6/12/09 D DAY!
- Thread starter bubba108
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::".....the day the music.......died.......and we were singing, 'Bye bye Miss American Pie'........"
::Could we have a moment of silence to respect and remember the untimely and unnecessary demise of an American Institution?
Do we have a smiley that plays TAPS?
:river
Good bye Analog Television, you will be missed.
Analog is still there...just not full powered 
I have 6 low powered stations still up
7 Telefutura
13 Univison (WUMN owned by Equity)
14 3 Angles
19 EWTN
43 Home Shopping
62 Daystar
I have 6 low powered stations still up
7 Telefutura
13 Univison (WUMN owned by Equity)
14 3 Angles
19 EWTN
43 Home Shopping
62 Daystar
Well 6/12 came and went and everything seems ok!
Not for me
Los Angeles is using channels 7 - 13 (Upper VHF Band) and they are not as easy for me to pick up as the UHF frequencies were. (I was using a UHF antenna CM4228)
I have been building antennas and trying to figure out what works for me, and with my latest antenna I can pick up 7,9, and 11 well but no 13 (MyTV).
I did read on another forum that 13 is the most difficult.
same here in Minneapolis (9 & 11 which are Fox & NBC)...using a UHF only antenna and it works just fine
I haven't used OTA in a while, but I'm curious as to what I can get on the digital channels here in NYC, so I went to Radio Shack today and asked the guy if they had any OTA antennas.
He asked me what size television I had (because it's not the fact that I live in a friggin city that blocks signals, it's my TV size). I told him 17", and he said:
"Oh, well the antenna you need will cost $59.99" - and it was an old "rabbit ears" type UHF antenna re-branded as a "digital hdtv antenna". It wasn't even an amplified directional antenna. >:[
I literally had to pause to bite my tongue so I wouldn't scream "go %$##% yourself!"
I'm glad I haven't shopped at Radio Shack in a long time
He asked me what size television I had (because it's not the fact that I live in a friggin city that blocks signals, it's my TV size). I told him 17", and he said:
"Oh, well the antenna you need will cost $59.99" - and it was an old "rabbit ears" type UHF antenna re-branded as a "digital hdtv antenna". It wasn't even an amplified directional antenna. >:[
I literally had to pause to bite my tongue so I wouldn't scream "go %$##% yourself!"
I'm glad I haven't shopped at Radio Shack in a long time
Lots of great information in the HD Over the Air (OTA) subforum on this site including how to build your own antennas cheap and easy. For me the key was to put a 9" diameter (uhf) antenna that I made myself, outside with a $10 pre-amp.
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I had some fun yesterday. When our local channel 2 CBS went off we were getting e-skip bigtime. Im in Chicago and was getting channel 2 WESH from Orlando Fla. They had a test card up. Took a few pictures from an great old Zenith tv I have in the kitchen. What a nice way to end analog getting OTA tv from 1000 miles or so away. Analog will be missed
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Great story LordKat lol, would be funny if it wasn't the truth. I wonder what the cost would've been had you told the salesman you had a 60" TV !
I was worried about those 18 stations that were suppose to drop off of Galaxy 18. Guess I panicked a little. THE SKY IF FALLING! 
FTA is all we got here in lunatic fringe land. I can only get one digital station off the air and only 50% of the time.Checked it's footprint and I shouldn't be getting it at all. Got a good yagi ant about 25 ft up, rotor and an amp.
So we are doing the happy dance here in Bubbaville.
FTA is all we got here in lunatic fringe land. I can only get one digital station off the air and only 50% of the time.Checked it's footprint and I shouldn't be getting it at all. Got a good yagi ant about 25 ft up, rotor and an amp.
So we are doing the happy dance here in Bubbaville.
Guy probably would've tried to sell me their way-too-marked-up Wineguard directional antennas at $200 a pop.
I will miss VHF analog DXing a lot. My best catches were Havana Cuba and Thunder Bay Canada. We can get some Tropospheric Ducting on digital.I had some fun yesterday. When our local channel 2 CBS went off we were getting e-skip bigtime. Im in Chicago and was getting channel 2 WESH from Orlando Fla. They had a test card up. Took a few pictures from an great old Zenith tv I have in the kitchen. What a nice way to end analog getting OTA tv from 1000 miles or so away. Analog will be missed
Tropospheric Ducting Forecast for VHF & UHF Radio & TV
Got Pittsburgh one morning at 80 signal strength. It was like having basic cable for a while. KDKA had a lot of sub channels.
I lost one channel, WHDH channel 7 from Boston, they went to VHF freq and I cannot get that with my 4248 antenna. Looks like I am stuck with NBC from Providence
Well at least one of our 3 high powered analog stations is still broadcasting here. I tuned it in Friday morning just to watch it go to static, but instead, it kept broadcasting one of those infomercials that tells you how to hook up a digital converter box. Darn thing is still cycling. But re being "OK", I wasn't sure for a while. After being dissappointed that the one station didn't go away, I switched to another channel that was supposed to replace it's VHF analog with digital that has been transitioning on UHF. I tuned in the UHF station with TSREADER, and the VHF station with my Diamond, going to my TV via HDMI. Well the VHF station was already digital, so I looked at the UHF with TSREADER, and for some reason, it was missing whatever the equivalent of the PMTs is in ATSC, because even though I could see the A/V streams, it didn't show any channels. So on my TV, I tried to pull up the UHF digital via PIP on my TV. I use PIP all the time, but usually display the cable input, which I have my Drake 1824 feeding into. So I tried to switch it to the regular TV input, but it wouldn't let me. All it would let me tune was 3 analog channels, only one of which was working. I started to worry that somehow the switch to digital had messed up my TV, so I got out of PIP, went to the TV input, and had it do a re-scan. After the rescan, I went back to HDMI, and tried to bring up the PIP.... I couldn't. It would only let me do a PIP with analog. I fooled around in the menus for a good hour, then I went to my Coolsat 8100, which is connected via component. Did a PIP, and FINALLY, it worked. So I was relieved. However went back to HDMI.... only analog, no digital. I fought with the darn TV for another half hour, until I finally found the darn manual. Turns out that you can't do a digital PIP when in HDMI mode, even though you can in component mode. I've been using that TV for 2 1/2 years, and use PIP every day, and I never noticed that you can't do digital PIP from HDMI. I guess I had only done that from component. As illogical as it seemed, I was convinced that the switchover had messed up my TV. Then I found that my Coolsat wouldn't scan in the VHF digital channel. I think it was multipath, because I finally got it to work by aiming my antenna away from the channel by almost 90 degrees, but it took me a long time to figure that out. So my simple little exercise of watching the analog channel go away ended up in several wasted hours, and I didn't even get to see the analog go to static.
Well, your dxing on analog may actually improve, since only the US went digital. Canada isn't suppose to do it for 2 more years. Since you won't have any more pesky analog channels coming from nearby cities you may actually be able to get Thunder Bay and Havana more often.
On a side note I was messing with a dish today and decided to bring out my rabbit ears and see how much better they would perform out side, and to my suprise I could get all 4 of my locals (between 2-12 analog) crystal clear even with the rabbit ears laying on the ground. When I have them inside my apt I can get 2 ok, 4 a little worse, 9 &12 bareley watchable. The spot I have them inside is about 3' above ground level, but it was only the thichness of the wall away from where I tried them outside. This was on the south side of my apt and all my towers for locals are north of me. I think I will put them on the fence in the backyard (east side of where the dish is but facing north without the building in the way) and use the unconnected coax for cable tv to feed them to my tv since the signal is so much better out side. Just need to get my crimpers back from a friend, to put a new connector on the cut off cable coax.
some stations are on "nightlight" mode until late June repeating that.
We have 2 of them here in Minneapolis that are like that.
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