I live 60 miles southwest of St. Louis, I'm using the antenna with amp that
has been on my 40 ft pole for some ten years. Hooked up the new set, and it
gets all the dtv channels including the low power/low budget farthest away
East St. Louis ch 46. Go figure!
--
Jim Padgett
St. Clair, MO.


Larry Bud wrote in message
om...
lame at best and driven by government requirements that all stations
must be broadcasting HDTV in the next few years.

Why don't you people become educated? The government requirements are
for DIGITAL TV, not HDTV. Get your facts straight.

For the very luck few inside a city with all of the HDTV OTA
broadcasting
from the same location/direction, at higher power, it's free and nice.
For all the rest of us we can't get a reliable signal for all the
stations even with a good antenna, adjusted just so, with a $300 OTV
decoder.

Then I guess you're just **** out of luck. How about moving out of
the boonies and into civilization?

"Chet Hayes" wrote in message
om...
Bulk Daddy wrote in message
. 6...
"Corey" wrote in
m:



Corey Says-

The Broadcasters in your area suck. I get HD just fine. If you are
able to get your fuzzy ghost plagued analogue you should be able to
get a flawless digital signal. Unless broadcasters in your area aren't
interested in progress, or don't know their heads from a hole in the
ground. They have 2 or so more years to get their act together, or
someone else will. end.



I agree. Someone has done do. The sat and cable providers. Keep in mind
that local providers make most of their mula from ads. A chunk of them
would drop their analog OTA except they are required to do it. When
(hmmm) more stations go HDTV, you and others will buy in because you get
more choice/service. Will you stick to OTA for your nice HDTV set as
your
only choice when you can get 20+ channels in HDTV via sat or cable? OTA
is a stop gap for a few until this happens. Local broadcasters know
this.
Only in the center of major cities does it pay for them to do good OTA.
I
really am glad your one of the few that gets good OTA from all of your
local broadcasters.
BTW: In no way does reception of the analogue signal mean that a person
can get a flawless digital signal.

Corey Says-

Maybe but my analogue is substandard and my digital is excellent. end.



I agree that for many people the preferred solution is cable. I don't
agree that sat without OTA is a solution at all. The sats simply do
not have the bandwidth to carry all, or even most of the HDTV locals.
For the indefinite future, sat will provide the traditional cable
channels, with OTA used for the locals. The only thing that can
change that is either newer technology or more sats, neither of which
is on the horizon.

Corey Says-

I like satellite better than cable. It is less expensive. Cable has to much
noise. Cable is different from one location to another. The HD package I
have with Directv (about 4 channels) is worth it. I can also get HD on 1
HBO and 1 Showtime channel.

The only good thing about cable is the fact that you can run it to every
room in the house. And if your really sick the toilet room. end.

In article ,
Bob Miller wrote:

Here in NYC Mark Schubin has a standing invitation to all to come to his
apartment where he gets good NTSC signals from 7 or 9 stations using a
bow tie antenna on top of his TV set. He gets two DTV stations one with
the antenna laying on the floor in a particular position and another
station with the antenna on a bookcase near the ceiling. This was before
9/11.

How can this have any current relevance? The transmition towers for all
the DTV stations were being deployed on the twin towers and the entire
enterprise was set back for years which has to be the least significant
outcome of that event. Two years ago the situation here in the Twin
Cities was far less favorable. Now there are ten digital stations on the
air. Five carry HD content and it appears that three more will sometime
in the next year. I live in a suburb and can receive all of it with an
antenna in my attic. I haven't gone in to details and it isn't all
perfect but the detractors don't have a leg to stand on based on this
admittedly anecdotal evidence.

Don't be too casual about the antenna. I couldn't bring myself to put
one on the roof for asthetic reasons plus I was fairly certain my wife
wouldn't put up with it. But that attic antenna was carefully aimed and
tweaked to get the best signal. One evening of tedious work and now I
can watch any of ten digital stations and it does a good job for the
NTSC stations also.

I think it is worth suggesting that in some locations there might be
some rather diffident efforts being made to justify those generous
licenses that have been granted. Get on the phone, write them letters
and e-mail. Maybe it's even worth a call or message to the FCC. This
stuff works and it isn't just better than the NTSC signals, the
resolution of the HD programs blows away what you can get with DVD's and
it's free!

Chet Hayes wrote:

I think that's being a bit naive. Do you really believe OTA is the
solution? Most of America is receiving their current signal via cable
not OTA. To expect people to start putting up antennas now to receive
digital doesn't make any sense to me.

According to studies frequently cited here something on the order of 40%
of all TVs in the US are OTA only.

Matthew

--
http://www.mlmartin.com/bbq/

Thermodynamics For Dummies: You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't get out of the game.

Chet Hayes wrote:

Even then, it only gives you the 4
major networks, plus some random PBS. Cable can provide all that plus
the 100 other channels that people are watching. I see cable as the
major delivery vehicle, with OTA being used by sat customers for the
locals.

In this area the cable company recommends OTA for HDTV. They provide no
HDTV whatsoever and no plans in the foreseeable future. If your
objective is for HDTV and the cable company does not provide HDTV then
the number of cable viewers is irrelevant. The area is great for OTA
reception and is easy to receive all the major networks plus several
minor ones; not a surprise that the cable company is reluctant to add
HDTV to their offering. Besides I can get two of each network affiliate.
The news programming is unique and many times sports programming. When
its game time, the same network may be offering different games form
each affiliate.

"Matthew L. Martin" wrote in message ws.com...
Chet Hayes wrote:

I think that's being a bit naive. Do you really believe OTA is the
solution? Most of America is receiving their current signal via cable
not OTA. To expect people to start putting up antennas now to receive
digital doesn't make any sense to me.

According to studies frequently cited here something on the order of 40%
of all TVs in the US are OTA only.

Matthew


I'd love to see a link to those studies. I don't know a single family
that doesn't have either cable or sat, do you? So where are these
40%? They must be counting the junk TV's in the basement.

I see lots of reference to numbers in the range of these from JD
Powers:

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_p...066711,00.html

where cable has 60% market share, sat 17%. I would think that would
leave OTA at about 23%, which sounds reasonable.

And whatever the OTA only market share is, it will only decrease over
time. On consumers wish list, clearly more channels than offered by
OTA is a top priority.

"Matthew L. Martin" wrote in
s.com:


According to studies frequently cited here something on the order of
40%
of all TVs in the US are OTA only.

Matthew

Ah Matthew, you are always entertaining by saying something like studies
say...
Then saying to look it up for ourselves.
OK, I looked it up. Here are a couple links:

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1544&sequence=4
Says that in 1998(!) that 67% of households had cable TV service.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/09...07tvdeth.shtml
Says that today 86% of Americans have cable or sat.

According to studies frequently discussed here, Matthew makes up 73% of
the figures he uses ;-)

On 12 Sep 2003 14:15:15 -0700, (Chet Hayes)
wrote:

"Matthew L. Martin" wrote in message ws.com...
Chet Hayes wrote:

I think that's being a bit naive. Do you really believe OTA is the
solution? Most of America is receiving their current signal via cable
not OTA. To expect people to start putting up antennas now to receive
digital doesn't make any sense to me.

According to studies frequently cited here something on the order of 40%
of all TVs in the US are OTA only.

Matthew


I'd love to see a link to those studies. I don't know a single family
that doesn't have either cable or sat, do you? So where are these
40%? They must be counting the junk TV's in the basement.


I don't have the links but there was an article in our local paper a
couple of months ago that said that roughly 60% of the houses passed
with cable actually subscribe. I thought as you that it would be more
than that.
Thumper
I see lots of reference to numbers in the range of these from JD
Powers:

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_p...066711,00.html

where cable has 60% market share, sat 17%. I would think that would
leave OTA at about 23%, which sounds reasonable.

And whatever the OTA only market share is, it will only decrease over
time. On consumers wish list, clearly more channels than offered by
OTA is a top priority.

Bulk Daddy ) wrote in alt.tv.tech.hdtv:
"Matthew L. Martin" wrote in
s.com:


According to studies frequently cited here something on the order of
40%
of all TVs in the US are OTA only.

OK, I looked it up. Here are a couple links:

Meaningless links for the stat that is being talked about.

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1544&sequence=4
Says that in 1998(!) that 67% of households had cable TV service.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/09...07tvdeth.shtml
Says that today 86% of Americans have cable or sat.

Right, and before I got my DirecTiVo, I had satellite, but one of my two
TVs had OTA antenna as its only input. This is the stat that is important...
not how many houses have cable, but how many TVs have OTA as their input.

Likewise, before I could easily record locals off satellite (again,
DirecTiVo), I had 3 VCRs which had only OTA for input. Sure, they fed
a TV that had satellite as one of its inputs, but at any given moment, it
was far more likely that I was watching something recorded from OTA than
live from satellite. DirecTiVo has changed that, but then recording HD on
my PC from OTA has changed it back a lot.

--
Jeff Rife |
301-916-8131 | http://www.nabs.net/Cartoons/OverThe...eriHatcher.gif

Gary H wrote:

With COFDM I can get the reception from downtown Manhattan from a
transmitter at 400 ft. at 100 Watts of power NON line of sight. And I
can get it with a three inch antenna while driving at 70 miles an hour
on the FDR.


Quite a difference.


Well with shortwave I can pick up a signal from across the world... but like
your COFDM it doesnt do me any good because it isn't HDTV.


How do you know if it is HD or not? It technically could be.