Swan in the Canal - Morelia ZooA
Like everyone who has a TV, we’ve been seeing the “public service announcements” concerning the coming change from analog to digital for “Over The Air” (OTA), “Digital Television” (DTV). We got our coupons recently so I decided to make the switch.
As the title of this post suggests, this is a rant. There has been and is a lot of misinformation being handed the public about the switch and it seems to me that both our government and the industry that benefits from our public airwaves are at fault. My opinion is based on my experience buying and setting up the service in our home. It may not be the experience you will have, but I hope at least it will inform some other people about what they could find as they try to switch to digital TV reception.
As a bit of background, I should say we don’t watch a lot of television. We live in an urban area, although it has a suburban feel. We are only three miles away from the city center. We had cable for a while and just found it was too expensive for the actual time we spent watching services other than the local channels we could watch without cable. We watch news in the evenings, a Spanish language station, public television, and the major networks for the most part.
So, when the $40 off coupons became available, we signed up for two (the most you can have). Several months later, we got them and they sat on the desk for a while. And so the first thing to understand – the coupons are only good for 90 days after they were issued (no matter when you received them). There are a lot of industry “pundits” saying you should hold off using your coupon because better converters will be coming out “real soon now.” From what I have seen I have to say – I seriously doubt it. My suggestion, get your coupons and use them.
When I decided to use mine, I first looked on line for reviews and consumer experience on which might be worth getting. The list of “eligible converter boxes” is quite large. There must be some that are better than others I thought. I found a lot of variance among the few reviews I could find, but I found fairly good results for the RCA model. Walmart lists at least two brands on their website, if you can find the listing. The RCA model I was interested in was among them.
I went down to Walmart and after looking for several minutes, I found a display model sitting on the shelf. I asked a sales person where the boxes of converters were to take to the register. “Oh,” he said, “we don’t have those in stock very often. All the TVs we have include digital tuners.”
Our converter sits happily atop our “analog” TV.
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In reality there are very few models available to buy anywhere. Most stores only sell one or at most two models. So, while I thought I had spent time wisely researching options, none of the models I read about where available locally. And that brings up the first really big failure in the government plan. While there might be several models of converters that are “approved,” retailers aren’t required to carry any. To get listed on the approved retailer list, they only have to say they are carrying one model and there is no requirement they actually stock any. From the retailers point of view, there is no value in selling you a converter box with a coupon they have to redeem when they could sell you a new TV for anywhere from $500 to several thousand dollars. What they want is to get you in the door and then to sell you a new TV. By the way, that won’t change any problems you might have receiving DTV over the air, but that is not their concern.
After checking several places, I finally found a converter box in stock at my local Radio Shack. It wasn’t a case of picking a model and features. They only carried one and they were the only retailer I could find in the time I had that actually had any converters in stock. I knew when I bought it that the reception of DTV is one of the biggest problems. In our living room, we didn’t use an amplified antenna. So, as part of the package, I also bought a set of amplified rabbit ears. Funny thing though, as I put the antenna on the counter to buy it, a fellow consumer walked up and said, “Why are you buying that? With that converter box you don’t need it.” Sure. I let him go on. He, like many, was confused by the public service ads. You do need an antenna. You might need a new antenna. You will certainly need to carefully point the antenna and probably need to amplify the signal. DTV only makes that more true, not less.
I got it home, unplugged several things we’re not using and plugged in the converter box and the antenna. The first thing you find is that to get the automatic set up to work, you have to pick an antenna direction that will allow the converter box to receive at least marginal signals from all the stations you want to receive. I was lucky, had read up on the location of our major station antennas and knew broadly what might work. I pointed my new antenna and tried it. And tried it. And tried it.
After lots of fooling around, found my old “un-amplified” antenna was just as good as the new one I had just purchased. Second lesson: if you find a converter box, the next challenge is getting the antenna to work. In desperation I tried the existing amplified rabbit ears on the TV upstairs with the converter box. It worked. No problem. So, back goes the new “approved, DTV” rabbit ears. Another lesson: Current set top antennas are all marked DTV approved, but it may or may not mean they work better than what you already have. Try what you have first. Of course it should be said, we’ve known the living room downstairs has issues receiving some of the outlying stations on analog. With that in mind, I returned the antenna to Radio Shack and went to Home Depot for a highly recommended GE model.
Our GE antenna works well in the worst reception area we have in the house.
I hooked up the new antenna to the converter box downstairs, fiddled with the direction a couple of times and got it to work. With that experience, I did the same with the upstairs TV and the old amplified antenna and it works fine too.
Our experience with the service over the past couple of weeks has been mixed. It is far more “sensitive” to changes in the environment. That means if you park the car in the front of the house, you may need to move your antenna. If the wind blows the leaves on the tree, you may get a lot of break up. If you don’t point your antenna in the best possible direction (by a few degrees) you may not get anything. Some stations are strong. Some stations haven’t put their digital service at the top of their tower or given it the signal strength they will eventually. Some stations have only implemented part of the service they could offer. Our local PBS station offers three nice services but they have a very low signal and it is hard to get the antenna pointing in the right direction exactly. Our other stations either offer only weather on their second channel or no second channel at all.
When we do get a good signal, the results are fantastic. We get as good or better image quality than we saw with cable. When the signal is weak, it is worthless. Unlike analog, you can’t get by with a “snowy” picture. The best option is a roof top antenna and the house cabling to go with it. For now at least, that option is not what we’re looking for and we’re happy with what we have. Things will improve as the channels around us improve their services. We’re learning to live with what is available. Sadly, I think a lot of people are being fooled into getting new TVs and a cable or satellite service they don’t need. I can’t blame them. I do blame a plan that the industry worked on to insure it would be confusing for consumers to adopt. I do blame legislators that I’m sure have never tried to buy and hook up the service. And I do wonder, given all the problems, how long it will be before over the air TV is abandoned because it has been handled so poorly. That is the real public loss.
May 21st, 2008 by MikeTagged as No Tags |
I had a very similar experience with finding a converter box, nobody likes to even have them in the neighborhood much less in their store.
There is another thing you probably should have mentioned for those of us who work during the hours that all of the good shows are on. You cannot have your box automatically switch channels to allow you to record shows on more than one channel during the time you are gone. I work in the evenings and there are several prime time shows that I like to watch. Many of my shows are on different channels but at different time so only recording one at a time is fine but now I’m stuck with only one all evening. The only solution to this issue is several recorders connected to several converter boxes. I’m sure lots of other people will run into other problems as well so it’s time to start letting everyone know all of the drawbacks. They force us into buying extra equipment and they don’t even try to make it work for what people actually do. The whole digital conversion is a scam if you ask me.
Too bad Nagra3 is now living with us as N1H1… before that, sat tv was a delight.