[BC] OTA TV makes a big jump.

[Robert Meuser]

I have had involvement in one way or another with the DTV transition 
over the last 16 years. Unfortunately at the time of the NTSC shutdown 
OTA was not fully ready for prime time. The early tuner chips did not 
handle multipath well and because of this we did not really have the 
tools to learn the old fashioned NTSC antenna would not be the proper 
approach for DTV reception.

Two things happened over time. The first was the drastic improvement in 
the tuner chip sets. The primary advantage is that they take advantage 
of multipath rather than deal with it as a detriment. This opens the 
door to the use of fractal and other omnidirectional types of antenna. I 
keep hearing stories of people who have difficulties with the old highly 
directional antenna on a tower with a rotator. This is not how to 
receive DTV.  Those who need height and gain are better served with a 
vertical stack of a bowtie antenna. This works if the desired stations 
are in the same general direction. If they are not, an omni may work. I 
do not know the best solution for a non engineering type living in a 
fringe area where transmitters are in all directions.

My own experiments over the years have resulted in the following results:

Early generation DTV set and a Terk so called 'digital' rabbit ear with 
small UHF log antenna, no usable reception either analog or digital.

The same Terk antenna and a newer generation Eye TV tuner for my Mac was 
awkward to aim and use but much better than the TV.

The newest tuner is part of a Tivo. It was even better but the rabbit 
ears still posed problems.

A $29 fractal antenna off the shelf at a local electronics dealer gave 
much better but still annoying results with the TV.

The eye TV was much improved and useable but the Tivo (newest tuner chip 
set) produced nearly flawless results.

With NTSC, I was never able to receive any over the air but with a 
modern 'digital' indoor antenna and a recent tuner chipset there are 
more programs recorded than there is time to watch including WKRP on 
antenna TV.

I know a lot of people with absolutely no connection to or understanding 
of broadcasting who have discovered the fractal antenna and dropped 
cable. I also know two senior engineers for one of the largest TV 
broadcast groups who in addition to cable have some off air secondary 
sets in their homes. Surveys show that in multi-set homes OTA is common 
on secondary sets.  It is unfortunate that there is no campaign to more 
widely promote OTA.

On 6/20/12 2:35 AM, Jeff Carter wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Alan Alsobrook<radiotech at bellsouth.net>  wrote:
>> This is more a TV thing, but it may be of interest that many are cutting
>> the cord and not getting a dish.
> I had a horrible time convincing people that OTA didn't just
> disappear.  In North Georgia, where I was living at the time, the
> cable and DBS providers were actively telling people that they'd need
> cable or a dish, that the days of broadcast TV as they'd known it was
> over forever.
>
> I proved the reality to my brothers by setting up temporary antennas,
> and one still thought it was some sort of trick. As far as I know, he
> continues to this day paying for a worse signal than he could get for
> free.
>