Patrick Hasler

He may of got someone else in his family to apply ? ... dunno ! i have all I need anyway

Patrick Hasler

On the downside to all this ............. I have noticed how many more channels I get in NYC and other city areas but in some more rural areas I can't pick up a thing

Michael

I don't think the boxes that are available with the coupon have HD capability but only digital SD capability. Besides if you purchased a HDTV over the past couple of years, it should have a digital tuner built in allowing you to get HD so you wouldn't need the external box.

If you purchased an older HDTV (at least 3 years ago) that did not have a built-in digital tuner, you would need to purchase a more expensive external tuner to be able to receive HD via the airways.

HoosierDaddy

Get the Dish Network TR-40 CRA for less than $10 shipped.....

mozoo

I second that choice. We received two coupons and got two decoder boxes, one to use in our RV, and the other for our basement telly. We subscribe to Dish but, on occasion, we lose signal from the inclement weather we sometimes suffer in Michigan. It's good to have a backup for our old telly in the basement when there are weather warnings and we have to stay down there. At least we'll know what's going on "out there" when we're hunkered down.

The RV one worked brilliantly when we went away this weekend. Very easy to set up, and we pulled in a lot of distant channels! We got ours from the following, and they do a good deal on shipping if anyone is interested:

https://digitalstar.com/product.aspx...0-144bf60cc8c3

Michael

Some of the stations are currently required to transmit at low power due to the possibility of interfering with other stations from a different city on the same frequency. Hopefully they will go to full power during the change over.

Also during the changeover, some stations will be assigned a new frequency so you will have to perform a new scan to pick up the stations again.

The following are the San Franciso stations and you can see the new frequency assignments as well as notes at the bottom showing channel 3, 4, 22, 36, 40, and 68 are currently transmitting at low power.

http://www.choisser.com/sfonair.html

Because of the way the new system is designed, you will not be able to just pick up stations like the analog system. This is due to the fact that the new system has an alais (virtual channel) and the physical channel can be completely different from the virtual channel (ex. ch 2.1 is currently physical channel 56.1 which will be physical channel 44.1 after the changeover in SF). Therefore in the rural areas or another city, you may have to rescan to pick up the stations from the nearest city if not the same as you previous city (you can't pick those up automatically without a rescan like analog). However, if you can determine the physical to virtual channel assignments in different areas and the virtual channels do not conflict with the other area, some external tuners will allow you to assign the channels manually so you could possibly enter them manually so you don't have to rescan as you move between areas. Even if the virtual number conflicts (ex. ch 2 is physical channel 56.1 in once city and is physical channel 44.1 in another city), it may be possible to manually assign one of those physical channels to channel 2 and the other physical channel to channel 3 so you won't have to do a rescan as you move between cities (watch channel 2 in one city and channel 3 in another).

The reason that the virtual assignment concept was created was to allow the channel number that you see never change. If they didn't have the virtual assignmnet capability, channel numbers would unfamiliar and possibly be changing all over the place until the final changeover occured (ex. ch 2.1 would be 56.1 now and 44.1 after the changeover in SF but instead will always remain as 2.1 with the virtual channel concept). Physical channel assignments are being changed during the changeover to eliminate transmision conflicts between nearby cities (some will start using the freed up physical channels) so that all stations can transmit at full power.

In fact if a new channel starts to broacast in your city, you will not pick up that channel until you rescan. So therefore until this changover occurs, it would be adviseable to rescan about every month to make sure a new channel has not started transmitting.

So you just can't move from area to area without rescanning or manually seting up the channels.

In the UK and the rest of Europe, the virtual channel concept (scan required to locate virtual channel assignments) is not implemented in digitial TVs and external tuners since assigned channel numbers are not as important as the US. However, when the changeover occurs in those countries, channels will be all over the place. Also the US system uses the dot system (ex. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc.) which allows all channels for the same station to have the same primary channel number (ex. 2 analog SD channel, 2.1 HD channel, 2.2 digital SD channel, 2.3 Weather channel, 2.4 Alternate SD channel, etc.) whereas Europe may possibly have their analog channel on channel 4, HD channel on channel 56, SD digital channel on channel 95, Weather channel on channel 42, and the alternate channel on channel 156.

effi

What I want to know is why have congress passed a bill saying we have to do this anyway? If they want us to do it, why don't they pay for the bleeding boxes? What are in the boxes anyway, are we going to be monitored? All sounds very fishy to me.

Michael

It is occuring around the world. It already started in the UK (analog is being turned off around the country in sections and won't be complete until 2012) and the UK government is not giving the consumer anything to purchase converter boxes.

The following are the reasons.

• Government needs some of the current frequency bands for emergency services.
• HD is becoming very popular and only uses about 1/2 the bandwidth as an analog channel with about 6 times the resolution.
• SD digital uses about 1/10th the bandwidth as an analog channel and the quality is better.
• By changing to 100% digital (even with removing some of the frequency bands for government use), at least 3 times the current number of channels would possibly be available for new stations.

Digital TV is totally different technology than analog TV so the broadcasters couldn't use the same frequency band and carrier like they did when TVs converted from black and white to color. There isn't any way to carry the data needed for digital tv on an analog band.

Patrick Hasler

Micheal ............. You are a mind of information... Thank you

Michael

I don't know if they exist but there may be external tuners that allow you to not perform the scan and have the channels show up as the physical channels. This way it would work like analog and you would immediately pick up different stations as you moved from one area to another. The problem is that your going to be seeing unfamilar channels numbers and if you do an Up Channel, it may take you 32 of those to move between main channels (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, .........,2,31, 2.32). To get though all the approximately 60 channels, it would take about 1900 Up Channels therefore making the Up/Down Channel useless. However, I think they may be able to analyze that band (main channel) on the fly and only stop at the next transmitting channel in the band instead of stopping on each channel in the band keeping the number of Up/Down Channels required to a minimum. Doing it that way would probably take longer (maybe 2-5 seconds) as you move from one band to the next band before the tv switched channels.

HoosierDaddy

Dish Network have now brought out the DTV Pal DVR...

$249 if you need it

Wondered how long that would take......

Moonshadow_Girl

After much research, my DH and I opted for the DISH Pal converter (We dropped our crap cable connection and can't have a Satellite Dish on our apt), and we are pleased as punch with our free with shipping and handling box. One of the local channels has 3 extra channels besides the regular one. Our local PBS has 2 channels and 1 spanish channel also.

DISH is coming out with a DVR/converter box edition mid December. At a heftier price of course, and it is not eligible for the $40 coupon. http://blogs.consumerreports.org/ele...er%20box%20dvr