atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News Free TV Converter Box Coupons Available

You can get two free $40 coupons for digital to analog TV converter boxes on this web page

Note: This will only raise your taxes by $160.00.

Don't expect much response to it. Over-the-air HDTV is in the UHF band and even if you can get decent reception there are at most two or three channels in each market to choose from.

If you have cable or DBS this change will make no difference to you. Unfortunately everybody now will have to subscribe to one or the other if they want to watch TV whether HD or standard def.

-Hal

Thanks for the tip! I'll be paying the taxes for this program regardless, so I've just cut my costs in half.

But we'll get a reduction in taxes once the government auctions off those VHF frequencies to the highest bidder.

Yeah, right.

-Hal

At first I was confused with this whole thing about convertor boxes, then I realized that you won't need them if you have cable :thumb:

I must be doing something wrong hbiss. I pickup ABC NBC CBS FOX PBS and a couple others on my HDTV with an antenna.
Its wild to see such a clear picture, then turn to the regular station and its fuzzy.

I have to subscribe to cable or satellite, since the only station I can pick up is one of the previously taxpayer supported stations and it's fuzzy at best. Since my broadband is on cable and I don't have to pay extra to get something fixed when it quits with cable, I guess I'm sticking with the tether. (Yeah, I know I'm paying the 'extra' up front)
Curiosity got the best of me, so I went to the link,"Retailer information will be posted when it becomes available" or something like that, with ONLY 414 days to go! John C. (Not Garand)

I must be doing something wrong hbiss. I pickup ABC NBC CBS FOX PBS and a couple others on my HDTV with an antenna.

No, you must be lucky. Off air UHF reception was always a problem in most areas, particularly in the caverns of cities. Also, because they tend to be scattered all over an area you need an antenna rotor to receive them all unless you are really close.

The only reason UHF stations survived was because the FCC told cable operators that they had to carry them on their systems. If they had to rely only on their off-air coverage they would have died long ago.

-Hal

I laugh every time i hear someone talking about this crap. The paranoia. I mean really; how many have a set of rabbit ears on their tv sets anymore? Not even novella, telemundo, junkies tolerate this type of reception anymore.

Rumor has it google is up on the bid. ?New cell services or wireless internet services?

People don't understand that these boxes will only allow digital signal to your set. This will not get you HD. As stated if you have cable or satelite you will already get digital. My questions is when the conversion is complete will we still pay extra for the digital signals or wil they just rename it to the standard package???

It is important to understand that the DTV transition is a transition from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. It is not a transition from analog broadcasting to High Definition broadcasting. Digital broadcasting allows for High Definition broadcasts, but High Definition is not required, and you do not need to buy a HDTV to watch digital TV. A Standard Definition DTV (which is simply a TV with an internal digital tuner), or a digital-to-analog converter box hooked to an analog TV, is all that is required to continue watching over-the-air broadcast television. Digital broadcast television includes Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) formats. You can watch High Definition programming on a Standard Definition DTV (or on an analog TV hooked to a digital-to-analog converter box), but it won’t be in full High Definition quality.

rustynails-
Google came out on it's home page and said they were not planning a wireless cell service, it was a word of mouth rumour.

More on the story here- https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15700344/

My company is doing a BIG wiring job in the Bronx. Fiber everywhere, feeding wireless transmitting stations on telephone poles and street lights.

Supposedly, when they're done with the Bronx, it's on to Brooklyn. And then the world.

I was told the name of the outfit we're wiring for, but it didn't register (They just might be a shill for someone). Supposedly they'll be buying up the bandwidth from the TV stations and offering wireless everything.

This is very reminiscent of 10-12 years ago. We did a lot of work for Winstar, ART & Telergy. They bought up bandwidth in the 38Ghz (Microwave) spectrum that had supposedly been previously owned by the CIA. We pulled fiber to centrally located "Hub" sites and then set up towers to supply bandwidth (internet access, tie lines and dial tone to local users over short haul (< 2 miles) microwave.

It worked real well for a couple of years until all these outfits overextended themselves during the dot-com feeding frenzy. When the bottom fell out, so did they.

I however, made a ton of money during those years, so I can't complain.


Sam

Well, my family does a bit of camping (city style) and I do plenty of football tailgating. I ordered my converter coupons so we can continue to take a TV with us on these outings. What about those kid's soccer playoff days where you have to sit there and wait for three games to end before you know if your kid's team will play again?

Hey, it's practically free, so why not?

Rusty I use rabbit ears and external antennas with a satellite connection thats the only way to get local channels.

Metelcom, I thought the FCC required Satelite providers to air local channels awhile ago. Of course you are "Up North".

I use rabbit ears on my TV in the gargage/woodshop and portable TVs for camping and when the wife goes shopping. (I sit in the car and watch Law and Order).

I'm glad to see a good explanation of the difference in HDTV and DTV. There is a lot of confusion about that.

That's true from what I understand, they have to "offer" the local channels, but customers do not have to buy them as part of their programming package.

I used to work for Winstar in the Houston area, I can honestly say that the concept of what they were doing was a great idea, but the technology running it was not up with the idea.... We had problems all the time, and customers were jumping ship after only a month with us.. No wonder that company is not longer in business.

We did very well and most customers seemed happy. What nailed Winstar was a commitment from Lucent to supply them with a Billion dollars worth of switching equipment. They had expanded at breakneck speed and when Lucent renegged they were left holding the bag.

Personally, I don't think that microwave should be your primary feed for Dial Tone. As a backup it's perfect. Of course sometime that's all you can get.

We had one job - a US government agency that took over 4 HUGE floors in an empty factory building in a NYC neighborhood that was pretty well empty - all former factories and warehouses.

They were moving in and ordered 500+ lines of Centrx from NY Tel. The Phone company came back with the shamefaced acknowledgement that thay only had 4 working pairs in the building and 11 in the immediate area! They had no plans to pull any more cable in for the next several years.

They went to TCG for fiber, but they couldn't deliver it in time. We ran in a DS3 from Metrotech over Microwave. Installed the muxes and delivered 672 DT's in under a week.

It worked real well. I think they're still using it.

Sam

?

My apologies. If anyone should no better - it's me.


Sam

We don't subscribe to any satellite or cable service. We use an antenna to pick up the Memphis stations which are about 50 to 60 miles away. A little fuzz is better than paying for crap I don't want to watch anyway.

All broadcast TV here in the U.K. has been exclusively UHF for over 20 years, a situation which arose in part because for a long time we had two different standards in use.

Our old VHF system was the original pre-war, 405-line monochrome standard, with positive video modulation and A.M. sound.

There were only two organizations involved, the BBC and the ITA, but co-sited transmitters were very much the exception rather than rule, not least because of practical propagation issues. Most of the BBC transmitters were band I (ch. 1 - 5, 41 to 68MHz) while all ITA transmitters were band III (ch. 6 - 13, 174 to 216MHz).

In the early 1960s though, it was decided that Britain should eventually move to the emerging European 625-line standard, and a complete UHF network was designed to cover the country, with transmitter sites shared by the BBC and ITA throughout.

Four channels were allocated to each area, two intended for BBC use and two for ITA. The allocations were made so that in most places the four channels were all grouped near to each other, allowing narrow-band Yagi arrays trimmed to the appropriate group to be used for reception. The co-siting meant that viewers would need only one fixed antenna of the correct group.

The first UHF station (using 625-lines with negative video modulation and F.M. sound) opened for the new BBC2 service in 1964, with color (using the PAL system) being added in 1967. Around 1968/69 the BBC1 and ITA services also got UHF transmitters for the first time and went to color.

The three-station network on UHF was gradually extended across most of the country during the 1970s, but the old BBC1 and ITA VHF transmitters continued to simulcast the same program to the old 405-line monochrome standard.

The fourth network rolled out across the UHF system in 1982, and then finally in 1985 with very little ceremony the entire VHF network was closed down.

A lot of good planning went into the UHF network (the co-siting, grouped channels, etc.), but even in a country as small as the U.K. we had problems. Just look at a transmitter map of the country today and you'll see dozens of low-power relays (transposers) in the mountainous areas of Wales and Scotland. In fact when the VHF transmitters were switched off there were complaints from a lot of small, remote places in those areas because they simply could not receive decent UHF signals.

Even over this side of the country where the terrain is relatively flat there are shadows in UHF coverage. There's a town a few miles from here which lies in a slight dip, and even though it's only about 15 miles from a main UHF transmitter with 250kW ERP, they had to build a small relay for the town.

To get to more recent times though, we've seen the rollout of digital TV quite rapidly here in the last few years. Each transmitter site is broadcasting six digital multiplexes, each carrying an assortment of TV and radio stations. You can see the list here:

https://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/dtt_channels.html

At most sites they've tried to allocate channels within the existing antenna group of analog channels.

In many areas though, the digital transmitters will not be brought up to full power until analog is shut down, which is due to take place region-by-region from the end of this year through to 2012.

My local transmitter, Tacolneston, is running two multiplexes at 10kW and the other four at only 5kW:

https://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/tx_ea.html

A lot of people haven't realized this, and on the fringes of the service area (I'm about 25 miles away) some multiplexes can be very borderline at the moment, unless you want to spend a lot of money on a high-gain antenna.