[TowerTalk] HD Over-the-air TV

[A.J. Farmer (AJ3U)]

On 3/7/06, Lee Buller <k0wa at swbell.net> wrote:
>   I know that this might be a little off topic, but I find the whole idea of terrestial high >definition digital television facinating from the idea of signal to noise, propagation, and >multipathing.  Has anyone out there have any experience with HD Terrestial TV?

Yes, I'm picking up the stations out of Washington DC here at my
house.  I'm about 60 miles away.  I'm using a UHF directional TV
antenna with a mast mounted pre-amp.  Since it is digital, the
reception is crystal clear.  The nice thing about the over the air HD
channels is that each broadcaster is broadcasting two channels.  One
is the standard programming (NBC, CBS, FOX, whatever) and the second
channel most of them have dedicated to local weather.  The ABC station
here leaves their second channel on their local doppler radar sweep
24/7.  Whenever I heard the rumble of thunder, I switch to that
channel and can see the location and movement of the storms in
realtime.

This is a great website for finding what HD stations are in your area:

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

Note that most are broadcasting on UHF.  If you still have an "old"
VHF/UHF TV antenna, you can use that, or you can get yourself a new
UHF TV antenna.

Good luck!

--
A.J. Farmer, AJ3U
http://www.aj3u.com