Back to the days of big ol antenni on rooftops now :O

We just got digital and, contrary to what I expected, I love it! PBS is now THREE PBSes! I get a CW on my ABC feed's second digital station! my NBC runs an all-weather, all-the-time on its second digital station! It's like everything I would get cable for except the Discovery Channel suits of channels.

Plus, our reception is a billion times better with digital ... using our crappy old rabbit ears which we had retracted all the way and stood straight up while moving TVs around. They're still standing like that, getting great reception. We'll probably get a nicer antenna, both because the existing one is broken and because FOX comes and goes, especially when there's weather. But it's great!

@Eyebrows McGee: I thought rabbit ears were strictly VHF antennas. You can get UHF staions with them, too?

I have the digital cliff, annoying. (Or is it I'm IN the digital cliff?)

Also, I don't have wide screen, yet the stations assume everyone does. So now there's a black frame around the picture, turning my 19 inch into a 15 inch tv. Some stations are good about it and give you a choice (KDOC), while others leave the frame (FOX).

We have a huge problem with the whole "pixelated picture" thing. We're about 30 miles west of Philadelphia on the second floor of a two-story apartment building. Tons of digital TV stations with those fancy little sub-channels. No mountains or tall trees nearby. Somehow, we have awful reception. Despite buying a Fancy Super Premium Antenna, the pixelation problem is huge. Unfortunately, we can't attach anything, including antennae, to our roof.

I would GREATLY prefer a half-fuzzy analog channel to a pixelated digital signal that blips in & out of audio. At least you can WATCH an analog broadcast that way. I feel totally out of luck.

Oh, and if it's of any help to anyone, our $2 antenna (circa '89) that I picked up at a flea market works JUST THE SAME as the fancypants one we bought at Radio Shack.

Any recommendations on the "best" converter? Radio Shack, Insignia...? Some brands are available on-line only but I'm looking for to buy from a bricks-and-mortar.

@Eyebrows McGee: I'm thinking I must live near a digital cliff. I went from fuzzy but consistent reception on most stations, to fantastically clear reception on more stations ... except when they suddenly disappear. I don't watch enough television to care that much, but objectively, I'm not sure which is more annoying - fuzzy but consistent, or all-or-nothing reception.

@Hyman Decent: Um ... I have no idea. All our local stations are UHF (19 and higher), but maybe it's a special antenna? It has a clicky dial in the middle in addition to the loop and two sticks. The dial's broken, tho.

In college I was in an all-UHF town too, and I know I just had random rabbit ears then. In fact, I think I just had one ear because I broke the other. :P

(A glance at wikipedia says they're not great at picking up UHF and the loop and dial help improve that problem, but they can apparently pick up UHF)

Anyone willing to recommend an antenna or a website that reviews them?

Sure. [www.antennasdirect.com]

Get the DB-8

@summerbee: Have you tried a signal booster?

I have not had firsthand experience with DTV and them, but I have heard they help with picture problems sometimes...

@silver-bolt: Yep, and HOA nannies across the country will be suffering seizures when they find their precious rules are subject to FCC preemption in most cases --
[www.fcc.gov]

On one hand I love the box for giving me crazy good reception. On the other hand, I can't record one channel and watch another at the same time without another box... :(

I'm just aggravated that the stupid coupons expire in the first place. I signed up for mine, got the coupons and then was waiting till there was a decent "sale" on them to purchase. Of course, all the sales happened well past the "expiration date".

Oh well, when tv goes black, it'll just force me to fix my extra pc to stream hulu...

@MrsLopsided: The one I bought, the "Insignia" branded ones sold at Best Buy (that's their in-house brand) is pretty good actually.

Rumor has it that the Insignia brand is made for Best Buy by LG, and the LG converters have gotten pretty good reviews also.

I think I paid $60 for one, coupon covered $40 of that.

My personal mantra in this switchover is to make everyone aware that if you're seeing your local digital station(s) on UHF now, that's not an ironclad guarantee that it's staying there. Some stations currently putting up their digital station on UHF will go back to their original VHF channel assignment after 2/17/09, so don't chuck your old rooftop VHF antenna yet in favor of a shiny new UHF-only model, thinking you don't need VHF next year.

Actually, there will be digital stations on all of the VHF channels from 2-13, somewhere in the US. In Boston for example, 7-NBC will move from UHF back to VHF 7 after the cutover. New Hampshire channels 9 and 11 are moving back to VHF as well. So if you have an antenna on your roof, you may need one that pulls in VHF as well as UHF depending on your local market. Reason for them moving back to VHF? Primarily, it's that in most locales, VHF can go the same distance as UHF but on far less transmitter power, and therefore huge electricity cost savings to the station.

Also if you scan for digital channels now and get the box set up, you may need to re-scan after 2/17/09 because a few of the UHF channels will move around within the UHF band also. Depends on your location.

Reminder to all: It is against Federal law to not allow you from installing a satellite tv antenna. No landlord, apartment owner, or power-drunk homeowners association may legally say no. Contact the FCC if you are denied permission.

we've had nothing but problems with the switch to dtv so far, despite buying fancy equipment, adding a rooftop antenna, and doing the antenna alignment jig on an almost nightly basis. A lot people in the rural areas around here don't have a cable or satellite option, and I imagine there are going to be some big time complaints when our local stations flip the digital switch tomorrow (2 months early).

@Angryrider:
It depends on how much you want to spend and how good you are at hooking things up. We have a DVD recorder/DVR that has a digital tuner in it, so we didn't need a converter box - but that limited us to recording the same channel we were watching. So we bought a converter box and a splitter for the antenna at Radio Shack. It means that we have to switch the TV to "Line In" to switch over to watching the channels through the converter box, but it works.

@Eyebrows McGee: The loop acts as a low-fi UHF receiver. Rabbit ears do too, but they are far worse, and much more susceptible to disruption, as they're meant for VHF. There are lots of better antennas, ranging from super-expensive to homemade, but just about any planar range of metal will do if you can get a clear signal.

We pick up digital just fine with a pair of those cheapo telescoping sticks, but every time a train comes by, the signal goes out. The train is pretty close to our apartment, but down in a creek valley, so there's no line-of-sight issues; it's just murder on the rabbit ears.

@Haroludo: Check this out. I'm not recommending making your own, but this'll give you an idea of how advanced and expensive an antenna you'd need.

@ideagirl: "we've had nothing but problems with the switch to dtv so far"

Ditto here. I have this aversion to subscribing to paid media in any form (I don't mind BUYING media, I just can't cope with recurring billing for any kind of media).

We don't own a TV, but I do have a TV tuner card for the computer, and about two times a year there's something on over-the-air TV I want to watch. This year it was the Olympics. Anyway, I got this massive new antenna, fancy feedline, a really tall antenna mast, a rotator and expected to enjoy the Olympics is clear, clean digital wonderment. Instead, I was able to get a local jeesus channel in crystal-clear dtv, a local tv station that apparently ran reruns of shows from the 80's almost 24/7 in DTV...and that was it. No major networks and no NBC.

But in Analog, I was still able to get fair to good pictures on NBC, and so we could see the live Olympics, but come Feb 17th....that' the end of over the air for us I guess...oh well. I will sort of miss it a little, but with Netflix & Hulu and the rest, I guess I get all my tv programming I need via the Internet now anyway. Unless a tree knocks out the phone lines. Then I'm on 3G via Verizon, which works pretty OK for Netflix and even some of the live news stations like CNN.

I'm a bit aggravated that people have to pay for converter boxes in the first place. The FCC is forcing this new change on what used to be free stations. Yeah, the $40 coupon is great, but there's still 20 bucks per set out of someone's pocket. Namely, my elderly parents.

Okay, I'm usually pretty tech savvy, but I keep seeing these Comcast ads that say if you have Comcast, you don't have to worry about it. But that's only if you have a cable box, right? My old tube tv in the bedroom is plugged straight in to the coax.

As far as I know, Comcast is still going to be offering analog cable just the same as they always have. The government mandate is to stop analog broadcast, but analog cable will still be fine.

@robotrousers: If you have cable, youre ok. The change only matters if you are getting free stations via an antenna.

@ceejeemcbeegee:
You can find converters for $40.00
Dish, for one, has them at that price.

If you are plugged straight into the cable companys coax you will be O.K.

@summerbee: are you sure you can't attach an antenna to the roof? is it a local regulation thing? because if it is, as jeffbone pointed out above: [www.fcc.gov]

In analog we get like 8 American channels and 6 Mexican channels.

In digital we get 1 American channel (which goes out every time a plane takes off or when the weather is bad) and the 6 Mexican channels.

Looks like my Spanish is going to improve.

@ceejeemcbeegee: tiger direct has one for $40.01 plus shipping but it got mediocre reviews

Some fun spelling facts, for anyone like me who is entertained by such things:

The plural of antenna depends on context. In England, it's always antennae. In the USA, if you are talking about insect feelers, those are also antennae, but if you mean electromagnetic transducers, the down-to-earth American engineers just call them antennas.

Not trying to be pedantic, I just think orthography is interesting. :-)

@j-o-h-n:
@catastrophegirl:

Thanks!

cynical_bastard is right, you might try a "signal booster," AKA a preamplifier, but be sure you save the receipt, because it might not be what you need. Whether it works or not depends on several hard-to predict variables. But it might be just the ticket.

Since the frequencies are the same for DTV, you don't have to get a newly-designed preamp; the kind they've been selling for years should work OK. (Caveat: I haven't tried this myself though. Like I said, save your receipt.)

Metaphorically, if you are close to the edge of the signal "cliff," the preamp can give you a small push closer to safety, which maybe is just what you need.

@robotrousers, xtc46, terryindtw: Analog-only TV sets with built-in cable tuners can only display analog cable channels without a cable box. There was an editorial in the dead tree edition of Consumer Reports earlier this year (I can't find it on their Web site) decrying the fact that some cable systems are making more and more of their basic offerings digital, thereby forcing their customers who currently don't rent a cable box to do so.

Check out this blog entry that Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, posted on its Web site yesterday. In particular, note this:

The cable industry plan also [calls?] for NCTA members to offer analog-only subscribers a free set-top box or adapter to view analog channels that have been moved to digital. The device is free for one year for analog-only consumers who request one by June 30th.

@robotrousers, xtc46: See my reply posted in the discussion immediately below this one.

@Hyman Decent:

Analog-only TV sets with built-in cable tuners can only display analog cable channels without a cable box.

i just think about my grandma who only watches jeopardy and wheel of fortune...and will probably call us when the 'tv has been on the fritz for a couple days now!'

@MrsLopsided: ConsumerReports.org has some ratings of some of the various models of converter boxes.

@Hyman Decent:

See my reply posted in the discussion immediately below this one.

@chrisjames: Thanks for the link. I wouldn't do things exactly as he did, but you can't argue with success. With antennas, size definitely matters, as does metal thickness; whereas the EM waves don't care how ghetto your antenna looks. So for those with a DIY streak, Google is totally there for you (e.g., this cantenna.)

@LandruBek: You may find this interesting. The high school (junior and senior together) I attended was all-girls until the first boys were admitted in the fall of 1974. (Those boys who stayed till the end graduated in 1980.) We don't have an alumni association, we have an alumnae/i association.

no.no.notorious makes a good point... check with your older friends and family to make sure they're all prepared too, since they may just ignore it if they don't understand the PSAs, or think it doesn't apply to them.

Also, people need to keep in mind that in a most markets, when the stations do the actual cutover, most stations will be changing what channel their digital signal is on. (Some are transmitting a digital signal on a temporary 2nd channel, but the receiver shows you the 'virtual' channel number). But when they make the ultimate switch, your receiver will need to re-scan to learn all the channel locations. In our market, 3 of the 4 local stations will be moving their digital signals to where their analog ones are now.

Wow, I had no idea that so many people in the US actually used antennas. I know cable is expensive, but jeez.

@robotrousers: Here's the deal with Comcast. Comcast has not been very straight-forward in explaining the situation.

Once February rolls around, if you have cable through Comcast, you will be fine. You do NOT need a cable box. However, you may have noticed that some basic cable channels are already gone (4 in total). These have transitioned to digital.

Within the next few years, things will change. I spoke to someone at Comcast who indicated that in 2012 (tentative), Comcast will no longer offer basic cable. So, at this point, you will need a cable box on each TV that does not already have a digital tuner.

Very simply, basic cable (channels up to 99) will no longer be available at some point, because Comcast will only offer digital service in the future and old, analog TVs will no longer work. You should also know that if you have only basic cable with Comcast right now, you are eligible for a free converter box from Comcast to continue receiving the four channels that you lost.

I am some what of an expert on this so here are a few suggestions. 1 get a good antenna. 2 get a good converter(the more expensive units tend to have more signal gain so they can get stations from father away. 3 if you are not receiving the same mount of stations on digital as u did on analog you may get them later because some stations have not yet turned on their digital transmitter. I'm not sure but there are also rumors that some stations will increase their transmission power after the switch.

We only get one channel where we are. It's Canadian, out of Victoria, BC. We don't watch a lot of television, but we do catch Punjab Journal now and then. Are the Canadians going digital too?

(Our satellite internet provider also sells television service, but we aren't sure if they offer CBC. Yes, I now that there is a lot of other programming, but all the good stuff comes out on DVD anyway.)

I am so sick of hearing about this crap.

@ceejeemcbeegee: I'm a bit aggravated that people have to pay for converter boxes in the first place.

I'm curious as to who would would get to produce them for free.

@tgpt: Visit wikipedia to confirm what channel the digital signals are on (it will be a different usually UHF channel number). If you don't have an amplifier get one. Visit antennaweb.org and find out what direction the signals are coming from and test your antenna out a window on that side of the house. Check signal strength on the converter box, if there's anything at all but just not enough to watch you may just need a better antenna. Antennasdirect looks like they have innovative new stuff.

If you mean mexican as in really from mexico, it could be your english channels are actually being broadcast from mexico (call letters start with X). Mexico will do a much slower switch to digital.