With an old (2000)RV TV antenna will the DTV signals get thru?

Question

The RV has both an over-the-air antenna as well as a satellite antenna. I know the sat will work OK but how about the o-t-a?

Answer 1

Despite what others say and whatever label manufacturers put on them, there is no such thing as a "HD" or "Digital" antenna.  If your current antenna works well for analog, it should be OK for DTV.  The antenna doesn't know what it's picking up, if it's in the proper frequency range, the antenna should work.

Just make sure the antenna is in good shape and works for UHF and VHF.

Answer 2

There is nothing special about antennas for DTV. In general, the signals are in the same frequency range as the old analog TV.

However, there are two factors to be considered.

The first is that much of the DTV programming is in the UHF band as opposed to the analog programming which is mostly in the VHF band. So, if your antenna wasn't designed to do well in UHF, you will have a problem. As an aside, after the analog channels disappear on 2/18/09, some of the DTV channels presently broadcasting will be moving to different frequencies, with some of them moving to the abandoned analog VHF frequencies.

The second consideration is that DTV is either "perfectly" received or not at all. With analog, you can get a snowy or ghosty picture and still watch it. With DTV, if the signal isn't good, you'll get no picture at all.

So, if you are getting good quality analog TV now in both the VHF and UHF bands, you should receive DTV well.

One other thing to keep in mind is that many antennas have performance that varies widely from channel to channel. With analog TV, you can live with it. With DTV, it leads to a situation where some channels come in perfectly, and others not at all.

The attached link is for a listing of all the US channels AFTER 2/17/09, showing the NTSC analog channel vs the final ATSC channel location.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/at...

Answer 3

Yes.

Digital or Analog signals, they are all the same.

Digital signals are on the same sets of channels (2-69) as analog signals.

Antenna sizes are based solely on the wavelength of the radio wave's frequency. Since The ranges of channels are the same for analog or digital signals there will be no difference in the design of the antennas.

Essentially an antenna can be as simple as a piece of wire cut to the right length. They can become more complicated to increase the sensitivity in a particular direction, however what's good for an analog signal is good for a digital signal.

There have been many antennas sold as "Digital antennas" This is a wonderful marketing ploy, but it is not grounded in any fact.