Just as an FYI I had picked up one of the 7" Insigna TV's from BestBuy last week - I had this brainchild that my wife and I could take it into the backyard and watch TV on the deck at night... This unit was unable to tune a single viewable station either on the NTSC or ATSC tuner. The best I could do was one or two stations with heavy static for sound and almost no picture (looked at it's best like you were viewing it through a white cotton curtain). This is in a suburb of Chicago only about 15 miles outside of the city. Needless to say - it went back the next day.

You won't get over the air ANALOG broadcasts any longer, but you will get over the air DIGITAL broadcasts including those broadcast in HD. I have been doing this since January of this year and like it alot. Free HD television for local channels is enough for me. I bought a 20" Sharp back in January.

Remember those two LCD tv's won't be high def, but who cares for an edc. Cable prices will probably drop or offerings improve alot, because more and more people will dump cable tv when they learn they can get digital broadcasts over the air cheaply and in digital quality.

My experience with Insigna branded product has been dismal. I would stay away from it in the future. I've had two VCR/DVD combos and a portable DVD player...all crap.

Sorry, didn't meat to sidetrack the thread.

Thanks for the information Martin. I know that my older sets I'm out of luck on, but the big screens were bought after the Digital Craze started so I might be ok.

Evan, what antenna were you using.

http://www.antennaweb.org/ will help with the antenna to see how far a digital signal is from you and what type antenna will work best.

These take a serious laptop. I've tried it on two. One is a desktop replacement level from a couple years ago. I have to give it a mixed review. When it pops up & says the processor can't handle HD they are serious. After flipping through a couple HD channels, it locked up. If you have a machine that can handle it, the HD reception is AWESOME compared to the tv receivers for computers from a few years ago.

Requires:
XP w/ SP2 or Vista
Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz, Pentium M @ 1.3GHz, or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 processor for normal resolution.
Pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHz, Pentium M @ 1.7GHz, or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 processor for HD resolution.
XP takes 256MB ram (512 recommended)
Vista takes 512MB ram (1GB recommended)
Audio & graphics support for DirectX 9
1GB of hard drive free minimum

I was using the internal antenna - (the whip that extends up from the unit itself). That was the whole point of the purchase. If I have to tether it to another antenna, it looses a lot of the appeal. Not to mention, what's the point of purchasing a portable TV, if I need to connect it to a directional antenna on a 30 ft tower to make it useful?

"...what's the point of purchasing a portable TV, if I need to connect it to a directional antenna on a 30 ft tower to make it useful?"

You are obviously unaware of the main point of scientific advancements in electronics and merchandising.

The Main Point: Make it totally !NEW!, so all the older stuff is obsolete. And once its obsolete, it needs to be replaced, usually for several times the cost of the last one.

Sue

Couple of things to remember if you are really concerned with "salvaging" your old analogue sets after the transition...

1) Any television with A/V inputs (yellow & red/white jacks, S-video connector, etc) can be hooked up to an ATSC tuner. The picture will not be much (any) better, but it will work.

2) Even if your TV lacks A/V inputs, it can be connected to a tuner box via an RF Modulater. This device converts A/V signals to channel 3/4 and plugs into the antennae jack. (~$30 at Radio Shack)

3) ATSC signals operate on the UHF frequencies and as such require a slightly modified antennae for best performance.

4) Being digital, ATSC signals tend to exhibit something called "cliff effect". Meaning when they come in, they tend to come in very well right up until the point where the built-in error correction can no longer compensate for bad reception. Then the reception falls off a cliff.

But the real question is do you really want to try and salvage your old set? Industry experts predict there will be a rash of cheap TVs (as well as expensive ones) made that recieve ATSC signals. The fact is the tuner chip sets are getting very cheap already and that trend will continue. And there are always companies willing to enter the market at the bottom price points.

Hope this helps,

I bought an LCD TV last year and it doesn't even have a tuner, several sets of inputs though including VGA so I can surf equipped.org at 32"

The digital over the air signal surely isn't perfect. Faltering reception for me does about two things.
1. Picture goes along and then freezes for a half second before starting again, along with audio dropout
2. Pixelating appearance of the digital signal (usu lasts only few seconds with no drop in audio)

Neither of these bother me unless the audio is stopping and starting frequently. Then it's no use watching. I get that mostly with NBC, sometimes ABC. Whatever channels are coming in on the VHF rabbit ear portion can be the most difficult to tune. The loop (UHF) channels usually do better.

If I bought again, I would probably look for a set that had a built in amplifier for best reception. Then all you need is the cheapest rabbit ears for great reception. A friend has that setup. My HDTV didn't have built in amplification. I suspect those small non HDTV LCD sets will get poor reception due to the antennas as Evan has stated.