Tuesday, March 31, 2009

My 100th Post On This Blog Will Be About ...

... how the goddamn digitial signal is pissing me off again.

I've said this once before, but I have to say it again because it frustrated the shit out of me; my antenna isn't good enough to pick up all the stations while being pointed in only one direction. I was jostling between the news and the talk shows late tonight and I had to get out of my bed to shift my antenna this way and that depending on what channel I wanted to watch. And since I channel-surf a lot, I'm ran into this problem all fucking night. I actually now have mentally placed which of the stations won't come in at which angle the antenna is pointed at. I now plan ahead so I won't have to get up in the middle of a show that's pixelating, even though I might have to spin the antenna in another direction the following hour. And what's even worse is that I checked antennaweb.org and it said that all my channels should be coming in through one direction, so that if I point my antenna that way, there should be no problem.

My parents are having this problem too, even though their bedroom is in the basement. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, if I need to point the antenna in a different direction, or if they need a new antenna altogether.

But the most galling thing about it is that digital seems to be an all-or-nothing presentation: Either you see the picture clearly (and even though they say you can tell that a digital picture is much more vivid even on a standard-definition TV, I can't tell any difference) or you won't see anything. In analog a show may be fuzzy, but you can still watch it, even without adjusting the rabbit ears. But on digital even a sudden gust of wind will "cliff" the show I'm watching. Is this really progress? Wouldn't it be better to be get a signal that comes in even halfway decently than one that won't transmit at all?

I'm starting to dread the Conversion.

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