DTV update from Tom Young

Still having reception issues?

Read Tom Young's answers to viewer questions.

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It has been several months since the digital transition and it has been a long time since I have commented on DTV, so here are some thoughts I have had about the whole changeover and some advice that I hope may be of use to those of you who still are having trouble.

June 12th came and went, and for us here at 13abc it was a busy time. The physical changes we had to make on the night of the switchover only took a couple of minutes, since the equipment was in place and all we had to do was change transmitters from channel 19 where our digital signal was temporarily broadcasting, back to channel 13, as was the plan, and waited for the phones to start ringing. And ring they did. We had several people answering them for days, and truth be known it really hasn't stopped.

At first there were questions about dish and cable reception, but most questions were from people who were trying to receive us with the same indoor antennas they had used for years that worked when we were broadcasting in analog. At the least it took a bit of fussing with the old rabbit ears to find a spot and orientation that would work with the new digital signal. To make matters more confusing for many, stations that were on UHF worked just fine, at least within a ten or twenty mile radius of the transmitting antennas in the city of Oregon.

It didn't help that antenna manufacturers and marketers were selling UHF only antennas and calling them HDTV antennas. In reality the digital channels are now 5 thru 51, the rest having been auctioned off by our government. For those of us who knew this and went to the trouble of having an outdoor antenna capable of both VHF and UHF there was no problem receiving any stations, VHF or UHF.

From my home in Sylvania Township I can pick up stations in Toledo, Bowling Green, Ann Arbor and Detroit anytime. Most of the time, I can also pick up stations in Cleveland and Lansing. Sometimes I can pick stations in other cities, like Lima and Fort Wayne as well as many analog stations in Canada. As many of you were tearing your towers down, I was putting one up. I have cable and didn't need an antenna, but I wanted to be able to speak from experience about antennas. I still contend that the picture and sound are better off the air than they are when delivered by other means. Also sometimes these stations I mentioned broadcast sports and other programs that aren't seen locally and aren't carried on cable or satellite.

My antennas are about 50 feet above the ground, and I have separate VHF and UHF antennas. The UHF antenna is an eight bay bowtie type, and the VHF is a ten element yagi. I have an amplifier on the UHF antenna that I purchased from an eBay seller in Germany. It has excellent noise rejection, and blocks the VHF signals that might be picked up by the UHF antenna so that the two can be combined inside the house with a special combiner that also separates the UHF and VHF signals. This is necessary so that they don't combine any channels that might be picked up by both antennas.

It took a fair amount of thought to design this arrangement, and my advice to someone erecting an outside antenna would be to stick to one antenna, moveable with a rotor. Even today it is difficult to find all the things you need to do the job yourself, and there are few companies left that do this kind of work and they charge quite a bit more than they used to. Good places to look for antennas and supplies are internet sites such as www.solidsignal.com.

Most of the problems we have found with antennas were rectified by moving them outdoors and by using antennas with good directional characteristics. Reception of digital signals indoors is difficult because of reflections off metal objects causing multipath (ghosting). Even outdoor antennas can be affected by nearby objects such as buildings and trees. Also, there are still interference issues; in our area it is most noticeable when the antenna is capable of receiving both channel 12 in Mansfield and us. That is the reason many of you who live near Tiffin have trouble with our signal. Adjacent channels often interfere with each other as much as stations on the same channel do.

The broadcasting industry is still trying to sort out the problems viewers of VHF stations are experiencing with reception issues. The Federal Communications Commission dictates the amount of power a station can use and there was no real world test that I am aware of that indicated that the system would work at the power levels and channel assignments dictated. There was one test done, but the VHF issue was not addressed. Our experience would indicate that the extensive use of indoor antennas, particularly "rabbit ears" was not sufficiently taken into account. Many of you who live in apartments without a master antenna have had no choice but to subscribe to cable just to pick up a couple of stations that are transmitting only a few miles away, or worse, to do without.

Although there is always a chance for constructive change, the roar of protest has pretty much gone away as viewers have found their own solutions to reception problems. Sometimes viewers are unaware of what they are missing. Many cable and satellite operators don't carry all the sub channels (13.2, 13.3) that are available and sometimes the quality of the carried signal is compromised.

I was viewing our HDTV channel on one of the satellite services the other day, and to be honest, I couldn't see a significant difference from a standard definition signal. After asking around I found that it is either the way the sets are hooked up or a DVR, which may be standard definition, even though the customer purchased the HD package.

Also in order to carry as many local channels as possible on a satellite or cable, the signals are not always carried at their full resolution, which emphasizes my previous point: HDTV never looks better than off the air with an antenna.

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