| Better late than never I got my coupon and my Zenith converter last month.
Reception is excellent - unless a car or truck drives by.
Then it just freezes.
My folks have a huge antenna on their roof, with a power rotator. With analog, they can get stations 75 miles away, no problem.
With their new digital set, half of the channels don't come in. The others lose audio.
Am I complaining? Not really, IFF DTV results in more content on multicast channels, not just informericals and weather stations.
But what we've discovered is that while DTV makes snowy reception a thing of the 20th century, crystal-clear pixelated slow-motion silent movies is not exactly what we were expecting.
Over the next year, we'll spend $150-400 to install new antennas on the roof. This is a hidden cost of conversion to DTV, which should be disclosed. I don't have any problem with it - after 50 years, I can understand the need and benefit of a forklift-upgrade, and the desire to recover the spectrum, and the content is still free..
We'll need the FCC to restate its satellite-dish placement rule, so it is understood that it applies to antennas as well.
I do believe that the government SHOULD NOT be handing out discount coupons (paid for by the taxpayers) of any kind, but as they have, they should be stackable, and apply to a converter, antenna/installation, or a new basic SDTV set. |
