Just FYI -
If your kits include a television or a radio that can receive television audio, remember that this coming February, they will no longer be able to receive over-the-air signals.

Portable options are few and far between for ATSC devices, and in my tests, the ATSC signal is far more fragile than the old analog signal it is replacing.

In a second line of thinking, I've been using the Verizon National BroadbandConnect service and am very, very happy with it. It's a wireless card that gets you on the internet at about the same speed as a DSL line, with no cables needed. Of course, the cell network will need to be present for it to work, and I've not tested it in an emergency situation when the cell sites are saturates, but as a way of getting online when the power is out and the wires are down it works.

Finally, in terms of telecommunications, it's a good idea to have a calling card in your wallet for those times the cell network is down. AT&T cards have no expiration and really low fees.

I recently picked up the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick. It is powered by a USB port on my laptop, and displays NTSC (soon to go away), ATSC (the new digital standard), HDTV, and also receives FM radio. I added a set of inexpensive headphones, because laptop speakers have poor audio. Using the supplied antenna (a telescoping whip with a magnetic base) I was unable to get a good analog signal, but receive over 40 digital or HDTV signals. My normal plan is to connect it to the external antenna on my motor home so that I can watch TV while "on the road". It can also connect to Cable TV, and watch any station that does not require a converter box. I was quite surprised by the excellent digital and HDTV performance, especially with the substandard antenna. My plan for power and/or Cable TV outage is to use this device with my laptop to gather information from TV news, as appropriate. The laptop batteries will last for some time, and very little backup power is required to recharge the laptop batteries when they run low.

More info is on their web site: www.pinnaclesys.com. Standard disclaimers apply.

I have been holding off on buying a 12-volt TV / DVD player to let the market catch up with the change over. I don’t really need one, but want it mostly to watch DVDs, but if If I’m going to buy one why not get it with a TV? I’m thinking this coming Christmas season would be a good time to buy a 12-volt portable TV / DVD player. I would guess the stores will be saturated with TVs right about then.

"...the ATSC signal is far more fragile than the old analog signal it is replacing..."

The TV in the living room of our new home on wheels is digital. When we get to a new "home," I crank up the antenna, then have the TV search for available channels. Many of the stations picked up broadcast both analog and digital. The digital is a superior view, but it comes and goes often, while the analog just keeps on a tickin'. I worry about what is gonna happen come Feb.

Great news on the aircard. Our Verizon aircard is well over a year old, and runs at the speed of lazy dialup. We may have to visit Verizon for a new card...

My 12-volt analog-only TV in the motor home died recently, and I could not find anything on the market that would make a decent replacement, so I opted for the laptop option. I usually take a couple of DVD's with me on road trips and watch them on the laptop anyway, so the new TV option works well for my application.

I agree with your statement that the industry has some catching up to do, especially in the 12-volt TV/DVD world. It does seem logical that November/December would be a good time to have such items in the stores....

Many stations are currently broadcasting analog at full strength on their original VHF frequencies, and digital on temporary UHF frequencies at significantly reduced power. Come cutover time, the digital may be switched over to the VHF frequency that is freed up when the analog currently there goes away. Or the digital on that temp UHF frequency may go higher power and be made permanent.

All this channel switching is made transparent to the end user by something called PSIP ("Program and System Information Protocol"). That's a way that frequencies can be mapped into channel numbers. For example, analog channel 9 is broadcast on the 187.25MHz frequency. "Digital channel 9" is often referred to as "channel 9.1", but this designation does not imply any particular broadcast frequency. It could be, for example, UHF channel 42 (639.25MHz) that is "mapped" to channel 9.1 via PSIP. What your digital tv does when it scans for channels (or you tune one manually) is it reads the PSIP data that is broadcast on that frequency. That PSIP data in effect says something like "I know you found me on channel 42, but instead of calling me 42, call me 9". Your TV remembers this.

That's probably lots more than you ever wanted to know. Bottom line: What you see today in terms of "fragile signal" is not necessarily what you'll see come switchover time. Actually, the digital signal is much more robust than the analog signal. The "fragility" that has been mentioned does not have to do with digital vs. analog (analog is the more fragile). It has to do with low power temporary transmitters and antennas. Or it could have to do with you having your over-the-air antenna pointed in the wrong direction. The digital transmission may well be broadcast from a different compass direction than the analog. If your antenna is pointed in the wrong direction for what you are trying to receive, you may still be able to pick up something if you're lucky (off axis), but you may also experience "fragility" because you're pointed incorrectly.

Thanks for all that info, and I hope that you are correct. Guess we will find out come Feb.

Re our antenna being off a tad, that is very probable. We use the time tested method of me turning the antenna from the bedroom, with my wife watching TV in the living room. When she gets the "best" picture she yells "stop" and I do...

I disagree - strongly.

From July 1999 until late last year, I had no television at all. I decided to get an HDTV tuner card for a PC because we intended to watch the olympics over the air this summer. Along the way, I picked up a 13" color TV set for free at the end of a rummage sale.

So, I have an old Analog set and a modern DTV card for a PC. I wanted to test them both. I also got a DTV convertor box for the old 13" TV. I got a monster TV antenna, put it on a mast up way-high in the top of a huge tree (what an ordeal THAT was), so it's at about 60' AGL. I ran Quad Shield RG8 down. It's on a rotator and I got the coordinates of the transmitters down in Philly and over in NYC, as well as Allentown. I have an aim point for each station.

After all was said and done, the DTV was hardly worth the effort. I spent HOURS messing with the system, trying to get something like stable reception on the DTV signal.

I have found that there really is no "fringe" reception at all. With the NTSC setup, I could get and live with a snowy, ghosty analog image and still get something understandable out of it.

With digital, the signal level fluctuates for who knows why, a signal that was fine one day is on the next day stutter-bursts of image & sound, making it gibberish, or nothing at all. That's really frustrating - when a DTV channel that was showing a 48% signal on Tuesday simply vanishes on Wednesday.

With the old analog rig, I could point the antenna in the general direction of a major city and be sure to get signals on a number of channels. With digital, not only do I need a higher antenna, I need to aim it far more specifically, and even then, I found it to be unreliable.

I gave up and took the antenna down a few weeks ago, tossed the TV into the household hazmat pickup bin and I use the Tuner card as an input source for the camera in the henhouse, so I can keep an eye on the peeps we hatch out.

I'll get my Olympics online, I guess.

NTSC was flawed, indeed, but the market didn't cry out for something better, this change was forced. I don't think most people care for how the signal looks. Look at the dismal sales of Blu-Ray vs. upconverted standard DVD - look at all the wide-screens you see making 4:3 NTSC fill a 16:9 screen - nobody cares.

Anyway, there's no choice now, you gotta buy the DTV stuff and hope for the best. Did I mention ATSC does not work when mobile? Yeah, that's not in the spec.

I think you are running into either:

(1) Your digital stations are broadcasting at low power, not full power (many are doing this now - call the station and ask them, they'll tell you).

(2) You have the wrong type of antenna (A VHF model when you may need a UHF one). You may also need an amplifier today if your stations are broadcasting at low power.

(3) Your digital tuners - both in the the PC card and the digital converter box - are not very good. Many of the digital converter boxes are indeed junk. Rushed to market at cheap prices. You might look at the "DTVPal" made by Echostar/DishNework. It is brand new and getting very good reviews.


This is true. You are evidently running into what is commonly called "the digital cliff". Either you have a great picture, or you don't have any picture. There is a very small window right near that cutoff where you will see pixelation, noise, and things cutting in and out. If your stations are broadcasting their digital signals at low power, the cliff may be closer to you than you'd like. But this will probably change at the analog-digital changeover date. Many stations are using temporary digital transmitters and small antennas today, and are ramping up their higher power transmitters and better antennas for the changeover date.


It's not the signal that disappeared (except if the transmitter broke - unlikely). It's your tuners ability to lock onto the signal. A very small deviation in the signal may throw your tuner over the cliff where it can't lock the signal.


Are you using a VHF antenna trying to pick up digital channels that are temporarily being broadcast on UHF? (and mapped down to lower channel numbers that appear to be VHF via PSIP). You have to have the correct type of antenna, and an antenna with enough gain to pick up the signal (which, as I've said before, is probably being broadcast at very low power temporarily).


You are confusing HDTV (high definition TV) and DTV (digital TV). These are two separate things. There is no mandate for stations to go HD, only for them to go digital. There is still tons and tons of standard definition programming being broadcast digitally. This will continue after the analog cutoff date.

If your comment on "most people don't care for how the signal looks" is supposed to go along with your second comment about stretching a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 one (I can't tell from your working), for the most part this distortion is caused by people who are ignorant of how to work their TVs. But not always. There are some TV stations that are notorious for actually broadcasting stuff in "stretch-o-vision". They do this because to many ignorant people, "short, fat characters" on the screen equal high definition. Not at all. It only means "distorted aspect ratio". I certainly don't set my TV to intentionally distort the picture, and if I run across a show that is actually being broadcast in stretch-o-vision, I move on to a different channel.


This has to do with the need for the receiver to sample the digital signal at specific intervals. If the receiver is moving quickly, this is difficult. Think of a car honking the horn while it first drives towards you, then past you - the frequency that the horn is broadcasting does not change, but it appears to get lower in frequency to your ear as you are passed because of the Doppler Effect. New broadcast specs, which are backwards compatible with existing tuners, are starting to overcome this limitation.

I'd just like to add that the FCC's reason for the switchover is not to provide a better picture, but to free up bandwidth. Digital broadcasts use up a lot less of the spectrum than analog.