-=> Mike Ross said to Jasen Betts
 -=> about "{at}%^{at}#$%^ VEROBOARD" on 03-11-04  22:04.....

 MR> They don't make tuners like they used to in early VCR's. I still use
 MR> an old RCA to pull in DX channels off air. The blue screen of death on
 MR> modern VCR's is less than useless.

For the technical skilled, for sure. For dumbos it's useful. It
tells them not to watch a channel they might want to complain
about.

  BTW digital tv is going to make
 MR> DXing nearly impossible. At least when analog goes wrong some of it
 MR> usually still manages to get through but with digital it's all or
 MR> nothing. I'd much rather have a degraded signal than no signal at all
 MR> or a stupid blue screen!

There have been a few letters and I think at least one editorial
in Silicon Chip  commenting on the problems
with digital reception.

One letter I recall said that the correspondent had been
persuaded to try digital. He spent a very long time experimenting
to find the "sweet spot" for the antenna where the signal was
good enough to give consistent reception --- and this was in an
area where the analog reception was consistently quite acceptable
for almost any siting of the antenna --- but he was still plagued
by intermittent loss of sound or freezes of the picture, not
long, but long enough and often but enough to destroy his
enjoyment of the programs.

It is said that the siting of the antenna usually requires a
special meter that measures the dropout rate.

And whan you find the "sweet spot" for one channel, what
guarantee is there that reception of other channels will be
acceptable?

DX my foot! Digital is going to destroy just about everything
outside of the area that currently gets absolutely perfect analog
reception.

I'm tempted to think the aim is to drive people away from "free
to air" and onto cable and satellite. OTOH it seems a damnedly
expensive way to do it....

   ,-./\
  /     \ From Greg Mayman, in beautiful Adelaide, South Australia
  \_,-*_/    "Queen City of The South"    34:55 S  138:36 E
       v

... Pull yourself together; things are not all that bad.
___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30

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