Posted on 04/26/2009 5:24:48 AM PDT by Las Vegas Dave
The lowly TV antenna is making a comeback, and bringing free TV along with it.
Sales of over-the-air TV antennas jumped last year thanks to the digital TV transition, as users upgrade their gear for better reception.
At the same time, some consumers looking to save money in today's economy are dumping cable and satellite pay TV services in favor of free broadcast television.
Makers of antennas, as well as local broadcasters, hope to drive more viewers to free television by touting its merits.
Besides being free, broadcast television offers the best high-definition picture quality, because it's uncompressed. Cable and satellite operators compress their HD channels in order to squeeze in more channels on their bandwidth, which degrades their quality.
Plus, most local broadcasters are now multicasting, with each providing up to six extra subchannels for viewers to enjoy.
Even if they can't persuade pay TV customers to switch to broadcast-only, antenna makers and broadcasters hope to get them to at least use antennas on secondary televisions in the home. Once households experience free TV, they might be willing to make the switch at some point, people in the industry say.
"We're seeing a huge uptick" in TV antenna sales, said Lou Lenzi, senior vice president of product management for Audiovox 's (VOXX) antenna manufacturing unit. "Some of our customers are reporting anywhere from a 50% to 100% increase in sales over the past 12 months."
< snip >
"A lot of people are rethinking spending $50 to $100 a month on pay TV," said Grant Whipple, national sales manager for antenna manufacturer Winegard, of Burlington, Iowa. "People are talking about not going out to eat or cutting out this or that, but I can save a lot of people well over $1,000 a year by putting up an antenna."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
The earlier poster is correct. You can receive an analog signal MUCH farther away than you can a digital signal. The Digital signal fidelity has to be MUCH higher for it to even decode a picture, while the analog signal will show up as “something” where the human eye does the decoding. You may see lots of hash, but you’ll be able to perceive the picture’s content.
Further, the frequencies being used by the HDTV signals are higher, so they don’t go through objects as well as the lower frequencies.
The difference is compensated for by using hugely more power for DTV transmissions at higher frequencies to cover the same areas.
In response to other posters - a directional antenna is always going to give better performance than an omni-directional antenna IF it is pointed in the correct direction. Essentially, a directional antenna is operating like one of these amplifiers you have heard about. Now - imagine what happens when you add an amplifier onto it! The only problem is you have to have rotor on it in some locations that have multiple broadcast sites. So add the rotor!
Finally, in case you folks didn’t know. If you own your property you are allowed to put up a TV antenna up to 12 feet above your roof line. This is true even if you have CC&Rs in the housing development that says “no antennas.” There is a Federal pre-emption of ALL existing CC&Rs and city ordinances allowing this issued by the FCC back in the 90’s to allow dish antennas. It also applies to over-the-air TV transmissions. For Town-houses, you can put the antenna on anything that isn’t a common wall (i.e. community property.)
The signal is not dependent upon content, but upon frequency.
The digital signal will travel at the same rate as the analog signal because the ‘carrier frequency’ remains the same.
The big difference between analog or an ‘FM’ frequency and a ‘digital’ one is that digital content uses a ‘checksum’ in the decoder to reassemble the signal for viewing.
Digital is ‘error prone’, just like your computer.
Any data loss shows up in the signal as a ‘block’ or drop out in the screen.
Trees, buildings and hill sides would have no more effect on digital then it does on FM signals.
Carriers ‘bounce’ and it is possible to set up a ‘passive repeater’ (stand alone antenna) on a hill side to increase your chances of getting the signal to your receiver.
“A lot of people are rethinking spending $50 to $100 a month on pay TV,”
We don’t have cable because it’s foolish to spend $80 a month just for a couple channels out of a package. The rest of the package channels are sewage... like the “gay” channel, and channels with filthy programming, and we don’t want to fund that sort of garbage nor allow it into our home.
I’d go back to cable if we could just subscribe to the channels we want.
A la carte...a great idea IMHO.
My over-the-air HDTV is excellent in the Chicago area. We enjoy all the extra channels and the quality is now great. I have no need to pay fees to anyone.
The one issue I had was the ability to record shows with the analog VCR obsolete. We got a DVRPal and now we can record all the digital and HD we want.
“The one issue I had was the ability to record shows with the analog VCR obsolete. \”
Almost all HDTV’s have audio and video inputs on the back of the set (rca jacks) to hook up analog VCR’s and DVD players.
Check yours. I’m sure you can use the old VCR with no problem.
I do.
I should add they have audio and video ‘outputs’ as well.
Does anyone remember “ON TV” from the late seventies, they would show premium movies over a UHF signal, and you had to purchase a descrambler to get the signal. But you could still get the sound. I remember they would show soft core porn late at night, and you could tune in and hear the action, plus every once in awhile the picture would “straighten out” just enough that you could see clearly what was going on.
Right Bigh4u2. I do have both my VCR and DVD attached into the HDTV to watch things previously recorded. The issue is the ability to record the new over-the-air digital and HD digital transmissions. The VCR could only records analog signals so any recording is cumbersome and very limited. I got the new DVRPal (a TIVO-like DVR device with no subscription fees) to do that.
The sale of descramblers and schematics to make your own was probably what killed the ONTV. I recall places would sell boxes of parts to built one to get around the possible legal issues of selling a complete descrambler box.
“The VCR could only records analog signals so any recording is cumbersome and very limited.”
Shouldn’t be.
The output signal on the back of your set (from the rca jacks) is ‘analog’.
Designed in backward compatibility.
Mine works that way. I can record anything I want from the TV outputs.
Of course, your set may be different.
Look in the manual, it might give you some insight on whether it’s compatible or not.
What I mean:
Your away for the a couple days and want to record the NFL game Sunday, the Unit Sunday night and 24 on Monday. I could not figure out how to do that with an analog VCR without multiple VCRs and D to A conversion devices.
Ok.. I gotcha now.
Yeah. Without the VCR’s built in ‘tuner’ receiving digital, it would be harder to do.
Of course you could always get a converter box and hook it to your VCR.
Does the same thing as using it with an ‘analog’ t.v.
Probably cheaper to buy the Digital box anyway.
Or a new digital VCR.
thanks for the ping
Next best thing to a'la carte television I could possibly think of, fellas. A small prayer, answered.
Y'know the lice at MSNBC-CNN et al had best be paying attention, that's all I can say. ;^)
When stations did trial runs on the digital broadcasts, some became unwatchable. Whereas some bad reception in analog can cause poorer picture, with digital, there were blockouts and freezes that disrupted actual content in a more meaningful way. For example, instead of some noise on the screen, there would be, “The White House is announcing that [. . . . .] would be an important development in [. . . . .] said.”
We are going to be doing this. Satellite and cable have become stupid expensive and we’re paying for about 1/3 infomercials as channels and nealy half of all broadcast time on every channel are commercials. Why am I paying to watch commercials? Satellite and cable ought to be free with this heavy load of commercials.
This is also why I haven’t renewed the Sirius radio subscription: Mostly commercials and they are primarily porno commcericals, from penis size and longevity to meeting new “singles”. Forget it. If I want to get those commercials I would subscribe to Penthouse.
Over the air HD provides free access to the majority of programming. I suspect many other current cable channels will be providing metro area broadcasts as this picks up.
“But can you get Fox News?”
Why would people want to? Between the hours on end “missing white chick channel”, Shep’s homo outbursts, O’Reilly’s obnoxious batterings, the yuppie bar room financials, and being last to show any breaking news, there isn’t much left. Cavuto is a good show and Megyn is an entertaining host, but that isn’t much of a reason to pay. If Fox wants metro viewers they, too, can provide over the air broadcasts.
“For example, instead of some noise on the screen, there would be, “The White House is announcing that [. . . . .] would be an important development in [. . . . .] said.””
The initial decoder boxes had a hard time discriminating between the different signals.
Like any other ‘new’ technology, they were prone to bugs in the system.
Digital to Analog (DAC) conversion relies on a strong signal carrier. Much like FM. If you don’t have a strong carrier then ‘dropouts’ occur in the content and the ‘Doppler effect’ takes over which means the strongest signal either on or near the intended frequency takes over.
On the other hand FM or digital (think Packet Radio as in HAM RADIO) can usually get the content through with a weaker signal than AM or Amplitude Modulation.
There have been many times when I was operating on certain HAM bands that the AM signal was almost too weak to read (hear) and switching to FM cleared it right up.
Also,they had to overcome the ‘speed’ of the digital signal.
Packet Radio was generally at 300 baud (or slower0 originally and it took awhile to bring it up to 1200 baud or faster.
Haven’t been in Packet in quite a while, so don’t know what speed they are currently operating at but they did have some success using 56k Baud through internet ‘hubs’.
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