TV Antenna

[Halcyon]

Does the switch from analog to digital broadcast TV require a new antenna? If so any recomendations. Thanks

[loubennett]

No antenna change is required. You will see a lot of talk about digital ready antennas but the broadcasts are on the same frequencies as the old analog system. Stations may have changed frequencies and some that were VHF may now be UHF. You need an antenna that covers both to get the best results. Other than signal strenghth the most important factor is multipath. Multipath is caused by the signal reflecting from hills, buildings etc and is what caused ghosts on the analog system. It can make recovery of the digital signal impossible. An antenna with higher directivity (usually means larger) can help this problem. The bottom line is connect a digital tv to your existing antenna and try it. Likely you will get similar performance on number of channels. Ones that had some ghosting will now be crystal clear. Ones that had severe ghosting will not be received at all.

[Halcyon]

Thanks Lou, my initial just plug the new TV in how the old one was did not get any picture. I'll try again. the boat has a three way splitter for cable in, tv and ? I'll fiddle with it some more.

[loubennett]

Make sure the digital tv is set properly. Somewhere in the menu there should be settings for analog, digital off the air or cable. Set it for digital off the air. Then use the scan function to locate the channels you can get. In the old analog system the channel number corresponed to the carrier frequency. For digital tv it doesn't necessarily match. The channel information is embedded in the signal. Scanning gathers that information and stores it in the tuner. If you travel to areas where different channels are available you will need to repeat the scan. During the transition from analog to digital each station was allocated an additional carrier frequency and they broadcast their analog signal on the original carrier and digital on the new one. When digital became mandatory they turned off the analog signal and had the option of moving the digital signal to their old frequency. Some did, many did not. Consequently they are identified with the old channel number but are not on the old carrier frequency. Another thing to check is to make sure your splitter passes UHF to the tv. Many channels that used to be in the VHF band are now in the UHF band as a result of the transition process.