[Tig] Cringely: accurate on digital vs. analog?

[Tom Tcimpidis]

With DTV, signal strength alone (as long as you have enough to break through
the noise floor) is a poor predictor of reception as there are many other
elements that are of equal or greater importance.  It also depends on how
old your receiver is - the current 5th generation Zenith/LG chipset is
amazing in its ability to handle extreme multipath signal distortion (the
main killer of DTV reception) and a low S/N. The best way to determine DTV
reception, orient DTV antennas, and the like is with a spectrum analyzer.
In DTV, the most important antenna characteristics are not gain but front to
back ratio and side lobe suppression.  Thus, I am not at all surprised that
your analogue reception is inferior to your DTV reception.  Even though I
have a great line of sight to Mt. Wilson here in Los Angeles, my OTA NTSC
reception was always degraded due to hills behind and to the sides of me,
producing ghosts.  However, my DTV HD reception is perfect on all channels
and significantly better than what my next door neighbors get from Time
Warner Digital Cable. Also, of course, you don't get the secondary channels
(.2, .3, etc.) on cable or satellite, and I enjoy a number of them such as
the raw news feeds. 

As a side note, the PBS station here (KCET) inexplicably broadcasts a
different program on their DTV side than on their NTSC side. The DTV side is
often just filler...

Tom



> I believe it's the error correction, mainly, but perhaps there are some
> antenna or propagation experts out there who know specifically?