Over the air Digital TV . . . any PriusChatter doing it yet?

I've been getting OTA HDTV for nearly eight years. I've also had HD premium channels from Dish Network (sadly lagging DirecTV in HD content now) for the same amount of time. I've got about a dozen HD tuners between various TVs, satellite receivers w/OTA tuners, and PC tuner cards and USB sticks.

The $40 off coupons are only good for SD set-top-boxes. If the STB outputs an HD signal, the coupon cannot be used for it.

I still pay the $5 for locals because 1) not every TV in the house is connected to an antenna, and 2) Dish uses MPEG-4 AVC compression on the HD local channels which almost halves the bitrate, meaning they take up half the space on disk when I record them with the DVR, and the sacrifice in quality is minor in most cases.

Since the satellite receiver has a built-in OTA tuner, it integrates the channels into the guide. Since the subchannels start at 1, the satellite-supplied locals show up at subchannel 0. In the screenshot below, SD and HD 7-00 are from satellite, while 7-01 is the OTA HD, and 7-02 and 7-03 are OTA news and weather subchannels.



At one house where all OTA digital channels are in the UHF band (except one), I use an Antennas Direct DB-2 indoor antenna. At the other house, where most OTA digital channels are in the VHF band (very rare, only about ten cities in the US), I have a ChannelMaster 3010, which looks sorta like a Stealth Bomber.

 

I've been doing it for a couple years with a DirecTV TiVo box (HR10-250) and it's all been pretty seamless. The TiVo takes care of unifying the different sources. If you're getting cable, you'll be fine, your cable box will continue to output an analog signal. The fact that the OTA broadcasts are now digital will be of no concern.

 

In DC I can get both the DC and Baltimore stations digital OTA with just the crappy existing (VHF Centric) antenna. One of these days I'm going to spring for a good Digital Antenna when I quit caring about the vhf stations.

It's nice because each station really has up to 5 digital channels. It's kinda iffy because 3 of them are usually whatever junk they can dig up to fill time. Having both SD and HD Digital option is nice though because it does let you display on your regular 4:3 screens without issues.

 

I'm getting OTA digital reception as well, quite impressed. I live quite a distance from the transmitting site as well (40-50 mi) just have a regular rooftop antenna with UHF.
I switch between OTA and Dish with the remote, have dish coming in on an svideo connection with OTA on the ant. Our set also has an optical audio output that I have patched into the audio receiver for when the programming is in 5.1.

 

I am gathering from these posts that a digital antenna is needed to capture the digital signal that is produced in the UHF band.

I do not have cable, and the OTA signals are mostly not that strong where I live, at least with a rabbit ears antenna. One TV (downstairs) gets no reception and the upstairs one (with a newer antenna) gets some reception, sometimes.

I do not really want cable, until they allow true a-la cart subscriptions - I do not want to pay for most of what is on cable.

 

Yes!

Yesterday (good timing for this post) I bit the bullet and took the chance buying a Digital HDTV Tuner for my mom's old plasma.

It's amazing!

Just plugging in the rooftop VHF-UHF antenna coax into the tuner revealed a whole new world of television for her. The 1080i looks spectacular over the air. I'm quite impressed with it...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...tuner&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1161734592183

I really wasn't expecting the interface from that box to be so well thought out. The gamble paid over wonderfully. I definitely recommend this for someone looking beyond just basic conversion.
.

 

You don't need any special "digital" antenna. There is no such magic. Radio Shack sells a $25 UHF antenna that works perfectly. Don't get sucked into the hype. OTA digital can be as good (and better) than anything you recieve "digitally" via sat or cable. I live about 15 miles from one of the biggest HD markets in my state, so I'm set.

 

We've been doing it for some time. I usually get my HDTV feed from cable, but over the air works fine too. The RF band is the same, so there is no magic involved. All I had to do is attach the antennae cable to the back of my TV.

Tom

 

I've been receiving OTA digital (including HD) signals for several years now. The HDTV I have has a built-in tuner.

The signal is much better than analog, and it is superior to cable (though I've never received HD cable signals).

I use an old "standard" antenna that is installed in our attic. There is no need for a digital antenna. All you need is a UHF antenna (unless you're in Chicago where WBBM, channel 2, still broadcasts in VHF).

 

Hi aPriori,

Finalized the DTV setup here during some vacation time. Getting all the downtown channels, using a Samsung DTB-H260F into this computer monitor. Pretty neat. Prior to HDTV, only the high UHF stations were clear on analog. Now everything is. Get some drop-outs on the weaker stations. But, when conditions are good the TV quality is fantastic. Even at 720p.

The antenna is a Channel Master 4 bay, into a 10 dB preamp, into a VHF/UHF combiner on the UHF port. Into the VHF port is a folded dipole cut for 63 MHz (or a little lower). Then out of the combiner into a second 10 dB gain preamp, through about 50 feet of cable to the tuner.

I talked to a channel 2 guy. They are only runnig 3400 watts into a .89 dBd antenna. Its probably oriented for best signal east west, and they are probably getting some reflection gain.

WBBM (Channel 2 ) will be switching to channel 12 for the DTV transmission in Feb '09.

Also that nice WLS-DT signal on channel 52, will be going to Channel 7 , when they turn off their Analog broadcast. That is a shame, as there is a very strong interfering signal here on 175.4 MHz here, in the morning sometimes. Its 10 dB stronger than the channel 7 Video carrier! When the change happens, I will just cut my Channel 4 dipole down to Channel 7.

 

Hi All,

As to DTV antennas, you may or may not need something. Signal strength is really not the issue, reflections are. In analog TV, your mind can reject the ghosting. But, in digital communications there is what is called ISI or inter-symbol-inteferance. That is, if the reflection has a strong enough (more than the S/N requirement is the rule of thumb) strength in comparison to the direct signal, and the reflection is delayed by one or more bit times, the interferance can be a problem. At the high bitrates of DTV, one can see where even nearby reflectors can cause a problem.

So, for a DTV antenna what you want is excellent front to back ( F/B ) ratio, especially if there are any nearby water towers or mountans off the back of your antenna. Needless to say, many of these antennas that are advertized for as being "DTV ready" are nothing more than warmed over rabbit ears or log periodic arrays, with little to no F/B ratio improvement.

Any antenna with a shield to the rear direction should be good for this. Channel Master has made UHF bow-tie multi-bay antennas for years. These have good F/B ratio. Phillips has a yagi with a very large semi-cylindrical reflector. That should be good, but I have not seen the specs.

A good rule of thumb is that if you did not have any visible ghosting on your analog OTA TV signals, you do not need any other antenna. If you have strong ghosting sometimes, you might want to look into an antenna with better F/B ratio, or with a forward null you can steer towards the reflector.

If you have access to a spectrum analyzer, and can see a humped pattern to the DTV signal, that is multipath. A percect DTV signal should be rectangular spectra, with a noisey looking pattern that should have equal peaks in time across the spectra. A multipath effected signal will have nulls in this socalled "Bart's Head" pattern. The frequency spacing of the nulls in the pattern is related to the difference in propagation times between the reflected signal and the direct signal. The closer the reflector, the farther apart the nulls will be. The weaker the reflection, the less the depth of the null. At one location with a water tower about 1/8 mile away, I saw about 4 nulls across one station's spectra diping down about 15 dB. If the nuls drop down below 16 dB S/N , the tuner may have problems decoding the signal.

 

Darell, while I respects your talents and knowledge, there really are differences between digital and analog signals and reception technology.

If you're close and clear path to the broadcast tower, then indeed any old UHF antenna will do great. But, if you have distance or reflection issues, then the ideal antenna design for picking up and sorting out digital signals is not the same as the ideal for snagging analog. The signal loss and artifact problems are different for the two transmission methods, as Donee points out.

Particularly if you're looking at needing signal amplification, there are differences. As Donee said signal strengh often isn't a problem, but it can be, and you definitely can't amplify the signals the same way and expect good results.

Most designs these days are still biased toward analog reception, but I'm seeing that change. That's why personally I'm going to give it a bit longer before I go spend bucks on a new antenna. But, when I do I expect to see a fairly significant improvement, and pick up a few more stations. (Yes, I do get significant 'ghosting' from some stations with my curren rig, which is one of the downsides of living in the city )

 

That's the beauty (or curse) of digital TV. Either you get the signal, or you don't. No more snowy, shadowy flipping pictures. They say, either you get a perfect picture, or you don't get a picture at all. While true, technically, in reality if your signal is right on the border you will sometimes loose the lock and the picture will get "pixelated".

 

I did once; but then later it was simpler to not have to replace the outside antenna when I moved.

The DirecTV box does it. And here is a secret: It's still over the air when you get it from DirecTV; the antenna, it's part of the sat dish.

Quite well. I have a old school TiVo and a DVR.

In Florida I got all the stations, from West Palm on down.

Here is something for you to consider:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140751-c,ces/article.html

 

someone has probably already mentioned it...

but

in feb 2008 analog CELLPHONE networks are being decommissioned.

its not until feb 2009 that analog TV is going away so you have plenty of time to think on your options....


it is tragically funny that when threatened with a temporary loss of television, the government is being proactive with preventing that several months in advance....

compare that to how they prepare for other events which would on the surface be more serious... but then again, i guess that depends on how much one values their tv...

 

That's not quite correct:

1) The channel to frequency map for channels above 13 is different between cable and OTA.

2) The modulation scheme used on cable for unencrypted digital TV is almost always QAM, while for OTA it is 8-VSB. This is a big deal because while most built-in tuners in TVs support both QAM and 8-VSB, the OTA tuners in your typical HD satellite receiver only support 8-VSB, meaning they can only receive OTA HD, but not the unencrypted HD from a cable provider like a TV can.

 

A standard antenna did NOT work for broadcast HDTV in my case, but a small $50 digital one from radio shack does. There is a site at http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
that recommends antennas and shows the orientation of local stations (on a map) based on your address....it asks for personal info, but a non existent address close to your own is good enough to make it work

 

Thanks for the update, Donee.

I don't know if it will make enough of a difference, but I suspect moving to channel 12 will be good news for me. The move by WLS from 52 to 7 is not good news. I receive the analog well enough, but I expect enough loss of signal to get pixilation issues.

Oh well. If it isn't one thing, it's another.