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First DTV experience
August 21, 2007

My VCR died last week. Fortunately, it's not the new TV season so I had time to look around a little for a replacement. I decided it was time to move towards digital and buy a VCR/DVD recorder. Of course, I had to buy a higher-priced model to get one with RF capabilities because my 21-year-old TV has no direct video or audio inputs. I was able to program the unit to make a timed recording to VHS or DVD with no problems.

Being as this is a new box, the como unit has a digital tuner and I thought I'd try connecting rabbit ears to receive DTV broadcasts. Well, I didn't have to. Comcast provides the DTV boradcasts already. So, I get Boston Channels 2 (PBS), 4 (CBS), 5 (ABC), 7 (NBC), and 25 (FOX) broadcasting as many as three programs. Channel 5 was broadcasting a football game with analog on 5 and a digital simulcast of the game digital on channel 5-1, and weather on 7-2. Channel 2 had separate programs on 2 and 2-1 while 4 and 25 had digital simulcasts on 4-1, and 25-1, respectively. Channel 7 had both of those plus weather on channel 7-2.

Flipping back and forth between the analog and digital versions of a program, I found a cleaner picture on the digital side. This was primarlily because there's no interference from the over-the-air signal beating on the cable signal of the same frequency. But, the digital version produced a smaller picture area than the analog version. A family member completely rejected the digital version in favor of the larger, lower quality, analog picture.

Posted by Martin Rowe on August 21, 2007 | Comments (4)


August 22, 2007
In response to: First DTV experience
Doc commented:

You could of gotten a cheaper model and just gotten a RF unit for about 15 bucks that works just fine and save about 60-80 bucks Doc




August 23, 2007
In response to: First DTV experience
Martin Rowe commented:

True, but I don't want another box atop the TV cabinet.




September 13, 2007
In response to: First DTV experience
Graham Boswell commented:

Have you tried comparing your cable signals to local analog services? Here in Cambridge UK I find that analog services received with a good antenna and head amp are way better than anything on cable. The DTV is full of squares when things move about and the analog is slightly fuzzy compared to over the air. I have a 32inch widescreen CRT and I'm not looking at Hi Def.




September 13, 2007
In response to: First DTV experience
jayn_j commented:

all across the country, people are reporting that the over the air signals are significantly better than those received over satellite or cable systems. Gone are the days when people went to cable to avoid multipath artifacts or atmospheric noise. If you have a strong enough signal to obtain a lock, you will get a sharp clear picture over the air. The dirty little secret is that virtually all cable and satellite providers are downrezzing some and choking bandwidth in order to stuff more into the limited space they have. This leads to a lower resolution picture as well as macroblocking on a lot of action stuff, such as sports. In addition, many channels have dedicated part of their bandwidth for subchannels that generally contain information services (local weather, etc). These subchannels are seldom passed on through the cable/satellite provider as they would require a full and different channel.





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