Digital TV - pleasant surprise

[Bob K]

I bought a digitial converter box for our analog TV and have better reception of the digital stations than I do with the analog stations.  Everything I read said it would be worse.  We use only rabbitears (inside the cabin), and when at anchor in places where analog reception was usually fuzzy, I am now able to get digital stations - and better yet - weather radar pictures whenever we like!!   So I suspect the tuner in the digital box has much better sensitivity than the one within the TV. 

[Craig Illman]

My feeling is that digital TV is pretty binary. You either have enough signal to get a complete picture or you get nothing. The bad news is that it's UHF and has a much more restricted range than the low end of the soon to end VHF analog signals.

Craig

[Braxton]

My experience backs up  Craig's statement.   Digital is great when you have enough signal but when you don't it shuts off completely.   As Craig said, its binary, either on or off.   

[Mike and Joanne Stimmler]

It's my understanding that digital channels are and will be on both VHF and UHF frequencies. My experience has been if the channel is weak, you will either get nothing or a checkerboard or it will cut in and out between a picture and no picture. In a lot of cases, fuzzy analog pictures turn into crisp digital pictures.
We are also using rabbit ears bungee corded to the boom, but we are in the process of putting up a radar mast on the stern and will be putting a permanent TV antenna on the same mast along with the GPS antenna.
I'll let you know how that goes.

[Ted Pounds]

The digital channels will just be UHF.  The VHF spectrum freed up will be used for other purposes.  At that point rabbit ears will be useless and all you'll need is a compact UHF antenna.

[David Sanner]

While on the topic, if anyone cruises with a laptop but no TV there
are DTV to USB converters  (ATSC HDTV Broadcast to USB),
so that most newer laptop can double as HDTV's.  Approx $80.

They are the size of a memory key and have a antenna input
on one side and a USB connector on the other.

Some even come with software that let you record your
favorite shows.... weather, baseball, etc..