Free TV...

[Jenn! 918]

TV is teh evil.. i know it's true cuzi just saw a show about it

Do you watch Oprah?

no im not gay like u looooooooooooooooool

It takes a big man to cry while watching Oprah...

And an even bigger man to laugh at that man!

...props to Jack Handy.

[caybee 21]

We used just an antenna for a while (rabbit ears), ordered the voucher, and bought the box (Radio Shack's brand). It works great once the antenna is adjusted. The channels we could already get are very clear, and there are additional channels because each station runs one or two additional channels. I'm not sure why -- digital signals take up less bandwidth maybe? The extras are mostly just 24-hour weather here, but the educational television network runs two additional digital-only channels that we can now pick up. We ended up subscribing to satellite also (for the soccer ), but my parents use only the digital box and rabbit ears, and they like it. If you already have cable or satellite, you don't need to buy the box unless you also want to pick up local over-the-air programming with an antenna. Cable and satellite boxes already convert digital signals for analog TVs. I think if you have a digital TV, you don't need the box either.

That said, if the signal isn't strong enough, it won't show up at all. It's not like the analog over-the-air signal that might be snowy but still watchable. It's like a satellite signal -- either it's there or it's not. So we had to adjust the rabbit ears for a while until we got a strong signal on most channels. If we had a rooftop antenna, the signals would be easier to find.

Oh, and an unexpected bonus -- the box we got has a closed captioning decoder in it. My parents' TV is an older model and doesn't have a decoder, so now they can watch the closed captions when they want to turn the volume down.

Edited December 10, 2008 by caybee

[reeses16 8]

Yep our experience is similar to Caybee. Get were just using an antenna, now that we have the digital converter box we catch about 5 extra channels. Sometimes we get a weak signal on a particular channel, but we just need to get a better antenna. The coupons are good, but I felt like I was cheated a little. Like everyone else we got 2 $40 coupons. We only needed 1 box so I though, "great, I can use both to pay for this $60 box"....nope! 1 coupon per box. But you can give any unused coupon to someone else to use.

[NickD 202]

A converter box, converts HDTV to NTSC signals with a built in RF modulator for channels 2 or 4 outputs, and even AV outputs. Let's you know how small an entire front end of a TV has become with even a tuner to select a whole bunch of channels. All it is lacking is a display screen that with LCD technology can also be made dirt cheap.

I played with an RCA, didn't open the box, has a button on the remote to switch aspect ratios, when viewing a HDTV 16:9 ratio width to height picture, didn't even fill the screen on the sides. Made a 27" set I was using as a monitor look more like a 17" screen, you may need a magnifying glass to watch TV. The 4:3 ratio changed the old fashion vertical and horizontal size adjustments, not only losing a good share of the once viewable picture, but everyone looked fat.

Sure all of you have watch cinema movies that were formatted to fit your screen, how in the hell do they know what screen you have, these movies really look like ####### when viewed on the HDTV format, wonder what we are going to do with the huge amount of money we spent on VCR tapes and DVD collections, this aspect ratio change is a major one.

UHF reception has always been poor, guess where HDTV is suppose to work, and much worse with digital as ghost signals will kick in extra digits to confuse the computer. Bush appointed an idiot to head the FCC, but we will pay the price.