It's kinda like vcr's vs dvd's......I have vcr tapes that r many years old and they play like new but I have some dvd's that r practically new that r unreliable.
The dvd's get damaged very easy where the vcr's could take a lot of punishment.
Also, I have noticed that the new digital tv reception is shaky.....I have a new dig antenna that works very well but the signals come and go. I never had that problem with analog.
Dvd's seem clearer but vcr tapes are more reliable......seems like.

 

I'm using a 20 y/o outdoor antenna to receive my off the air (OTA) digital tv signals... It works just fine... The idea of a "Digital Antenna" is a lot of hype...

If does not matter if the signal is analog or digital, transmission is still on the same frequency. It's just that the format is different... And only the tuner of the display knows the difference. The antenna just receives the frequency.. Although, digital signals may be transmitted with less power.

Most new TVs have some type of signal indicator in the channel setup. Digital signals are more sensitive to antenna alignment, obstructions, signal to noise ratio, and weather.

You can use this link Antenna Web to get the bearings and distances of your OTA tv stations. You don't have to fill in all the info, just the zip code will do it... This info will help align your antenna for better reception. It will also tell you the type of antenna reception path you'll need...

Most antennas are "directional". Meaning they do better pointed directly at the transmission source. A standard antenna has short and long elements. It's the short elements that should be points at the signal source.

Hope this helps..

 

If I'm the only one that handles a DVD, I never have problems with it. It's simple--remove from case touching only the center hole and outside edge, drop into already-open DVD player tray without sliding it around, play DVD, remove from player holding again only by center hole and outside edge and put back in case, again without sliding it around.

I can't count how many times I've borrowed DVDs from friends or rented them, and I wonder if I don't have to boil them first so I don't get sick from touching them--smears and scratches all over the place.

If you have a decent rental place nearby, some of them will clean and polish your unreliable DVDs for you for free, and they usually have good equipment. Yes, scratches on the top are bad as they can penetrate to the metal foil layer that contains the info, but I've found that the label paint protects pretty well, and most scuffs and scratches that render a disc unusable happen on the bottom--which the laser has to shine through to read the foil layer. The scratches cause the laser to refract differently than it's supposed to, causing the problem.

Always wipe from the center outward when cleaning them, and I highly recommend a reasonable ($10-15) rotary-style cleaner that uses alcohol or an alcohol-type solution. Mine is such that the spinning brush is only in contact with the disc while it is going from the center hole to the outer edge.

Jason

 

stop banging the systems around when you 10 beers deep and getting smoked in ncaa football ea style

 

analog always has a signla - or it does not, when an analog signal is weak, it has noise.

when a digital signal is weak, it becomes fragmented, you get clear fragments which are more discernable over noisy analog - think of a cell phone.

the VCR tape signal degrades and noise introduces, but typically with the error correction, it introduces the noise in the color portion - since the colorburst portion of the signal is so small, you get reds where there aint supposed to be any.

when you scratch a dvd, the scratch occupies many frames of data - the dvd reader exhausts the lookahead buffer trying to reread the info, until it times out, then it advances by so many frames - which is why you get the jumpy, freeze frame effect.

in terms of audio - the digital signal is a timeslice of an average value. analog is (removing any noise) what happened on stage. I far prefer analog music sources (LPS or tapes) over regular CDs when on one of my good stereo units. SACDs are the only digital I would classify as audiophile quality.

the absence of noise in a CD signal just means you can hear the slices more. amp designers went thru so much trouble to remove crossover and harmonic distortion, only to insert waveform distortion. ick. at 1-3 watts on my clean units, I can hear stuff in CDs that just did exist in the recording studio.

 

May or may not be true---but I heard that the TV people are underpowering the digital cause they're broadcasting in both analog and digital. When they go all digital, they may be adding more power, which means the signal may come through better. I have the converters for my bedroom TV's (have cable in the living room), and I've noticed if a station is cutting out, if I leave it on that station for 10-15 minutes, it tends to come in a lot better.

 

digital can be broadcast at far lower signal strength because you only have to represent a serial stream of 0's and 1's, rather than a complex analog signal with stuff added to it (like colorburst)

 

microsoft word vs the typewriter.....