Rabbit Ears on a TV?? WTF???

[Brutalis]

I thought everything went digital for local channels?

Why is best buy selling rabbit ears to digital ready TVs???

[NASpurs]

I thought everything went digital for local channels?

Why is best buy selling rabbit ears to digital ready TVs???

You can get free HD channels for your local channels through the air.

[Brutalis]

Ok.

Well I never what they did with that signal til you just told me.

My uncle has a Sony Wega 720p widescreen tube TV and is tired of paying 60 a month, so he wants to do the cheapest way and just get locals. Best Buy told him to get bunny ears.

[PM5K]

LOL.

How do you think a digital tv gets its signals, magic?

[TDMVPDPOY]

have u guys check if ur gettin fully hd channels? u can check the bitrate stream down....


the only problem i have with free to air channels and their extra hd channels? its all regurgitated horseshit replayed all over again....

[MannyIsGod]

I would use them but I have QAM channels since I have a cable company giving me internet.

[Brutalis]

LOL.

How do you think a digital tv gets its signals, magic?

Last I knew the rf signal was history and if your TV was not digital you had to get a converter box. If your tv was digital ready you could just hook up the cable and get locals.

[MannyIsGod]

You can broadcast a digital signal over the air. The previous signal was analog (which is why you saw snow) now when you get a digital signal its crystal clear with no snow or nothing at all but you still transmit it over the air.

[ElNono]

Rabbit ears will work on a TV with digital tuner if the nearby stations are within 20 miles.

You can check distances to the stations and the antenna type you need here:
http://www.antennaweb.org

If the TV has no digital tuner, then you'll need a digital converter box (~$35 at Walmart), AND get the proper antenna.

[Frenzy]

Hd channels look better over the air than on cable since cable has to compress It's signal supposedly. However I tried it and didn't see much a difference...except for the occasional smear. So if all you do is watch local you could cut the cable and save a few bucks..

[Wild Cobra]

Hd channels look better over the air than on cable since cable has to compress It's signal supposedly. However I tried it and didn't see much a difference...except for the occasional smear. So if all you do is watch local you could cut the cable and save a few bucks..
Cable does compress them too much. They place about two channels in the space they should place one in. However, they are changing the way they do that as well, and soon, you probably cannot tune to any station on any cable without their box.

Note.

I have serviced QAM transceivers for digital communications in the 80's. The technology is nothing new. The better signal to noise ratio you can get, the more data you can put per mhz.

[Wild Cobra]

Rabbit ears will work on a TV with digital tuner if the nearby stations are within 20 miles.

The distance isn't as important as the signal to noise ratio you get at your receiver. That's probably a good general rule.

[MannyIsGod]

I don't think they can get rid of the QAM channels without changing a law first. It was my understanding they were mandated. Comcast has done a complete switch to digital and you can't get any cable channels from them without a box of some sort but I can still get the QAM HD channels (all local - some extras that are unscrambled) just fine.

[ElNono]

Cable does compress them too much. They place about two channels in the space they should place one in. However, they are changing the way they do that as well, and soon, you probably cannot tune to any station on any cable without their box.

Correct. Cable Co are moving towards SDV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video), simply because of bandwidth considerations. That said, they're mandated to support CableCard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD) access for interoperability, thus the set top box requirement is not really true. That said, CableCard doesn't support additional services, such as PPV, etc.


The distance isn't as important as the signal to noise ratio you get at your receiver. That's probably a good general rule.

I'm not saying you couldn't pick up a signal further than 20 miles away with rabbit ears, I'm simply telling him what rabbit ears are rated at as far as distance goes. He shouldn't expect to hit stations over 20 miles away with a small multidirectional antenna, but given favorable conditions, he might.


I don't think they can get rid of the QAM channels without changing a law first. It was my understanding they were mandated. Comcast has done a complete switch to digital and you can't get any cable channels from them without a box of some sort but I can still get the QAM HD channels (all local - some extras that are unscrambled) just fine.

They won't get rid of QAM because they have a lot of equipment invested in the technology, plus it's as good modulation as you can find these days.
That said, they can simply stop simulcasting multiple channels over the same wire and go with a switched model as described in SDV above. Just as long as they provide support for two-way CableCard (which allows to switch SDV streams), they can scramble and do whatever they want. Especially now that local TV stations have started to charge cable companies for carrying the signal in their systems.

[Wild Cobra]

I don't think they can get rid of the QAM channels without changing a law first. It was my understanding they were mandated. Comcast has done a complete switch to digital and you can't get any cable channels from them without a box of some sort but I can still get the QAM HD channels (all local - some extras that are unscrambled) just fine.
That may be so, but only for a limited bandwidth to service the local broadcast channels. I doubt it though since a couple years ago, I had to get a little converter box to receive the local channels on cable too. I'll bet legislation has a time-line for various implementation of change.

[Brutalis]

The result: Rabbit ears sucked ass. He took them back, got more expensive ones, they sucked too. Scrapped the whole idea, got the most basic Dish package.

[The_Worlds_finest]

I have some antenna from costco. During the season I have cable but off season I use Netflix and broadcast. The hd over the air looks better then what is provided by twc.