Do you understand this DTV thing?

Question

My old Magnavox TV finally died after 17 years of great service. I bought a new RCA TV to replace it because Magnavox quality has gone way down over the years. This TV is DTV ready, but during the setup, I got 7 analog channels and 0 digital channels. Will this pose a problem when the conversion occurs or is this TV converting the channels from digital to analog? Any help would be appreciated. Their web site doesn't explain it very well to me.

Answer 1

Are you sure that the new TV has a digital tuner> HDTV-ready usually means that the TV has the resolution to display HD content, but not necessarily that it has a digital tuner. You may have to buy a separate digital tuner.

There are some external digital tuners around, but they're hard to find. If you're interested in getting a TiVo, the HD TiVo ($250) could feed your DTV. Unfortunately it has a monthly subscription fee of $8-$13.

Answer 2

no it won,t

Answer 3

DTV ready and a DTV are very different things.  A DTV ready TV is a analog TV and therefore will need a separate digital tuner in order to get the stations you would like.  Only SDTV and HDTV have a digital tuner already installed, if you have one of these you may need a better antenna.

Answer 4

There is no difference between an analog antenna and a digital antenna.

That being said, here's something to consider.

In analog TV channel 4 is channel 4, channel 18 is 18 and so on.

With digital, all is not as simple as it may seem. Right now most analog stations are also transmitting in digital. But you don't have the analog and digital signals on the same channel number. So channel 18 might have their digital signal on channel 61. or channel 4 may have theirs on 28.

Digital TV allows the station to use "Virtual Channel Numbers" So even if the signal is actually on 61 the TV will tell you it's 18. (This was to make stations feel comfortable with having to change their number).

So here's the problem you may have. Many VHF channels you are used to (2-13) have their digital signal on UHF. If you have a great VHF antenna, but the UHF was not so great, this could explain it that easily.

Maybe you need a better antenna... but don't fall into the "Digital antenna" misleading information. There is NO DIFFERENCE between an analog antenna and a digital antenna.

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Update

If you have one, check your amplifier, it might not be so good for digital. It shouldn't make a difference, but maybe it's inserting noise your digital tuner doesn't like.

Check your tuner settings. OTA (Over the air) and CATV (Cable TV) use different modulation methods to encode the signal. OTA uses ATSC, CATV use QAM. If you are set to the wrong one, your TV will not see any digital cahnnels.

Does your TV have more than one Antenna Input? Some do, it could make a difference.

Do  you have any splitters that could be looping back in your antenna cable line? It could cause interference that wipes out the digital signal.

Do you have any channel injectors, devises to put a security camera on a UHF channel or something, they could also cause problems in some cases.

Does your signal come in separate UHF and VHF cables and you are using a combiner? Try one then then the other.

Is it possible to type in a known digital channel? Some TVs will let you type in a digital channel number, the once detected it will remap it to its virtual channel number. Sitting on the channel for a few minutes might cause it to find it. (Some TVs just don't do it this way)

Have you tried a simple Re-Scan?

Is it possible to hook to a crummy indoor antenna just to see if you get different results?

Answer 5

The antenna you have may not be adequate for digital TV reception or may not be pointed in the right direction.

See what antenna you need (by distance from your local stations) and where you need to aim it by using Choose An Antenna at this web site:

http://www.antennaweb.org

By using this site run by the Consumer Electronics Association and the National Association of Broadcasters you will find out if digital stations exist in your area and if so how far away are they.  Antennas that worked for analog might not work for digital due to the need for more signal for the set to lock onto the data.