Re: DTV antennas?

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:37:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Dunno. The local Radio Shock store had a pile of the Zenith ATSC
converter boxes in stock. About $75. I may have timed my visit
perfectly, but they were certainly available about a week ago. I'm on
satellite TV so I don't qualify for the government subsidized coupon.

The what??? In "socialist" Britian you would have to prove you were
absolutely destitute to get a subsidy on a digital set top box!

See:
<http://www.dtv2009.gov>
Basically, the victims of the latest government plot to obsolete
everyone's TV are being compensated for the inconvenience. Please
note that we're having a national election in Nov 2008, with a new
government in place in Jan 2009. The transition is in Feb 2009 thus
insuring that the incumbents will be safely out of the country when
the GUM (great unwashed masses) riot at the doors of the houses of
government chanting "You guys broke my TV".

One does not need to demonstrate impoverishment or even financial
ineptitude in order to obtain a coupon. That's done indirectly as
those that can afford cable TV or satellite TV are not eligible for a
coupon. We may not be socialist quite yet, but we do know how such
things are done.

However, there is one good thing about the converter coupon program.
In order to qualify for the plan, the converter box has to meet the
NTIA A/74 specifications which are surprisingly sane when compared to
some other specifications I've been forced to read and follow:
<http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/frnotices/2007/DTVFinalRule_2e.htm>

ISTR there is a scheme to make them available free to pensioners.

The only pensioners we have are pensions from government services.
Most of the 409K retirement plans have imploded and are not paying
dividends. Good plan as the government always takes care of its own.

And
more importantly some help in setting the thing up to work.

Since the boxes are purchased from a retailer, the assumption is that
the retailer is responsible for assisting the customer. Actually,
that does tend to be a problem as it adds yet another IR remote
control. (I have 5 on the table).

The older TV
aerials lacked the right characteristics and often needed replacing for DTV.

Pardon my ignorance, but what "characteristic" of an antenna is
lacking for DTV? Unless you have a resonant hole in the middle of a
channel, there's not much I can do to an antenna to make it difficult
to receive DTV. Besides, such an antenna would also not work for
analog. For marginal situations, I can see a bigger antenna, adding a
low noise amplifier, or repositioning, but not replacing the antenna.
<http://www.antennaweb.org>

Incidentally over here a few early adopters have come unstuck when the
latest signal encoding improvements have broken the earliest firmware.

It would have been so nice to be able to do OTA (over the air)
firmware updates, but that might have added a few pennies to the cost.

It is estimated that about 1% of all set top boxes sold to date will
fail as a result (although most early adopters probably have replaced it
by now). At present only a few parts of Scotland are affected.

Once upon a time, I personally tested and ran QA on approximately 100
radios prior to shipping. About 5% of the radios were deemed
"defective" by the recipients. I've used that number ever since for
the percentage of working products, that are deemed defective. Another
interpretation is that 5% of the customers will claim something is
defective, even when it's working.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

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