For months I've been urging readers who get their TV service the old fashioned way - over the air, with an antenna - to apply for a pair of government coupons. Each provides $40 toward a converter that will keep an analog TV working when the nation's broadcasters switch to digital transmissions on Feb. 17, 2009.
My coupons arrived over the weekend, so in the interest of science, I bought Best Buy's Insignia converter box and hooked it to a couple of TV sets to see what would happen. What I learned surprised me, and may surprise you.
When it comes to old-fashioned analog TV reception, all sets are not equal. Some are much better at finding distant channels than others. Reception depends on many factors, including the converter you have, the quality of your set, your antenna and - as Realtors love to say - location, location, location!
But the more channels you receive today by antenna, the more likely you are to be disappointed - or hopping mad - when the broadcasters turn off those analog transmitters. This is particularly true if you watch sports or news on Washington stations or other distant channels.
For the $60 price tag -_$20 after the coupons - the Best Buy converter should have had a channel display on the front, as some competitors do, instead of relying on the TV display. But that was my main complaint about an otherwise workmanlike package. It included a remote control for the tuner, a standard coaxial cable for your TV set's RF antenna port, and separate audio and video (A/V) cables with RCA jacks for sets that have AV ports. Use these if you can: they provide a slightly better picture and much better sound on TVs with stereo capability.
Although I was hardly in a laboratory environment, I wanted to level the playing field, so I bought a $19 RCA antenna with rabbit ears for VHF stations and a UHF loop. The antenna was "certified" for Digital TV, but that's a marketing gimmick. Digital broadcasts use the same set of frequencies as analog broadcasts, so an antenna that works today should be at home with a digital converter box.
Our home presented no particular geographical problems. It's just outside the Baltimore Beltway in Pikesville, on the northwest side of the city, at an elevation of 500 feet. It's about 7 miles, as the signal flies, from Television Hill in Baltimore and 5 1/2 miles from the Maryland Public Television towers in Owings Mills.
