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5,510 Posts
My real objective here is to find out how pleased people are with Digital TV.
Personally, I do NOT like it at all. My answer is:
"Bought a new TV and am ready, but think Digital TV is NOT "better" than analog"
but I considered:
"Twinkle twinkle little toes"
I got two coupons, intending to purchase two different brands of converter boxes.
I used one coupon to get a converter from Radio Shack. NONE of the other stores... K-Mart, Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, or any other shops I managed to go to in the 90-days the other coupon was valid had any in stock when I was there, so the second coupon was not used and cannot be renewed despite claims by store personnel that all I had to do was send it back and request a renewal because of unavailability of units for sale.
I found immediately that my completely adequate Rabbet Ear antenna was totally useless for digital signals. For analog TV, I sometimes had to move the Rabbet Ears a small amount to improve reception of one or two stations, depending on weather conditions. But with just the Rabbet Ear antenna I had almost NO reception at all for 3 of the 8 stations I could get before. For the ones I could get a signal, it was so poor that audio dialog was mostly not understandable due to loss of every other syllable and the picture was severely pixelated and blocky totally ruining any visual understanding of what was being presented.
I happen to have purchased an outdoor antenna a couple of years ago because I found it on clearance at a store going out of business (double discounts!). I had thought that maybe with an outdoor antenna I could maybe receive another 4 or 5 stations that I could only poorly detect with the Rabbet Ear antenna, but I never got around to trying it. So... since my Rabbet Ear antenna was not working for Digital TV, I put the new antenna in the attic and aimed it in the direction of the majority of the broadcast antennas in my area. It "improved" reception, but I am still experiencing random total signal drop outs, blocking/pixelation, and other problems usually associated with low signal quality.
THEN, my TV began to act weird. The top of the picture began to fold over. It is my personal opinion that the converter box actually damaged the old TV! I believe the converter does not output the usual frequencies for the video sweep and that the old TV was just not up to working at the fringe of the frequencies it was designed to do. Granted, the problem is a common TV set failure, but it would work fine if I went back to the totally analog reception without the converter box between. But I reconnected converter box and watched Digital for a while and now the "fold over" is permanent.
Thus, I now have a brand new Digital ready TV. Yes, I like it as it is bigger than my old one, but it is an expense I would not really have had to make if it were not for the forced conversion to Digital TV. It also means the Converter Box is now a useless item.
Yes, I wanted two converters, but one was for a battery powered TV that was only used during severe storms as I cowered in the basement. Since Digital won't work without a large outdoor antenna and I don't really want to connect it to an outdoor antenna during STORMS, that small portable battery powered TV is now completely useless! Besides, if I lost power in a storm the battery powered TV would continue to work but the converter box would not, thus no TV.
Another note: My VCR is also now mostly useless. Even with the converter box, it lost a large portion of its utility as it had its own tuner and could be set to record any station at any time, but with the converter box, it could only be set to record just the channel that the converter box outputs (channel 3 or 4), so to record things on different channels, I had to be there to tune the converter box. So much for recording different stations while I am away.
I have not investigated to see if the new Digital TV has a "tuner out" that I can hook to the VCR to record things, but I doubt if there is a way to do it, so I think my VCR is now just a "Playback" only machine.
To further compound things... I think the people who are now "in charge" are not the least bit acquainted with the word "Quality".
I was watching a tense and exciting movie and just when all the story was coming to the conclusion the next show started and ran for about 5 minutes, then it switched back to the movie, missing about 2 minutes of the most important scenes at the end.
My new TV has Closed Captioning and I find that often the captions do not follow the spoken dialog... sometimes with just minor alterations (especially Live captioning) and sometimes with MAJOR alteration (even movie and pre-recorded shows), which changes the meaning of what is being conveyed to the "Reader" versus the "Listener"!
I have even seen Closed Captioning that is from a totally different show than what was being shown... I was watching "Retro TV" (one of the new digital services of one of the channels here) and the Closed Captioning was for "Kojak" while I was watching "Simon and Simon".
I was watching "The A-Team" and that signature quote from Hannibal (George Peppard): "I love it when a plan comes together!" was Closed Captioned as "Well, that worked." Mr. T's famous "FOOL! You can't get away with that!" was Closed Captioned as, "Hey, stop that."
I have also noticed that the "Guide" that is broadcast with the signal so you can see what is going to be on later in the day often updates 5 minutes after the new show has started. On one station in particular, is always off by an hour (seems to be permanently set to the time zone to the east of me). The Guide is also often just plain WRONG in what it lists is to be on.
All in all, I hate Digital TV. I HATE even more the continuous claims that it is "Better". It AIN'T "Better", it is JUNK, and a needless expense at exactly the wrong time for people losing their jobs!
I'll get off the soapbox if you will please take note the order of the last two selections in the poll!
Personally, I do NOT like it at all. My answer is:
"Bought a new TV and am ready, but think Digital TV is NOT "better" than analog"
but I considered:
"Twinkle twinkle little toes"
I got two coupons, intending to purchase two different brands of converter boxes.
I used one coupon to get a converter from Radio Shack. NONE of the other stores... K-Mart, Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, or any other shops I managed to go to in the 90-days the other coupon was valid had any in stock when I was there, so the second coupon was not used and cannot be renewed despite claims by store personnel that all I had to do was send it back and request a renewal because of unavailability of units for sale.
I found immediately that my completely adequate Rabbet Ear antenna was totally useless for digital signals. For analog TV, I sometimes had to move the Rabbet Ears a small amount to improve reception of one or two stations, depending on weather conditions. But with just the Rabbet Ear antenna I had almost NO reception at all for 3 of the 8 stations I could get before. For the ones I could get a signal, it was so poor that audio dialog was mostly not understandable due to loss of every other syllable and the picture was severely pixelated and blocky totally ruining any visual understanding of what was being presented.
I happen to have purchased an outdoor antenna a couple of years ago because I found it on clearance at a store going out of business (double discounts!). I had thought that maybe with an outdoor antenna I could maybe receive another 4 or 5 stations that I could only poorly detect with the Rabbet Ear antenna, but I never got around to trying it. So... since my Rabbet Ear antenna was not working for Digital TV, I put the new antenna in the attic and aimed it in the direction of the majority of the broadcast antennas in my area. It "improved" reception, but I am still experiencing random total signal drop outs, blocking/pixelation, and other problems usually associated with low signal quality.
THEN, my TV began to act weird. The top of the picture began to fold over. It is my personal opinion that the converter box actually damaged the old TV! I believe the converter does not output the usual frequencies for the video sweep and that the old TV was just not up to working at the fringe of the frequencies it was designed to do. Granted, the problem is a common TV set failure, but it would work fine if I went back to the totally analog reception without the converter box between. But I reconnected converter box and watched Digital for a while and now the "fold over" is permanent.
Thus, I now have a brand new Digital ready TV. Yes, I like it as it is bigger than my old one, but it is an expense I would not really have had to make if it were not for the forced conversion to Digital TV. It also means the Converter Box is now a useless item.
Yes, I wanted two converters, but one was for a battery powered TV that was only used during severe storms as I cowered in the basement. Since Digital won't work without a large outdoor antenna and I don't really want to connect it to an outdoor antenna during STORMS, that small portable battery powered TV is now completely useless! Besides, if I lost power in a storm the battery powered TV would continue to work but the converter box would not, thus no TV.
Another note: My VCR is also now mostly useless. Even with the converter box, it lost a large portion of its utility as it had its own tuner and could be set to record any station at any time, but with the converter box, it could only be set to record just the channel that the converter box outputs (channel 3 or 4), so to record things on different channels, I had to be there to tune the converter box. So much for recording different stations while I am away.
I have not investigated to see if the new Digital TV has a "tuner out" that I can hook to the VCR to record things, but I doubt if there is a way to do it, so I think my VCR is now just a "Playback" only machine.
To further compound things... I think the people who are now "in charge" are not the least bit acquainted with the word "Quality".
I was watching a tense and exciting movie and just when all the story was coming to the conclusion the next show started and ran for about 5 minutes, then it switched back to the movie, missing about 2 minutes of the most important scenes at the end.
My new TV has Closed Captioning and I find that often the captions do not follow the spoken dialog... sometimes with just minor alterations (especially Live captioning) and sometimes with MAJOR alteration (even movie and pre-recorded shows), which changes the meaning of what is being conveyed to the "Reader" versus the "Listener"!
I have even seen Closed Captioning that is from a totally different show than what was being shown... I was watching "Retro TV" (one of the new digital services of one of the channels here) and the Closed Captioning was for "Kojak" while I was watching "Simon and Simon".
I was watching "The A-Team" and that signature quote from Hannibal (George Peppard): "I love it when a plan comes together!" was Closed Captioned as "Well, that worked." Mr. T's famous "FOOL! You can't get away with that!" was Closed Captioned as, "Hey, stop that."
I have also noticed that the "Guide" that is broadcast with the signal so you can see what is going to be on later in the day often updates 5 minutes after the new show has started. On one station in particular, is always off by an hour (seems to be permanently set to the time zone to the east of me). The Guide is also often just plain WRONG in what it lists is to be on.
All in all, I hate Digital TV. I HATE even more the continuous claims that it is "Better". It AIN'T "Better", it is JUNK, and a needless expense at exactly the wrong time for people losing their jobs!
I'll get off the soapbox if you will please take note the order of the last two selections in the poll!