In all this it may be good to consider how cable TV got started. CATV -
that's not CAble TV, but Community Antennna TV - started in places where
residents couldn't get TV off the air because they were located in valleys or
other
places where TV signals just wouldn't go. (I think the very first system was
in NE Pennsylvania.) So some enterprising people (hams?) put antennas up on
the hilltops, and sent those signals down on wires to the people in the
lowlands.
It was only many years later that these cable providers began offering
non-off-the-air programming, notably HBO. And the rest is history.
So please remember that there have always been times and places where some
people couldn't get over the air TV.
73 - Jim K8MR
In a message dated 1/23/2009 6:14:53 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
W2RU@frontiernet.net writes:
I can't agree with this. Here in the central Adirondacks of upstate
NY, during a sunspot minimum I get very useable analog pictures from
Syracuse, Utica, and Watertown on channels 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and a few
UHF channels (16, 20, 24, 33, 68), too. The UHF channels tend to be
"snowy", as does Channel 2 from Utica, but the other VHF channels are
almost as clear as satellite, despite the mountainous area tending to
add multipath to everything. My antenna is a 10-year-old Radio Shack
"fringe" VHF/FM/UHF design with a mast-mounted preamp and coax into
the room directly below it. The antenna is about 30 feet over the
lake I'm on, but probably 60 feet below the tops of the pine trees all
around me. Utica is 60 miles away, Syracuse perhaps 90, and Watertown
30 -- all in different directions.
Using the same antenna, the same preamp and the same feedline, but
adding a top-rated DTV converter (the Zenith), I get only channel 7
out of Watertown. No amount of fiddling with the TV antenna heading
brings anything else in. My local satellite TV installer says he's
not surprised, and expects I won't see any additional channels until I
put the antenna and the preamp up above the nearby tree tops -- if then.
The people in the hamlets around here have cable, so they won't care
much. But those of us outside the hamlets that depend on local
weather maps (especially in this lake effect snow belt region I live
in) are going to be out of luck. Utica is our "local" metropolis but,
because of some arcane FCC or Congressional ruling, neither Utica nor
Watertown can be one of satellite TV's "local" options. And, to add
insult to injury, in our zip code another Congressional mandate makes
it illegal for the satellite TV suppliers to offer Syracuse as our
local option!
Love those politicians!
Bud, W2RU
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