Digital Broadcast TV: Fraud!

After moving to a new house this past week, we decided to forgo the hassles and expense of cable television (see ya Comcast). Instead, we plan to begin streaming online video, combined with Netflix.

Meantime, we’re still unpacking, buried in the multitude of things to do accompanying a move.  So we’re reliant on the newfangled digital broadcasting world that was rolled in 2009.  Argh.

Reception is awful, and we’re close to most of the signals, living on the near east side of Indianapolis.  Admittedly, we don’t have a fancy multi-directional antenna or a rooftop antenna.  But we do have two setups, one with the digital converter box and one digital television, and both with antennas.

Naturally I assumed that digital TV would be NO WORSE than the old fashioned analog signals that have been around since the 1950′s.  I could not have been more wrong.  Very few stations are received consistently.  Most signals break up and are so unstable as to be unwatchable.  Some don’t come in at all, unless the antenna is repositioned.  There is no antenna position in either setup that brings in all of the major local stations in an acceptable manner.

I wonder if our experience is common to others, but I don’t doubt that it is.  In the old days, people bought fancy antennas if they were in fringe areas (50+ miles from the station transmitters) but we are probably only ten miles from most of the transmitters.  Currently about 10% of US residents do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV.  I’m not sure how they stand it, though.

Right now, I’m thinking that federally mandated digital television is a fraud.