Quote:
Originally Posted by herplace
I'm baffled by the apparent smothering of all the other stations by NBC yet all emmanating from the same place.
They all used to come in analog with snow more or less. now NBC has the as advertised digital perfection and all the others are gone. How do I get around the NM spread? CBS has 13. something and NBC is like 0.something.
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Hi, and welcome. Thanks for the tvfool link.
It looks like all the channels in your area are relatively weak, which is what you'd expect from being about 58 miles away from most of the transmitters. I don't think it's a matter of NBC "smothering" any other channels, but merely a case of the other channels not coming in strong enough.
Having a spread of NM values over 20-30 dB is also not a problem. Your tuner should be able to deal with that much variation without breaking a sweat.
If you would characterize your analog channels as "snowy" before, it probably means that you're not getting enough signal to lock onto the digital channels now. Digital TV signals need to be pretty clean to be locked on to. It's almost an all-or-nothing situation. If your tuner has enough signal to lock on to, you end up with the pristine DTV picture. If you're below the minimum threshold, even by a little bit, you will probably get no picture at all (and get the message "no signal" on your TV).
Having lots of excess signal does not make the picture any sharper either. However, sometimes having a bit of extra signal "buffer" is good for preventing the signal from fading into and out of signal lock (due to moving trees, cars passing by, weather variations, and other random fluctuations).
If you are indeed just a little short on the required signal, it would help to know a few more details about your current setup:
- What kind of antenna are you using?
- Where is the antenna installed (attic? roof?) and which direction is it pointing?
- Do you have a pre-amp?
- Approximately how long is the cable from the antenna to your TV?
- Do you split the signal among multiple TVs?
Your answers will determine whether or not the best solution involves getting a better antenna, adding a pre-amp, or something else.
Best regards,
Andy