Tom; Your experience matches mine. I don't want to say that the strong pronouncements of the "digital cliff" are off-base; they're just misleading, and I suspect that is because they are talking to engineers that aren't able to fully articulate the problem. With analog, there is graceful degradation from strong to weak signal levels. With digital, there is an area with zero break ups (more than 5 or so miles from the transmitter) and there is a zone where one can get no signal. The border between these two zones is a rather narrow one geographically where there are breakups ranging from nettlesome to severe. The latter leading to lockups of my computer. This is unlike analog's gradual degradation, where all but the weakest signal levels (pink noise) are usable, depending on how many other channels are available, and how interested one is in consuming the content. John Willkie -----Mensaje original----- De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En nombre de Tom Barry Enviado el: Monday, December 22, 2008 3:43 PM Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Asunto: [opendtv] Re: news: In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air That article once again explains the all-or-nothing digital cliff effect. "Those who have their converter boxes have discovered the "cliff effect." If the over-the-air signal is not strong, the viewer does not receive a fuzzy picture as he might get with a weak analog signal; the viewer gets no picture at all because digital reception is all or nothing." Everybody keeps telling me this but every place I've used HDTV in the last 8 years or so there was not really a static digital cliff on iffy channels. Instead as the reception got worse there would be increasing frequency of video and audio break-up and drop-outs. This could eventually get to a point where the channel was no longer worth watching, even if it didn't go away entirely. And I don't think I've ever had a channel with ZERO break-ups, at any address with any antenna or receiver. So it somewhat annoys me we keep pretending the signal is either there or not, with nothing in between. That may be mostly true for any given moment but not over the course of an entire show. The error correction span is just not long enough for that to be true (and of course cannot be). - Tom Craig Birkmaier wrote: > In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/technology/22digital.html?_r=1&th&emc=th > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: > > - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at > FreeLists.org > - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word > unsubscribe in the subject line. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.