A lot of you know about the upcoming digital tv conversion happening on the airwaves later this month. Some of you may not know all the details and I’ve been doing a little research on the matter, because I happen to get my TV over the air. I just don’t watch enough to really explain paying $30 a month and I don’t really miss it. So anyway, thought I’d share some basic info and some lesser known info for anyone who may need it.
First of all, if you have cable or satellite you don’t have to worry about anything. The DTV stuff won’t affect you.
If you use an antenna to get your TV and you still have an older, thicker, analog TV then you don’t need to buy a new TV, unless you’re looking for a good excuse to get one.
You can buy a converter box to get the new digital signal and convert it to a standard coax connection to plug into your TV to get the new digital broadcasts.
You may want to go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ to fill out a form to get $40 coupon to put towards your purchase of the Converter box. There may be a bit of a wait with the economic problem, but I would get on the list anyway just to get a coupon as soon as possible. For now you may have to get a box at full price. Around $50 at Wal-Mart will get you a basic setup.
If you already have your box connected and working here are a few things that you may not know or may help you out.
Your old antennas should work fine. If you have an old TV antenna with the flat lead coming down to a couple of screws on the back of your TV you will want to get an adapter to change it to coax at the antenna and run the cable down to your box. If the screws are the only connection on your TV they do have adapters to take it back to the twin lead again at the TV level. This will help you get the best signal possible on this type of TV.
Digital TV right now is currently only broadcasting on UHF and has been for some time, so some of the new HDTV antennas only have the UHF part. However after the final switchover, some of the stations are going to start using VHF again and so you will need a VHF antenna as well. If you already had an antenna with UHF/VHF to begin with, your old one should work fine.
Some of the stations are currently only running at 50% power so it is possible if you already have a converter box or a digital TV that your signal will come in better after the switch over. I guess this is really causing trouble, and it is also a problem for me. One week I might have a channel and the next I don’t and I thought it might be my box or my antenna, and then I heard on the radio others were having this same problem because of this.
For High Def TV owners:
HD content available thru satellite and cable is always compressed where you may see some blockiness on your new High Def TV. Before questioning your TV you may want to hook up an antenna to it to check it out. Over the Air signal is uncompressed and shouldn’t have any blockiness. If you still have blockiness then you may need your TV checked out.
If you have standard def cable and a new HDTV, you can hook up an antenna in conjunction with your cable so you can use the cable for the channels you don’t get over the air and use over the air to watch High Def. This can be done with a switch box or using different inputs on your HDTV depending on your setup.
Some Samsung High Def TVs have an odd problem. Some of them power themselves off after a while. One of my friends had a red ring on one of the buttons and Samsung told her to push that button and it hasn’t broke since then. The other had to send his into repair. Sorry, I’m not totally sure which models they were.
Finally, I don’t think I can cover every issue here. There is still talk of delaying the switch over which I hope they don’t do. My analog reception stinks and my digital could work a lot better or be more stable after the stations turn off their analog. But if you have any questions about this let me know and if I get enough questions about the same topics I’ll write up an entry to address them.
Sorry, I don’t know if I can answer all individual questions that may come thru the Blog so I won’t try unless it affect a lot of people.
I hope this helps.
later.
