Thread: Will this be the end of TV Dxing?

Originally Posted by Scroll

That's kinda funny in one way. I'm just across the pond in St. Pete and when the wind is blowing the trees Fox and NBC Tampa start to break up. LOL

I used to DX occasionally in the Chicago area with just a bow tie antenna in a 2nd floor bedroom. I didn't have much luck with VHF & rabbit ears but at times I got a pretty strong signal from about 70 miles away and occasionally even Cincinnati, OH on some weekends.

Still just by the way the digital signals are it won't be like in the old days where you strain to hear call letters with a grainy picture to try & make sense out of. Kinda reminded me of the early days of scrambled PPV ota & cable.

I used a new A/74 digital broadcast TV compliant receiver. That standard DOSE make a difference when DTV DXing. If anyone has seen the picture I posted of the antenna used it was a small outdoor antenna!

Actually, this sounds like an opportunity to actually increase the hobby value. I can see people experimenting with antennas, low noise amps, etc. I can also see an opportunity to build computer software to try and extract id info out of weak signals that won't lock. There may also be opportunities to do software to reconstruct a lock from sparse datastreams. This actually seems exciting, as much fun as FTA.

I haven't been able to find out the noise figure for converter boxes or DTVs, but an LNA should solve that problem. Now if some hobbyist would come up with a DIY or low cost box to trick the DTV into thinking it had found a station on scan DX would be alive and well.