Martin,

I feel your pain but the "bad engineering" was probably mostly due to the bad politics. Engineers don't always (or even regularly) pick the top level requirements. Someone in the big corner office said - make it do thus and such and the engineers probably whined and complained the whole time they tried to do a good job with that horrible requirement set pushed on them. If the corner office wants something stupid the engineers are usually stuck with it no matter how they explain/simplify the basics to someone who doesn't have an understanding of the technical impacts, just the business ones.

Hmmm - I think the above may be a bit slanted but what the heck.

- Eric

It sure sounds like people jump to conclusions. <grin>

Seriously, we all know there are folks who think the CD tray is a drink holder. However, this isn't a localized problem. It is a widespread problem and has been for some time. The govts own hacks have admitted they had poor study, poor implimentation, and that many people will no longer even get what they had. It's been an issue for long before the equipment was widely available. It's been on local and national news, radio, and the web. Surely one or two of them attemped to autoselect channels on their DTVs???

I sooo am not happy with this "digital" conversion. before the conversion i could get about 19 channels on a good day.. now any that come in come in intermitinly. I keep rescanning and that doesn't even help.. and i keep moving the darned anttena.. Cable tv soo isn't in my budget.
Ya I thought it was kinda of wierd that the Home shopping network didn't go digital.

All I'm saying Marty is that everything you've described so far matches exactly what happened to me until I repeatedly re-scanned the new television. It was worse when I originally failed to scan it properly and it was bad until I rescanned it twice now since the official changeover.

I'm not defending poor engineering or antenna designs nor am I maligning your own abilities to fix the problem. Simply relaying a different experience than you're having.

It's the nature of digital systems that you either get a perfect picture or you get nothing. Gone are the days of just a watchable signal. It's all or nothing now.

It was kind of a wash for me. I hooked up the converter a while back before the switch over and got the same basic channels plus a few new sub-channels. After rescanning I got the same ones I think. At least the ones I watched anyway.

We usually use the satellite box for main TVs but have one in the Master bedroom that we watch the local news before bed. We have another in the screened porch that we can watch either a repeater of the satellite or local OTA channels. Again, most of it really isn't worth watching, but sometimes the local news is of interest especially for the local stuff.

As someone who works for a cable company, I assure you - there is more to DTV than meets the eye.

The basic package may be small, but digital transmission allows for a large number of specialized channels for those inclined (travel channel? home improvement anyone?). DTV (at least ours) also supports interactive features, TiVo equivalent decoders and an increasing number of HD channels.

All in all, there's absolutely no comparison for a slightly elevated cost. Then again, it is my understanding you Americans are used to getting your cable... for free? o_0

Does the antenna have a rotator?

I have one and there are three different azimuths I use most often and it took me a considerable amount of experimentation to discover the best antenna facings.

In perfect conditions I can get all the channels pretty reliably pointing directly at the weakest station and letting the stronger stations use the weaker receiving lobes. But as soon as clouds and storm show up I start to have to point directly at the sending antenna to receive channels. Sometimes it takes a bit of tweaking to make a channel come in.

Rarely, mostly when there is a storm between my antenna and the transmitter, I can't get a channel.

So far the digital change has been fairly worthwhile. Reception is all or nothing but, so far, for the most part, I get all the channels, several more than I used to, all the time.

It wasn't free. I had to get a digital converter. Had I not already had them I would have had to have bought antenna, pole, and rotator. Roughly $250. On the other hand the same money only buys you about four months of cable so I'm ahead of the game.

I took the whole darn mess down and gave the stuff away. Phooey. Enough with that.

Ha! My '81 Panasonic Floor Model gets me through the Stanley Cup Finals every year, with the help of great set of rabbit ears.

Thanks for the heads up from the south. "Upgrades, we don't need no stinkin' upgrades".

I believe we have another year until the change-over here in Canada, next years playoffs will be watched at a buddy's!

Yea Pens!