Now that people are using their discount cards to get digital tv converter boxes, they are discovering that they need to upgrade their antennas too. Of course, they don't have discount cards to cover antenna upgrades. The antenna issue mainly effects people that are over 50 miles away from a transmitter or people that use a "rabbit ear" antenna, like the one shown here. Digital tv signals are broadcast over the UHF band and are highly directional. With the old analog signal you would sometimes get poor reception, but at least you could see a picture and hear the audio. With digital it's either all or nothing. I think this is going to disappoint a lot of people who didn't realize that they would have to upgrade their antenna too. I haven't heard any complaints about it yet, but I suspect that people in rural areas, who don't have satellite receivers, are quietly looking for ways to upgrade their antennas.
The distance from my dad's cabin to the nearest big city is right on the edge of the 50-60 mile range of most antennas. The antenna looks like the photo shown here and is supposed to have a 60 mile UHF range. It's on a pole about 20 feet high with a powered antenna booster on the line just before the converter box. Sometimes we can get 4 or 5 digital stations, but at certain times the signal will go out. Rescanning on the converter box will find no signals. This could be caused by weather conditions or power fluctuations in the digital signal. But in order to fix the problem we have two choices, either mount the antenna higher, or get a better antenna. I did find a
cool looking antenna for $109 that claims to have a 70 mile range. In addition, I think we will need to put
a rotor on the antenna. That's at least $169 that we didn't expect to spend!
Now that people are using their discount cards to get digital tv converter boxes, they are discovering that they need to upgrade their antennas too. Of course, they don't have discount cards to cover antenna upgrades. The antenna issue mainly effects people that are over 50 miles away from a transmitter or people that use a "rabbit ear" antenna, like the one shown here. Digital tv signals are broadcast over the UHF band and are highly directional. With the old analog signal you would sometimes get poor reception, but at least you could see a picture and hear the audio. With digital it's either all or nothing. I think this is going to disappoint a lot of people who didn't realize that they would have to upgrade their antenna too. I haven't heard any complaints about it yet, but I suspect that people in rural areas, who don't have satellite receivers, are quietly looking for ways to upgrade their antennas.
The distance from my dad's cabin to the nearest big city is right on the edge of the 50-60 mile range of most antennas. The antenna looks like the photo shown here and is supposed to have a 60 mile UHF range. It's on a pole about 20 feet high with a powered antenna booster on the line just before the converter box. Sometimes we can get 4 or 5 digital stations, but at certain times the signal will go out. Rescanning on the converter box will find no signals. This could be caused by weather conditions or power fluctuations in the digital signal. But in order to fix the problem we have two choices, either mount the antenna higher, or get a better antenna. I did find a cool looking antenna for $109 that claims to have a 70 mile range. In addition, I think we will need to put a rotor on the antenna. That's at least $169 that we didn't expect to spend!
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