Digital converter that receives NBC?

Question

The Olympics are on but, unfortunately, my NBC (ch. 11) is fuzzy.

My friend who lives 7 blocks away from me does not receive NBC neither, even though she has cable. However, another friend lives four blocks above my hill and receives NBC signal with or without her Insignia converter box.

I recently bought the Insignia digital converter hoping to be able to watch the olympics. However, when i pressed 'ch 11' it stated that it had no signal in my area. I was wondering if there is anyway i can change the settings to receive ch.11/ 3 or if there is another brand of digital converter out there so that I would be able to receive a signal for NBC.

Thanks in adv.

Answer 1

If NBC is coming in fuzzy in analog, very likely its digital signal is too weak to be picked up with any digital converter box.

By your description, you need to raise a pretty high outdoor antenna. That hill is your problem.

I'm surprised your friend has cable but doesn't get the local NBC affiliate. That would be my suggestion: subscribe to cable or satellite.

Answer 2

I too was hoping to watch the Olympics.  I correctly set up my converter box to my TV and antennae but kept getting a "No Signal" message on the TV screen.  Not just a low-strength signal, but NO SIGNAL whatsoever.  After 3 hours of trouble shooting, I figured it out. It turned out that I had to turn my antennae (it's a fancy antennae, not just rabbit ears) to the lowest strength to pick up the highest number of local signals.  When I had it set to the highest strength so it would pick up long distance signals, it found NO SIGNAL.  So you could try turning you antennae to the lowest strength/ local signals and see what happens.

Answer 3

The tuner in the Insignia is about as good as they get, so getting another brand is not likely to help any.

Unlike analog TV channels, the channel numbers for digital broadcasts are more like names. Unless your Insignia found channel 11 during it's setup scan, it doesn't "know" where digital channel 11 is. If you go to the web site below you can find out what the "real" channel number is. You can enter this number into the Insignia with your remote and use the signal strength tone/bar to move your antenna around and see if you can pick up digital channel 11.

While you are at the tvfool.com web site, write down the distance and direction(s) to NBC's analog and digital transmitters.

Since you have a fuzzy analog NBC picture, it's unlikely that you are going to be able to get a reliable digital signal with your current antenna.

You will probably need a better antenna, but without your zip code and distance to transmitters, it's rather useless to speculate about what kind you  need.