Going digit-dull!
Alright! Got my government coupons, got my DTV converter boxes... time to see what the DTV hype is about.
But wait. Terrestrial DTV isn't the same as the DTV you get over cable. The converter boxes won't tune those. Off to the bowels of my apartment in search of rabbit ears.
Got the rabbit ears, but the 300-ohm to 75-ohm converter I need to plug them into the converter box is gone. WTF?!
An hour later, I find a somewhat acceptable solution, plug everything in, extend the antennas and off to the channel scan!
I hold my breath as the box slowly reports its progress, get dizzy, breathe, get tired of wating, go off to do something else... and hey! It's done. A whopping 5 channels in my line-up. Then, it hits me: all but 2 are unwatchable. I live in an area that has poor analog reception. No surprise, the digital reception is kind of weak too.
This is where analog beats digital. Sure, digital 1s and 0s, on and off, high and low; that means you get a perfect quality picture, right? Sort of. The digital converter (and built-in tuner for newer sets) can only tolerate so much loss before its error correction can't reconstruct a complete stream. What happens then? Frozen picture, no sound; no picture, no sound; garbage patchwork, no sound. Yeah, you either get a perfect quality picture or no picture. Wonderful, huh? Compare this to analog, where, even with the weakest signal, bounced off a mountain and half a dozen skyscrapers, then attenuated by brick and stucco, it's still possible to get an idea of what's going on. True, the picture will be snowy, ghosted, and the sound full of static; but there's a faint picture in the sea of snow and deep in the roar, theres an intelligible voice.
For what it's worth, the picture and sound quality is great if I can get a good enough signal.
But wait. Terrestrial DTV isn't the same as the DTV you get over cable. The converter boxes won't tune those. Off to the bowels of my apartment in search of rabbit ears.
Got the rabbit ears, but the 300-ohm to 75-ohm converter I need to plug them into the converter box is gone. WTF?!
An hour later, I find a somewhat acceptable solution, plug everything in, extend the antennas and off to the channel scan!
I hold my breath as the box slowly reports its progress, get dizzy, breathe, get tired of wating, go off to do something else... and hey! It's done. A whopping 5 channels in my line-up. Then, it hits me: all but 2 are unwatchable. I live in an area that has poor analog reception. No surprise, the digital reception is kind of weak too.
This is where analog beats digital. Sure, digital 1s and 0s, on and off, high and low; that means you get a perfect quality picture, right? Sort of. The digital converter (and built-in tuner for newer sets) can only tolerate so much loss before its error correction can't reconstruct a complete stream. What happens then? Frozen picture, no sound; no picture, no sound; garbage patchwork, no sound. Yeah, you either get a perfect quality picture or no picture. Wonderful, huh? Compare this to analog, where, even with the weakest signal, bounced off a mountain and half a dozen skyscrapers, then attenuated by brick and stucco, it's still possible to get an idea of what's going on. True, the picture will be snowy, ghosted, and the sound full of static; but there's a faint picture in the sea of snow and deep in the roar, theres an intelligible voice.
For what it's worth, the picture and sound quality is great if I can get a good enough signal.