TechnoBabble

Every now and again I either get a call from a viewer or friends who ask me if this "digital television" they keep hearing about really works. Well of course it works! I see all the time at work! Of course that isn't what they mean. What they mean is can they watch TV in digital with an antenna from their house like they can with analog TV. There are so much information out there, and some of it isn't correct and even contradicts itself so what is the truth? All I can tell you is what I have personally observed from my own experiences in the last 6 years of having a digital tuner (well many anyway).

In late 2001 and early 2002, the major stations here began to sign on their digital transmitters at varying levels of coverage. No one was at full power except for PBS on Sauratown Mt who has a low power level to start with. Up until then some stations in Raleigh and Charlotte were on the air, but it didn't make much sense to go buy a $1200 digital tuner or a $6000 TV just to see if I could get those stations. So I waited until the local stations came on. By that time the price of tuners had dropped and I could actually watch something.

In those early days of local digital TV, not everyone was on 24 hours a day. WFMY was only on the air from 8:00 PM to 11:30 PM and when they actually broadcast something in HD. WXII signed on at 5:00 PM and signed off at 11:30 PM. Both were operating at half power. WXLV and WUPN (now WMYV) were on the air 24/7 but no HD and both operated at reduced power as well. We did operate 24/7 from the first day, but operated at 4200 watts of power, not the 1 million watts we run today. Even so, with the transmit antenna at 900 ft on our old tower at Randleman, I was able to pick up a viewable picture 99% of the time at my home in north Greensboro and we heard from many others around the area that did also. But there were many who couldn't because they were beyond our limited coverage area.

What that did show me was that this "digital TV' could do pretty well, even at low power. What it doesn't do is work 100% of the time with rabbit ears. Even after we increased power, more people with rabbit ears did pick us up, but in the digital world, rabbit ears should be avoided at all costs. Even a modest antenna placed on a deck or overhang will run circles around rabbit ears. My first antenna was a $50 UHF only antenna with 50 feet of RG-59 cable (not the stuff you want to be using) on a 10 ft pole roped to my back deck with no rotor and I picked up all the local stations, even low power WGHP from that humble little screen antenna. It doesn't take much antenna to pick up digital signals, but you have to at least try.

Now for those who have a noisy analog picture of a station, then yes, you may have trouble picking up the digital station counterpart, not because there is no signal, but there isn't enough signal for the digital receiver to lock to. Digital doesn't go quite as far as analog because of that, but it does work 95% of the coverage area. When we fire up the channel 8 digital transmitter on February 17, we will be looking to see how close the new digital signal will be in coverage to old analog signal.