCat&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget&_trksid=p284.m183&_trkparms=algo%3DDR%26its%3DS%252BI%252BSS%26itu%3DISS%252BUCI%252BSI%26otn%3D4
My winning bid was 51 bucks ,should be here the end of the week. We have direct tv for all the other shows .
Jay
I used to fix TVs, more to the point, I had a digital tuner available to play with at home for years and the experience of the installers to draw on.
The key to digital TV service is not only signal quantity, but signal quality . Digital TV is a stream of data, and there is no error correction like on a computer, that's up to be box to try and figure out. What passed for a watchable analog signal, some snow, occasional ghosts, is no longer going to pass muster. The signal meter on your converter box shows the signal quality, the lower it goes, the more likely the sound will drop out or the pix will block. If it gets poor enough, you won't get anything.
My experience with rabbit ears is poor. When they dropped analog service, they moved all the TV stations in the UHF range, so the long antennas just don't cut it. Inside loops are iffy also.
My best efforts so far have been with the UHF portion of a TV "beam" type antenna mounted in the attic and pointed towards the cluster of stations down the road some 8 miles away. That has got me a solid signal on most channels around here, except one which is off to one side of the antenna.
Depending on where one's cabin is, you may need to drop some reasonable coin on a good antenna and a pole or tower to get it up off the ground apeice.
-Ron
Ron,
So here is another scenario. For my camper I use a 12VDC power assist antenna which used to get about 4 to 6 channels in the Argonne area. Last weekend with a converter I got 2. Is this also obsolete technology with the digital signal?
At the mole lake we got 20 channels with old rv anntena and a converter box , better than last year .
dunks: Ron, So here is another scenario. For my camper I use a 12VDC power assist antenna which used to get about 4 to 6 channels in the Argonne area. Last weekend with a converter I got 2. Is this also obsolete technology with the digital signal?
Basics of digital are: 1) Channels are now UHF (14 though 80), not VHF (2-13), so an antenna set up for VHF, won't work well. 2) If the analog UHF signals were weak (snowy) or multipathed (ghosts), you won't get much on digital.
Argonne looks to be fairly remote. We had folks in Sun Prairie who had to have directional antennas to recieve Madison stations a few years ago. To get the best signal, you may need to point your antenna at the station. If you are running an omni-directional antenna, it may not suit your needs anymore.
For those in fringe areas, digital TV is going to suck. As a kid, I remember watching Milwaukee stations at my Grans up near Columbus. You could see the pix and had good sound, though it was snowy. Those days are history. For those in metro areas, it will mean a bounty of new stations to watch. Our selection in Madison has trippled over the old setup mainly because those same analog stations could broadcast 2 to 4 stations on the same channel as the old setup. For example Channels 3-1 and 3-2 actually both occupy Channel 50 on the UHF dial.
New UFO looking outdoor anntena did not help . It's going back , I got the best outdoor anntena amp that radio shack sells and got all channels again , with my old uhf/ vhf anntena .
Jay,
we'll have to share info on the RV anntenas next time up at Mole Lake.