I don't understand that comment. The VHF segment...of the antenna is too small? ...of the spectrum is too small? ...is too small for what? This confusion is compounded by recommending a UHF-only antenna.



Yeah, I was mixing my semaphores again.

Thanks for the replyand advice..I'll check out your suggestions...I live in Holly Springs 15 miles south of Raleigh...

Why get a VHF antenna at all? All the stations he listed are UHF.

All the stations that xmit digital ATSC around Raleigh are UHF only at the present time.

PBS is almost 180 degrees from all the other local digital stations for us folks in the Raleigh area.

Rotors are a nice suggestion but could someone tell me how the OTA tv guide would work with a rotor ?

Is over the air digital truly free ?? What are those things called commercials that I see? Don't they help pay for the Broadcasts stations transmitting equipment ?

And I have to agree with srj1957 about reception. Using my attic mounted 4228 I can easily pick up all the local analog stations with one antenna including PBS coming from the opposite direction. These analog signals are good to very good. Maybe some ghosting or snow that is not that distracting to me. And I am talking minimal ghosting and snow here. Audio is fine on all the analog stations.

Digital OTA in Raleigh on the other hand needs fine antenna tuning to produce reliable signal and in my case I need the 4228 for all the stations except PBS and I use my SS2000 for PBS.

Without the above set up I would experience video signal lock up and audio drop out that would be by far too much to tolerate.

I know I know that I have my antennas in the attic and that things may be different if I put the antenna on the roof and/or used a rotor. But I got to keep the better half happy as well as the Homeowners association.

I remember reading a post on this board awhile back which stated that if you get a snowy or ghosty picture with analog you will find digital to be much better. I use to think this was the case but having experienced both I do not believe this is the case.

I am keeping an open mind however as once NTSC analog is history the reception of digital could easily improve because of readjusting of signal strength, antenna location, and/or channel assignment. Or maybe even better comnpression algorithms.

Again I am speaking for my area of Raleigh and with my setup. It may be completely different in other parts of the country or even at my next door neighbors house.

And don't get me wrong here, I am completly for HD !! Put two tv's side by side one showing a perfect signal analog show and the other being an HD tv showing a perfect signal HD show I will always say the HD is better. It is just unbelievable how good a picture you can get with a Digital HD OTA. Even the background information is almost perfectly clear.

-Don B

It's not DirecTV that's screwing up the HD images (by compressing them so strongly). It's the video feed being sent to DirecTV. Some people are cheap. Every once in awhile you'll see something on HDNet that is crystal clear. That's Mark Cuban's channel though. He knows HD. Now, keep in mind that the images ARE compressed. They have to be, but some programs are compressed more heavily than others.

The best advice I can give someone is if you want HD then dont waste your money on a projection TV or a tube TV. You wont get true HD quality. you'll have to get a plasma or an LCD. I have a cheap 32" LCD and it looks amazing

Please enlighten us. For what technical reason does a projection TV (This could be CRT projection or DLP) or CRT not give "true HD quality".

Note that there are plently of CRT monitors that far surpass the resolution of the best plama and LCD displays.

If DirecTV is not compressing the signals, who is?

And the reason it is more clear is that DirecTV allowed the bitrate up. Cuban is still sending them the same thing. Comparisons by many have been done to the same show via D* and either their local OTA and/or cable channel. Almost invariably the OTA looks best, because they don't need to compress.


That is so wrong there aren't words to describe it. What size plasma would you recommend?

Yeah! I've got a client with a DILA projector and a 22' diagonal (on 4:3).

Lemme know when THAT plasma is available, huh?