[Amps] OTA TV

[Fuqua, Bill L]

  The big winners were the TV manufacturers. People ditching the old tv sets and buying new ones
boost their profits considerably. Also those that manufactured the conversion boxes that were purchased
with coupons from the government. 
  We had one station that had hoped to extend their range by being on VHF. They installed their new transmitter
and antenna and received nothing but complaints from even local customers. The problem was that everyone was
buying these "Digital TV Antennas" from Radio Shack and other vendors. The problem was that they were all UHF
only antennas. They ended up ditching their new transmitter and going UHF. That had to cost them. 
  This is the only time in the history of TV that a system was developed where the signals could not be received by an older TV set. 
Until now you could watch TV on a 1950's TV set. If I recall, there were l systems proposed that could be received by both
analog and digital receivers. 
73
Bill wa4lav
________________________________________
From: Amps [amps-bounces at contesting.com] on behalf of donroden at hiwaay.net [donroden at hiwaay.net]
Sent: Saturday, August 03, 2013 1:13 PM
To: amps at contesting.com
Subject: [Amps] OTA TV

Quoting Jim Thomson <jim.thom at telus.net>:

> I for one will miss the OTA broadcasts once they are gone. They
> had much better picture quality than this compressed "stuff" we
> get via cable or satellite.



The FCC sold the public a bill of goods when they were promoting digital TV.
They told TV stations that their coverage area would double in area.
Over the air real world results were just the opposite... We lost all
of our fringe viewers and half of our grade B viewers. People who were
watching our analog signal with indoor rabbit ears lost coverage when
we turned the analog transmitters off.

Elderly fixed income viewers couldn't afford the expense of getting an
outside antenna or the monthly costs of cable or sat.

Other than a few digital geeks , no one wanted HDTV. It cost millions
for TV stations to convert , and we lost half the audience. Some Deal
!!!

Many could watch an analog signal with some fade or snow.... with
digital, its all or nothing..... usually nothing.

The digital signals pixelate and the faces look like
8 shade cartoon "paint-by-number" animation when blown up to large screen.

Background scenes like a person walking along side a brick building
especially with the "progressive" scan format blur in and out of focus
as the computer trys to make decisions about bandwidth allocated to
stationary vs moving objects.

Watch a NASCAR event over 720P ?? Forget it.

Follow the money...........free OTA is doomed ( purposefully ) for the
higher government revenues generated by cellular plans that start at
$50 per month.


Don W4DNR
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