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With the advent of digital broadcast TV, I'm really wondering if it's all that necessary for cable TV or satellites to exist at all. For example, it should be possible for additional digital TV transmitter antennae to be set up to boost the signal in areas where existing signals are too weak. This would be far less costly than the expense of launching a satellite or even stringing new coax cable to every home.

Additionally, it should be technically possible to scramble a digital broadcast TV signal so it can only be received by those paying a subscription fee. I don't like the idea, but it could be done.

Finally, there seems to be plenty of room for additional digitized TV channels on the airband. Certainly more than exist in the analog band. I may be wrong there, anybody have an idea of the maximum number of digital broadcast TV channels that are possible?
 
So much to consider. One (or more) satellites instead of
thousands of transmitters or repeaters? Signal strengths?
Power requirements? I'm about 25 miles from the OTA digital
transmitter, but experience dropout (probably from trees).
Satellite is a disadvantage for the promotion of local
programming. Both satellite and OTA can suffer from
meteorlogical phenomena. Just a start of considerations.
 
Well,

A small number of satellites can cover all of North America. It would take many thousands of transmitters and towers, and billions (trillions?) of watts of electricity to begin to match that coverage and channel selection with terrestrial antennas. And the best way to distribute programming to those stations? Well, satellite actually.

Avoiding interference between channels on land-based transmission is a nightmare. Not everyone lives in densely-populated areas where several broadcast channels are available. Many people don't get strong enough signal to pick up digital TV reliably or at all -- even in urban areas.

Cable offers high-speed internet, and cable companies can offer a mix of local and nationwide programming, including community access programming which would not be affordable otherwise. Cable will also continue to provide analog signals for quite a while, so not everybody will have to go out and buy an ATSC tuner or TV when broadcast shuts down.

All in all, I'm glad I don't watch TV.

-kevin
 
One huge problem with trying to install lots of land-based repeater antennae is finding the sites and then getting permission to install the towers. Cell phone companies have already snapped up most of the good sites, and even they sometimes have trouble getting permits to install antennae that are lots less obtrusive than those needed for TV. Neighbors frequently lobby against even the most discreet installations, like fake palm trees that are hardly noticeable in a group of real ones. These objections are sometimes ignored by local governments on the basis that cellphones are of significant benefit to the public and there are no good alternative methods of providing the service, but with satellitea and cable TV available that argument won't work for TV transmitters.
 
Most of the stations I receive are in SF about 17 miles away. No problems with dropouts. I have a second antenna pointed towards San Jose; most of those are about 22 miles away, and they come in quite good also. The pictures are crystal clear, too. Of course I haven't yet seen the signal quality in rainy weather; that will have to wait until November/December.

The rooftop antennae I'm using are relatively old (over 25 years old) and the one pointed south is in need of repair. But it works.

Some of you may not know this, but the city of SF is working on providing free wireless internet connection to the whole city - for free. If that can be done, I don't see why free digital broadcast TV can't be done either. Obviously the reason is money. There's a lot of money in cell phones. Not so much in free broadcast digital TV. Money is also the reason why we don't have national health care - too many powerful interests are making money off sickness.

In any case, I'm quite unwilling to go back to cable, especially since the picture quality is so good with terrestrial digital.
 
Distance isn't the problem for many of us . . .

it is the local topography. I actually tried a rooftop TV antenna once where I live, and got two stations with acceptable pictures. Another couple of stations came in very poorly. I have the same problem with FM - none of my favorite stations will work in my house, as my tuner (a decent model by Rotel) rejects them due to the multipath distortion. I can get in my car and have barely listenable signals, then drive 1/2 mile to the freeway, and once I'm up the ramp they often come in fine. The house is on a dead flat lot but the Santa Monica mountains are to the south and west, and all I can guess is that they kill most TV and FM signals. I'm not really a big TV fan, but I love radio and for me internet radio is a godsend because otherwise I just wouldn't listen to it at home since the few stations that come in strong and clean aren't to my taste.
 
Hills

Well, I guess that must be it. There are no major hills between my house and Mt. Sutro, and probably not between here and the San Jose transmitter(s). For one PBS station down there, I find I can get it during the day ok with the combined signal from both antennae, but at night I have to select only the antenna pointing towards San Jose to get the picture.

This location gets probably the clearest TV signals I've ever enjoyed in this area. I was pleasantly surprised by that. Berkeley wasn't bad, either. I also discovered that the broadcast quality, even for analog, is generally better than what I was getting with cable.
 
No surprise as to bad cable quality! Century/Adelphia/Time-Warner had just terrible quality, and high prices too. The last straw came when they made the name change to Time-Warner and then dropped many stations from the package we had and put them only in higher priced packages. On the phone the rep insisted it was a better deal because if we got the much more expensive digital package we'd get all those channels and lots more . . . he seemed incapable of understanding that fewer channels for the same money = a worse deal. Dish Network has been a huge improvement: cheaper, more channels, much better picture quality, and it has been pretty much dead reliable. Century/Adelphia/Time-Warner had frequent outages, and would often quote a week to come out and fix it if it was in the house (and the reps always said it was). That never actually happened because 100% of the time over 14 years it was with their crappy cable system in the neighborhood and they would manage to fix it within several hours to a day. Satellite dishes have sprouted on rooftops in my area like toadstools after a rainstorm because everyone is so fed up with cable.
 
since the few stations that come in strong and clean aren't to my taste.

Hmmm, could they be Clear Channel stations by any chance...
 
Our local PBS station, KQED, has five channels now: analog, and four digital channels. My favorite is the "KQED Encore" channel, which replays PBS shows for about a week at a time. So if you miss it on the analog channel, you can usually view it on Encore. "KQED World" is good too, with international news types of programs.

There are two other PBS stations within range: KCSM just south of SF, and KTEH in San Jose. There is some overlap in shows between all three, but often the other stations will show stuff that KQED rarely carries (such as "The Rise and Fall of Reignal Perrin" - can't wait for that one to come round again). For KTEH at night I have to switch to the San Jose antenna, but during the day mixing that signal with the one from SF works ok. Oddly, other San Jose stations, like channel 36, comes in just fine with the two antennae mixed. Must be different coverage patterns and/or signal strengths.
 
Are those simply 2-Way splitters or are they switchable?
How does it work having 2 "outputs" feed into a single
"input" if it is not switchable? If the signals/frequencies
are separate, I can believe it would work - it will actually
combine them, but what if you are picking up the same station?

Is that phone wiring or ethernet wiring to the right?
 
Oh, maybe that black box on the bottom selects between the
three inputs so if there is a problem with the combined
signals, you can select from either of the two antennae alone.
 
Yes, the black box is the selector. The middle position combines the two antenna signals, the left button selects San Jose only, the right selects SF only. Most of the time I leave it in the middle position, which selects both antenna. Nothing more fancy than combining the two signals. There's nothing directional about the two-way splitters, so I just reversed one of them (the one in the middle) to combine two signals into one.

The box to the right with the little red light is a signal booster. After all that splitting and combining I figured the signal would need boosting, especially since it's then split into four cables running to separate areas of the house.

There is slightly more ghosting on some channels with the two antennae combined, but not much, and the digital picture comes in with no ghosting at all, of course. If the signal degrades in the winter with stormy weather, I'll just select one or the other antenna. I might also upgrade one or both antenna to better models with less corrosion on the elements, but for now they're just fine. Plus, digital signal are all UHF (as I understand) so a big antenna with the big VHF rods probably won't be necessary any more (and those are the ones that are falling off one antenna - I blame fat birds!).

All the cables are the best I could get - RG-6 as I recall - and are run under the house in the crawl space and then up into wall outlets or simple holes in edge of floor. It took a while to design and install all this, but I wasn't working at the time so it gave me something to do... lol...

The telephone wire connection block to the right is what's called a "66 block". It's ok for telephone signals, but not considered good enough for ethernet. I forget the name of the block that is best for that, but it has much smaller, hidden blades to connect the wires, for less signal loss/distortion. At some point I will have ethernet going to all rooms, but don't really have the need at present. And for that I'll probably use a 100baseT hub with eight ports (ethernet to the workshop would be nice).

I used to work in the IT/computer business for about 15 years. Working as a machinist now. Pretty tired of computers; have had a new motherboard/processor plus hard drives to upgrade my main computer system here for about three years now... just can't get excited about it like I used to (plus I know all the complications that can ensue to make a 2 hour job into a 2 week job!).
 
Just spent about five hours mounting the flat panel to the wall. The biggest problem is that the mounting plate for the flat panel wall kit wasn't quite wide enough to span three wall studs. It's exactly 32 inches wide, but the mounting holes are more like 28 inches apart, max. Naturally, the way the fireplace is constructed, I had to span three studs to center the panel. Standard stud spacing is 16 inches...

So I brought the mounting kit to the workshop and after some sawing, bending, drilling, and filing, I was able to grip the edges of the mounting plate 32 inches apart, with four bolts, and then also hold it to the center stud with extra bolts (had to drill one extra hole for that). This being earthquake country, I wanted to make sure the thing won't come tumbling down in a shaker. Also, the wall is plaster and lathe, so toggle bolts won't work at all. Anyway, with six lag bolts, the flat panel's not going anywhere it's not supposed to!

Just why the mounting kit mfg created the mounting plate with no provision to span three joists is beyond me. Next time I'll check more carefully and make sure the kit has holes 32 inches apart ... if there is a next time.

Also discovered that the antenna cable wasn't screwed onto the flat panel coax connector very well, which might explain the dropouts I was getting on some San Jose stations. It's tight now, and not having a problem getting KTEH digital channels at night any more.

Next up is figuring out how to hide the wires and how to hook up the home theatre amplifier.
 

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