Is it the television or antenna or both.

westend wrote:
Wes,
Everything changes in the electronic game. Two years ago I bought a Magnavox screen based on the review of a Forum member. I thought I'd never buy anything Magnavox in my lifetime. Turns out the picture quality is excellent and the 32" screen is the least wattage for an LCD/LED in that class (33 W-Standard).

FWIW, I made my own antenna. Got a good design published on the internet-- Gray-Hoffman array. I use a 6' mast in a sidewall bracket. The picture quality from broadcast is as good as my screens in the house with cable.

westend,

I had a little trouble linking your link. It's printed/html'd correctly, but when I mouse over the link on RV.NET, it comes up:
http://http%20//docslide.us/documents/gray-hoffman-antenna-rf182.html, and won't load as is. Then when I manually corrected the link, my old Win7 operating system and Netbook Explorer 8 won't completely render it anyway. But I found another link that works:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/140169268/Gray-Hoffman-Antenna-RF182#scribd.

Better yet, here is an image:

There isn't any further detailed info on construction here (for my computer anyway).

I am a believer in going low cost unless I know better. The old saying, "You get what you pay for.", is less often true than one thinks, in this modern era of sleazy ad hype.

The digital TV change is interesting. It is very similar to the cell-phone change from analog to digital, and Verizon finally forced me to go digital. When we were still allowed, I used my cheap analog flip-phone at work as long as possible (@$15/mo). It never momentarily dropped a call, but rather faded in and out pretty much like snow on old TVs. I worked on a railroad crew which paralleled Interstate 94, which had reasonable ND cell coverage. But the railroad cut through hills just enough to severely weaken signals, since the tower positions were optimized for I-94 highway traffic. All the rail guys with their digital phones lost calls constantly. Digital phones are marginally better now.

Digital TVs, like digital phones, are all or nothing. The picture is either perfect or nothing (dropped). While a good digital TV may pixal out at worst on occasion, a poor design frequently loses track altogether. I think we were plagued by some bad chips for a while.

Because of the history of the problem, the OP would do well to prove it is not the inherent tuners doing the bad deed. My Insignia (and my buddies) periodically failed on perfectly good cable. Apparently no antenna improvement could help.

Wes
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