Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV channels?

[mm]

If this is the wrong newgroup, I apologize and hope you can recommend
a better one.

Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV
channels?

Or is it more likely my friend, who has a plain antenna in the attic,
needs an amplified antenna in the attic? She doesn't want an antenna
on the roof.

Any recomendations for a powerful converter box? Maybe with a good
Guide. She has a coupon good for 3 more days.



She's in north suburban Baltimore (Reistertown) and can't even get
channel 45, a Baltimore channel, (it says "No signal") that came in
perfectly for her and me too in analog, and perfect for me in digital.
OTOH, she does get channel 7 in Washington DC. The city is about 50
miles from her, not sure where the transmitter is, but it's farther
than channel 45's.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Reisterstown is more properly to the west of Baltimore. (I know because I
used to live off Liberty Heights avenue).

Bad reception might be due to a converter with poor sensitivity, but a good
antenna should be the first step in obtaining good reception.

If her coupon is about to expire, she might ask for a demonstration at a
retailer. (Good luck...)

 

[Rich Webb]

If this is the wrong newgroup, I apologize and hope you can recommend
a better one.

Is it likely a different digital converter box will provide more TV
channels?

Or is it more likely my friend, who has a plain antenna in the attic,
needs an amplified antenna in the attic? She doesn't want an antenna
on the roof.

Any recomendations for a powerful converter box? Maybe with a good
Guide. She has a coupon good for 3 more days.



She's in north suburban Baltimore (Reistertown) and can't even get
channel 45, a Baltimore channel, (it says "No signal") that came in
perfectly for her and me too in analog, and perfect for me in digital.
OTOH, she does get channel 7 in Washington DC. The city is about 50
miles from her, not sure where the transmitter is, but it's farther
than channel 45's.

Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx and also to
http://www.tvfool.com/. TVFool is nice in that it can give you the
azimuth (direction) and a nominal expected signal strength for
neighboring stations.

The antenna is more important than the converter box.

 

[mm]

Reisterstown is more properly to the west of Baltimore. (I know because I
used to live off Liberty Heights avenue).

I'm from Indiana, where 95% of the streets and roads run due north and
south or due east and west. I get confused here.

Bad reception might be due to a converter with poor sensitivity, but a good
antenna should be the first step in obtaining good reception.

Well, the coupon is expiring and she's trying to decide whether to buy
another box.

Plus she has a cramped hot dirty attic which she won't go up in. I
can't go there, not because I'm fat, which I am, but because my
ribcage is too big for the hole in the closet ceiling, right in the
middle of my chest. (I have a little fat at my ribcage, but only maybe
an extra quarter of an inch.) I don't know why the hole is so small.
I'm 5'8", medium build. I have no trouble getting though the hole
into my attic.

If her coupon is about to expire, she might ask for a demonstration at a
retailer. (Good luck...)

Right. And some of the good ones seem available only on the web.
There are two models which will tune the converter box to a station at
a particular time, so if your vcr is set the same way, you can still
do timer recorders with a vcr, wihtout setting the channel each and
every time.

One is DTVPal Plus, which one "rater" said has 5 timer slots, although
the ad I saw for it doesn't say how many.

The other is Zinwell ZAT-970A`, which has 8 timer slots, although one
"rater"** said it had the lowest quality remote he had ever seen, and
one button was starting to break after only a few days. Other rated
it highly and said nothing about the remote.

**This guy said he had two converters and the DTVPal gave terrible
reception and that was improved in the DTVPal Plus. So I was
wondering how common that was.

Not only doesn't she get 45, but she had to add 7 several times before
it stayed, even though she watched 7 each time she added it. It would
still disappear later from the list of stations the up and down
buttons stopped at.


Thanks and thanks, Rich.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Considering that the unit will cost no more than $20 with the coupon, you
might as well get another one.