Re: Digital sucks I want my Rabbit Ears back!!!

[john1966elliott]

And too me, in Australia

[davenwin1973]

I know this video is a year old, but I only came across this video recently. What kind of antenna or antennas are you using for your stations and for what area? I'm in Gary Indiana, & I have a big outdoor rural antenna that's optimized for 2-69. Chicago has always been a VHF/UHF market. Prior to June 12th, WBBM-TV was the only VHF station on 3. June 12th, WLS-TV went back to 7 & WBBM-TV went to 12. Everyone else is on UHF. Except for WYIN (1 of 3 PBS stations), 1 antenna is all I need.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

Hi...Where to start...I have been using outdoor combination Vhf/UHF antennas for years, as at first we had only Vhf TV stations, then they brought in PBS on UHF, so these antennas worked great. However, after they went digital I had to use DTV converter boxes as the TVs were fairly new, only a couple of years old but like new yet. Now all the TV stations that I can pick up are digital, so now all I'd need are UHF antennas. The VHF portion of the TV antenna isn't being used.

[davenwin1973]

@BernieLJ77 Wausau & Eau Claire markets still have VHF stations. So it's not true that you're only using the UHF portion of your antenna. CBS & ABC in Wausau are on VHF, along with NBC out of Eau Claire. Even Milwaukee & Green Bay each still have 1 VHF station in their market. Madison however is all UHF. Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo MI went from being a 3 VHF channel market to a 5 VHF channel market (WGVU/WGVK were former UHF stations now on VHF)

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

Yes, I know that they have some low power VHF stations, and some translator stations, but they are too far away, as I don't pick them up here at all. I have a TV that picks up VHF and I get nothing on it and also have an analog TV card in the computer and I no longer get anything on it either, except I do now use a DTV converter box connected to it. I replaced the 90-mile (VHF)/50-mile (UHF) antenna with a 120-mile (VHF)/90-mile UHF one.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

I turned the 90-Mile VHF/50-Mile UHF towards Eau Claire, and I have both antennas fixed in those directions, the 120-mile VHF/90-Mile UHF one I have pointed towards Wausau, SE from Medford here, and Rib Mountain is almost in direct line between here and Fox55 in Wittenburg, and it always was snowy here, but the digital signal I couldn't pick up until I switched the 90-Mile antenna to a 120-Mile one.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

The 90-Mile one I have pointed SW towards Eau Claire, towards the transmission tower East of Eau Claire actually...but trying a VHF only antenna I get nothing at all...so here I can only pick up UHF stations, but my point to who I originally uploaded the reply video to, well, he was trying to get UHF stations, and if you look at the picture, it looked like the UHF portion of his "Rabbit Ear" antenna was hanging down, not connected to his TV. Thanks though.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

I don't use rotors as they're expensive, and those are expensive, if you get a good one, and the $50.00 to $60.00 ones don't last over a year or two, plus I have TVs in the living room and bedroom, so I just have them fixed in one direction. I may add one more to point NE towards Rhinelander, which is the same network as Eau Claire but they do go to local programming at times. Happy Father's Day and catch you later.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

Oh yes, almost forgot, Wausau, Eau Claire and Wittenburg had analog, and VHF, stations on the air last year yet, running half power, and they ran their UHF digital signals half power also, but then they stopped the VHF and upped the power of the digital signal to full power..and since Wittenburg, Fox55, was the last station around here to come on the air, it also was the last to get assigned a UHF frequency...and the first frequency had interference, so they were re-assigned. Bye

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

I live in a smaller city, around 5,000 to 6,000 people, as the population sign hasn't been changed for years, and the closest TV station to me is about 45 miles away in one direction, about 60 or 65 miles away in another direction, and around 80 miles in a third direction, so indoor "Rabbit Ears" may get me one or two channels at the most, so I use the outdoor antennas.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

Either here or elsewhere, when talking about "Rabbit Ear" antennas, especially if a person is within a few miles of a TV station, or within 20 to 25 miles away from a TV station when using "amplified Rabbit Ear antennas," and is having problems receiving the digital signals from the TV stations, the main point that I wanted to make is the Rabbit Ears I used to use had separate connections for Vhf and UHF.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

If memory serves me, since I haven't used "Rabbit Ears" for a number of years, I think that the color of the 300-Ohm Vhf cable connection was Brown and the 300-Ohm UHF cable connection was Gold colored, and they were separate spade connectors. The second Rabbit Ears I used had round, 75-Ohm, "F" Type, Black Vhf connections and the UHF was either Brown or Gold 300-Ohm connections.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

So basically, since the analog TV stations have been moved to UHF frequencies, once they went digital, the Vhf connections were worthless to use for receiving purposes...Know what I mean? The Vhf "dipoles" are no longer usable...You need to use the older "ring" or the "Bow-Tie" UHF part of the antenna to receive the digital TV signals. I hope that I am being clear enough on that. Basically a different part of the "Rabbit Ear" antenna has to be used now.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

That's all I was trying to say to the guy having problems receiving the newer DTV signals, as it looked like the UHF portion of his Rabbit Ear antenna wasn't connected to his TV, and that he was probably trying to receive the UHF DTV signals using the Vhf portion of the antenna. It appeared to me that he needed to disconnect the Vhf cable coming from the Rabbit Ear antenna and connect the UHF portion of the antenna to the TV....If you know what I mean? Anyway, Have a Great Day.

[BernieLJ77]

@davenwin1973

Sorry, I should have just replied to the video and not to you, so don't take it personally...

[giovanni2015]

Deadline on due june 12, 2009. it will lose rabbit Ears. If back to digital you. IT LAW!

[bluecandylover]

I've used digital terriestrial here in the UK since 2001-2002 with an internal antenna (you guys call rabbit ears) without a problem! :)

[BernieLJ77]

Yes and sometimes they call it a bowtie antenna too because the Uhf part of it sort of is in the shape of a bowtie type of tie, but of course the extendable part, the ones they call dipoles, are for Vhf, but some Uhf antennas are "ring" shaped, or maybe even double-ring shaped, so since the extendable dipoles stick up, they call the antenna "Rabbit Ears," since it reminds you of "Bugs Bunny," or "Mickey Mouse," etc.

[BernieLJ77]

@bluecandylover

Hi...Yes, if you're close enough to the TV stations, like if you live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota for example, and if there are enough or plenty of stations to choose from, and if you receive TV OK with rabbit Ears, you should have no problem receiving the DTV or Digital TV signals. All I was trying to say is some systems were or are set up for separate Vhf and Uhf outputs on the Bowtie antenna itself, meaning separate cables/connectors.

[BernieLJ77]

So you need to use the UHF "ring" or "Bowtie" part of the rabbit ear antenna, instead of the VHF extendable dipole part of the rabbit ear antenna, or the same with outdoor antennas. If you had a (rated at) 90-mile VHF/50-Mile UHF antenna, then before the longer elements were what you were using to pick up the TV signal, except for the UHF or PBS channels, and Fox55 here was on UHF Channel 55, and now it's the shorter elements that are used, the 50-Mile rated part of the antenna.

[BernieLJ77]

This weekend I've watched a few good movies, oh there were one or two that I didn't really care for, but most were pretty good...right now one is called "Do you remember love," which isn't bad, and there was one where there were people on motorcycles, etc., but mainly it was that the guy was having trouble with DTV and preferred his old "Rabbit Ears" for Analog TV, but I did wonder if he was using the right part of the antenna or not, being that DTV is now on UHf and not VHF.

[BernieLJ77]

There is more than educational stuff, you stated that they cut out the good parts, well, all I've seen "cut" are profane language words, and to me, they take away from the movie...The more swear words in a movie, the less I like it...I don't think that swear words make for a good movie myself. I'd give the movie I have called "My Cousin Vinny" 5 stars out of 5, but since it has so much cussing or swearing in it, I'd give it only 3 stars, and also an "R" rating.

[BernieLJ77]

Without the swearing I'd give My Cousin Vinny 5 stars and a "G" rating. Swearing to me drops my opinion of a movie by quite a bit. When I had a "Movie Package" with either Cable TV or Satellite TV, and they swore every other word it seemed, on HBO and Cinemax for example, I dropped the "Movie Channel Package," as to me, a movie stinks with all of that swearing. Swearing doesn't do anything to a movie, other than to "degrade" it as far as I'm concerned.

[BernieLJ77]

Also, it seems as though today that you can't watch even ten minutes of a movie, and right away they have to have people in bed with each other, and if you like that sort of thing, get the Playboy Channel or something. They always had violence on TV though too, but years ago, like on Gunsmoke for example, even though they shot people, they didn't show the "gore," so much like they do now...They didn't need to waste so much catsup ha ha ha or whatever they used for blood in the movies.

[BernieLJ77]

It's not to compare DTV with satellite or cable TV. The guy is having a hard time getting DTV to work where he is, whereas here DTV works fairly well. The nearest TV station to me is about 45 miles away and I'm getting a 100% signal on them, Channels 7-1, 7-2, 7-3 from CBS, which has My (Network) TV and yes, 24-hour weather, and 9-1, 9-2, and 9-3, which includes THE CW which was only available on Cable TV before DTV came along, and THIS-TV, the first movie channel on over-the-air TV...

[BernieLJ77]

and Channels 20-1, 20-2 and 20-3, which includes THE Wisconsin Channel and The Create Channel, then more or less in the same direction, SE, there's Fox55, which is about 70 miles from me, and I get about a 70 to 75% signal strength on it right now, and there's a mountain inbetween here and Fox55. I looked at a map and about 45 miles from here there's a 2,000-foot mountain right between here and Fox55 which again is 70 miles from here and the 2 Channel 13 stations in another direction from me...

[BernieLJ77]

and they're coming in good also...In the 50's we only had one station, CBS, then two, CBS and ABC, then 3, CBS, ABC and NBC, then quite a bit later 4 stations, CBS, ABc, NBC and PBS, then finally just a few years ago, a 5th one, Fox55, came along...Now, with DTV, there are 13 stations coming from the same stations, with programming, so for over-the-air TV, it's not so bad, or it's better than TV used to be. The DTV stations act like satellite TV though, you can lose signal briefly during storms.

[BernieLJ77]

I was born in 1958, and back then we still had B & W or Black and White Television and we got color later on. There wasn't any cell phones, there weren't any VCRs, no cassette tapes, all we had was AM radio, later to get FM radio, we had these 78 and 16 RPM records, later on we got the 45s and 33 1/3 RPM records, we had no cable TV, no satellite TV, etc., but this video is in response to a guy who was having a hard time with DTV.

[BernieLJ77]

Back in the 50's we didn't have Internet access, oh they had Intranet, almost like Internet, for a number of years, for connecting businesses together, but they were trying to figure out how they could try and protect their computer systems after allowing the general public access to it, or to the Internet. Anyway, this is either comparing the new DTV (Digital TV) standard to the old Analog TV standard, or just showing how well, or not so well, DTV works.

[BernieLJ77]

Because if you're using the longer, extendable dipoles of the rabbit ears to receive DTV, that won't work too well or at all. You need to use the ring or bowtie part, the UHf part of the antenna in other words. Have a Great Day, Bernard

[BernieLJ77]

I was mistaken when I had mentioned that I was receiving Fox55, from Wittenberg, WI at 90 miles away, as looking at a Google Earth map, it looks to be about 70 miles and it looks like it isn't in a much different direction from me than Wausau, WI is, so my antenna wouldn't need to be turned much, if at all, to get Fox55. However, it also looks like Rib Mountain, 45 miles or so from me, is right between me and Wittenberg, which is about 70 miles from me.

[BernieLJ77]

Rib Mountain, more like a hill at 1,940 feet tall, is classified as a mountain, I guess because they probably measure it at 2,000 feet to the top of their 60-foot observation tower ha ha ha or hee hee hee. The point is that I'm receiving Fox55 right through, over or around that mountain. Of course I don't know the surrounding elevation of Wittenberg or the elevation of their DTV transmitter tower or antenna height above average terrain, etc.

[BernieLJ77]

I saw the video of the guy who says he'd like to get back his rabbit ears, one of the reasons why I did this webcam directly uploaded video, and I wondered whether he was trying to view DTV with them, and I'd think he'd get DTV from around 20 or 30 miles away, but it would help if he was on the second floor, or have the antenna by a window facing the TV station's direction, and wondered if he's trying to use the VHf part of the antenna instead of the UHf part to receive DTV with.