how are you getting more stations without cable?
“how are you getting more stations without cable?”
I noticed that also when I hooked my digital TV up to a digital antenna. With digital over the air, each signal can carry multiple stations.
The CBS affiliate in may area is channel 4, but over digital there is 4-1, 4-2, 4-3, & 4-4. Four channels comming over a single signal. The religious broad casting station was sending out 6 channels over a single signal.
So, lets say there are 12 channel/signals in your area.
12 signals x 6 channels per signal = 72 channels!
I think this will be the eventual end of cable/satellite service. The marginal cost to add an extra channel to an existing signal is probably close to zero. Eventualy there will be so many free, over the air channels available that people will ask “why am I paying $50 a month for cable?”
Well, factoring in all the HD and standard digital stations, and analog, it really is more.
Locally, the normal PBS station is only one station, for instance. With digital channels, our local PBS has four stations, one that is a HD channel, three that are standard digital channels. One of these standard channels is the same content that the HD PBS channel has, but the other two are completely different content. We now get a PBS cooking show, McLaughlin Group, and Nova simultaneously via these four channel channels from what was one channel before. In addition, we still get the analog PBS, which is the same content as the HD and one of the standard digital channels, so we actually have 5 PBS channels for one network where before there was only 1, period.
Also, our local CBS station has one of these extra subchannels that is broadcasting 24-hour weather information.
This is an example of what is there when you hook up an antenna and have a digital converter box to help!