DTV TRANSITION COMPLETE - OR IS IT?
It has been over six weeks since the USA's full power analog TV broadcasts went dark, and the few left that are simply providing a "nightlight" service are slowly fading away as the "completely unready" household ratio continues to dwindle down.
However, those over the air households that thought they were ready with their converter boxes or new TVs have realized that they did lose some channels even after a rescan of their tuners. There have been reports of a handful of VHF stations now looking to get FCC permission to increase their transmit power as some households, be they just on the fringe of the viewing area or have indoor environments where the signals are not penetrating the buildings, are missing out on their shows after taking heed of all instructions to convert.
Additionally, there are still some DTV stations that have not yet gone to their maximum allotted DTV transmit power simply because they were not quite financially or technically ready to do, but plan to in the next few months.
So, if you have found a couple off-air DTV channels to be breaking up occasionally on a humid or stormy day, I would contact the station and ask if they are broadcasting at full power, and if not yet, then when. If the stations are at full power, then you may want to consider upgrading your antenna to a larger one that can pull in more signal.
Also, be sure to rescan your tuner about once a month as more and more stations are adding multicast channels to their over the air DTV broadcasts. Who knows, you may find yourself hooked on a new channel that you had to shell out a lot per month to get on digital cable.
It has been over six weeks since the USA's full power analog TV broadcasts went dark, and the few left that are simply providing a "nightlight" service are slowly fading away as the "completely unready" household ratio continues to dwindle down.
However, those over the air households that thought they were ready with their converter boxes or new TVs have realized that they did lose some channels even after a rescan of their tuners. There have been reports of a handful of VHF stations now looking to get FCC permission to increase their transmit power as some households, be they just on the fringe of the viewing area or have indoor environments where the signals are not penetrating the buildings, are missing out on their shows after taking heed of all instructions to convert.
Additionally, there are still some DTV stations that have not yet gone to their maximum allotted DTV transmit power simply because they were not quite financially or technically ready to do, but plan to in the next few months.
So, if you have found a couple off-air DTV channels to be breaking up occasionally on a humid or stormy day, I would contact the station and ask if they are broadcasting at full power, and if not yet, then when. If the stations are at full power, then you may want to consider upgrading your antenna to a larger one that can pull in more signal.
Also, be sure to rescan your tuner about once a month as more and more stations are adding multicast channels to their over the air DTV broadcasts. Who knows, you may find yourself hooked on a new channel that you had to shell out a lot per month to get on digital cable.
posted by Derek (IA) | 4:13 PM
|
4 comments
