digital TV is NO good at the moment ?

[Telstra]

pixelated, jumpy, shaky and crappy.

The same in the US or EU ?

 

[Tommy2Tone]

I am in the USA and I have to say it is shitty. I have Time Warner and thats not saying much. Hope they get the problem fixed.

 

[Horschallen]

Even closed caption is somewhat compromised with the digital conversion in USA.

 

[Heliostat]

They definately did something wrong in designing the US DTV standard. The old analog signal would hold up even in the most severe of weather - the DTV signal fizzles out completely at the sight of the smallest raincloud. The image gets pixelated, the sound is garbled and unintelligible. I'm sure glad I dont live in a place with severe weather, that I'd have to watch the TV for warnings, because DTV is not good enough to save me I think. At least the analog signal still had somewhat intelligible sound and a snowy image with bad weather. I also get periodic channel outages (on one channel, but not the others), which suggests they dont know what they're doing, or the signal is unstable.

The worst bit of it though is that the DTV converters are Made in China - and where did the government get the money to give me my $40 coupon? They borrowed it from the Chinese. Win-win for China, Lose-Lose-Lose for America. (manufacture of the converter, source of money, and quality of the new signal!)

 

[frankfrank]

^ You got all of THAT right!!

Chalk up another big victory for the Chinese economy.

And I live in one of those areas where indeed I need to depend on local media for the severe weather alerts, something which is fairly routine here in spring.

I'm not having all THAT much bad luck getting my digital TV's, but on the other hands there are probably no more than four people (in this county of more than 30,000 people) who are as well equipped to receive fringe TV as I am. I reckon that most of the other people not so equipped merely have to put up with having no local TV that really informs them of anything.

There is a local PBS station, but local information on them is nonexistent, and I think they're one of those stations that only put a very generic weather-warning logo on the screen with no descriptive information at all, meaning that a viewer can be sixty miles away from the bad weather.

 

[Telstra]

umm don't blame China.
Blame your own government ... etc.

 

[Triple G]

The only over the air TV in my area comes from 125 miles away. I works good during the winter, but in summer it is hit and miss. Old analog was fine year round. I had to get Dish Network. Thank you US government for $40/month in extra expense. Will they be adding a big tax on the service next?

 

[GM1985]

Our country (Scotland) and the rest of the uk are in the midst of the digital takeover of analogue tv.

Our main TV in the sitting room has Sky Satellite, this is a very tempremental service who's programming is very questionable!

We also have freeview digital recievers in each bedroom, which are also just as bad.

Pixelation, loss of picture, channel freezing, sound impairment, are all experienced at least a few times a day.

With analogue, as stated above, nothing short of a thunderstorm would make your tv go on the blink!

And in addition to this, why do all broadcasters have such shit program lists?

Seriously, one other season of Big Brother, and I'll have to destroy that house myself!

 

[NedNickerson]

I don't have cable and bought one of those converter boxes. Here in Memphis, most of the new digital channels are religious channels that doesn't interest me at all.

The first thing I noticed when I began watching digital TV was that the volume on all my channels dropped way down to the point that I could barely hear what's being said. I'm hard of hearing and I use closed-captions. A lot of times the captions freeze up and when they start up again, it doesn't just go to the next caption but shows all the captions that weren't shown previous to that, so you're barraged with a dozen captions in the space of a few seconds.

I noticed also that when it's storming outside, I might as well turn off the tv, since the captions barely work anymore and the picture is pixelated or just simply freezes up altogether.

I'm still using an old rabbit ear antenna on my TV and was thinking about buy an HD antenna, and I don't want to spend the extra money for one until I know just how much of a difference it would make. Judging from some of the comments here, it looks like HD cable isn't much better.

 

[RationalLunacy]

The aliens are coming!

 

[Telstra]

I don't have cable and bought one of those converter boxes. Here in Memphis, most of the new digital channels are religious channels that doesn't interest me at all.

The first thing I noticed when I began watching digital TV was that the volume on all my channels dropped way down to the point that I could barely hear what's being said. I'm hard of hearing and I use closed-captions. A lot of times the captions freeze up and when they start up again, it doesn't just go to the next caption but shows all the captions that weren't shown previous to that, so you're barraged with a dozen captions in the space of a few seconds.

I noticed also that when it's storming outside, I might as well turn off the tv, since the captions barely work anymore and the picture is pixelated or just simply freezes up altogether.

I'm still using an old rabbit ear antenna on my TV and was thinking about buy an HD antenna, and I don't want to spend the extra money for one until I know just how much of a difference it would make. Judging from some of the comments here, it looks like HD cable isn't much better.

instead of digital TV, probably it is better to watch internet TV if there is any.