[SBE] Digital Conversion PSA

[Richard Klein]

Much of my experience so far points to some specific causes of reception problems that are associated with equipment at the receive end.  Over the 5 year period we've been on the air in the Albany NY market, I've found very few viewers that I have not been able to help resolve a DTV related receive problem.

The number one issue I've found has to do with amplified compact antennas that have terrible frequency response over the band and/or are only good for UHF, not the full range of channels used for DTV transmission.

The second has to do with the use of amplifiers that are being overdriven into compression or clipping distortion.  The distortion may not be very apparent when watching analog, but will cause severe problems in decoding DTV.

A close third is the use of amplified rabbit ears with "tuning" controls which cause phase and frequency response problems.  For most of those I recommend the use of a simple, inexpensive set of rabbit ears that costs less than $15.

Unfortunately we have many vendors out there who are selling equipment inappropriate to the area of use and giving out poor or false information. We all need to do a better job of reaching out and communicating with our viewers.

Richard Klein
Director of Engineering
WNYT-TV/DT
(518) 207-4850
(518) 207-4895 fax

________________________________
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of A9xw at cs.com
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 3:20 PM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: Re: [SBE] Digital Conversion PSA

When WBBM CBS 2 DTV 3 moves to DTV 12 maybe I can get a signal and cancel my sat sub. As of now they have (and for decades) the worst signal in Chicago and completely unreceiveable in my area, 32 miles from their TX.

Henry
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