Want to upgrade tv to digital

[palmwhit]

I would like to upgrade our tv and antennae to digital. Our early "06 Lance 1181 has the analog tv and we have to use a converter but would like to upgrade. Not really concerned about bigger, just would like to be able to run off of 12v without a converter or inverter. Anybody gone down this path?
We don't use it much when camping just when on the road traveling. Anyhew thanks.

[IAMICHABOD]

I have to agree on the Insignia, one thing to remember when purchasing a TV for the RV is to look at the viewing angle, if you can go to the store and sit lower then off to each side to see what it looks like at those angles.

Most times in a RV you wont be looking straight on at it. I found out the hard way after buying and returning 2 TVs, that sometimes at those angles the screen is washed out or black making them un-viewable.

After buying a Samsung and a RCA I found a Insignia that has a much larger viewing angle, 160 horizontal and 160° vertical viewing angles. I Run it off a small inverter or AC if I have hookups.

In my RV with the TV in the front or the rear bedroom you have to look up at it. This TV works great in both areas. The DVD quality is excellent.

[wnjj]

rwbradley wrote:

robsouth wrote:
From what I have read here and other places, there is no such thing as a "digital antenna", only those sold as such. As stated, if the one you have works well now, it will work well with new TV. It may take a little fine tuning to aim it properly toward the desired station.

Not meaning to correct someone publicly but I think the OP may need some additional information. In the old days with VHF and UHF TV most home antennas were tuned to receive all the UHF and VHF channels. Generally if you remember the old anennas, the larger "arms" were for the VHF channels, and the tiny "arms" at the back of the antenna were used to receive UHF. When US and Canada started the switch to digital TV, this also meant that as the old analog channel 10 started broadcasting in both digital and analog during the transition, they kept broadcasting Analog in the old VHF band but moved the digital broadcast into the UHF band. Once the transition was completed they just stopped broadcasting the analog on the VHF band.
My understanding is that now all the original VHF channels (2-13) are now broadcasting their digital in the UHF bands. This means that you need a different antenna "arm" to pickup channel 10 digital vs channel 10 analog.
With older RV antennas like the Wineguard Batwing which is common. The 2 metal arms (about 3ft span in total) are tuned to be optimal for receiving the old analog channels (because they were in the VHF Band). Yes these antennas did also receive the UHF bands.
Now with the need to only pickup channels in the UHF bands, strictly speaking there is no digital vs analog antenna, however digital signals only need the UHF portion of the antenna. This allows companies to optimize the antennas to only receive UHF. This is the reason why the Wingman attachment for the Batwing (with the tiny arms) and some of the smaller newer antennas improve reception on Digital, because technically they are optimized to pickup only UHF vs VHF and that just makes it a happy accident that they appear to be optimized to pickup digital vs analog. Typically these UHF "digital" antennas are not required but because they are tuned for UHF only they do typically improve reception of the UHF "digital" channels.

Generally good info here with some correction needed. VHF is actually 2 separate bands called VHF-lo for ch. 2-6 and VHF-hi for ch. 7-13. While it's true that digital channels were broadcast on UHF during the time when both analog and digital were broadcast, some of the stations on VHF-hi moved back to their VHF-hi frequencies after the analog shutdown. VHF-lo has been abandoned for TV in most, but not all places. The plan is to eventually repurpose VHF-lo.

Since VHF-hi is about 3x the frequency on average of VHF-lo, the antenna wings need not be as large but the antenna still needs to be able to receive VHF.

This FCC spreadsheet shows all US stations with both their previous analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) channels.

[DWeikert]

rwbradley wrote:

My understanding is that now all the original VHF channels (2-13) are now broadcasting their digital in the UHF bands.

I don't believe this is accurate. From
FCC Guide to Antennas and Digital Television

To receive digital TV signals from all stations, it is important that your antenna be able to receive both VHF channels (channels 2-13) and UHF channels (channels 14-51).

[rwbradley]

robsouth wrote:
From what I have read here and other places, there is no such thing as a "digital antenna", only those sold as such. As stated, if the one you have works well now, it will work well with new TV. It may take a little fine tuning to aim it properly toward the desired station.

Not meaning to correct someone publicly but I think the OP may need some additional information. In the old days with VHF and UHF TV most home antennas were tuned to receive all the UHF and VHF channels. Generally if you remember the old anennas, the larger "arms" were for the VHF channels, and the tiny "arms" at the back of the antenna were used to receive UHF. When US and Canada started the switch to digital TV, this also meant that as the old analog channel 10 started broadcasting in both digital and analog during the transition, they kept broadcasting Analog in the old VHF band but moved the digital broadcast into the UHF band. Once the transition was completed they just stopped broadcasting the analog on the VHF band.
My understanding is that now all the original VHF channels (2-13) are now broadcasting their digital in the UHF bands. This means that you need a different antenna "arm" to pickup channel 10 digital vs channel 10 analog.
With older RV antennas like the Wineguard Batwing which is common. The 2 metal arms (about 3ft span in total) are tuned to be optimal for receiving the old analog channels (because they were in the VHF Band). Yes these antennas did also receive the UHF bands.
Now with the need to only pickup channels in the UHF bands, strictly speaking there is no digital vs analog antenna, however digital signals only need the UHF portion of the antenna. This allows companies to optimize the antennas to only receive UHF. This is the reason why the Wingman attachment for the Batwing (with the tiny arms) and some of the smaller newer antennas improve reception on Digital, because technically they are optimized to pickup only UHF vs VHF and that just makes it a happy accident that they appear to be optimized to pickup digital vs analog. Typically these UHF "digital" antennas are not required but because they are tuned for UHF only they do typically improve reception of the UHF "digital" channels.

[RoyB]

Hard to find a better antenna then the crank up BATWING with ADDED DIPOLEs. The KING Antenna is nice too but I still prefer the BATWING here.




Some of the newer trailers are coming out with this KING antenna that rotates but doesnt crank up.



We use the VIZIO 22-inch Digital HDTV here (WALMART). Takes a beating in our off-road POPUP and is still ticking.. Just plug it in to the antenna panel. Throw away the Digital to Analog TV converter if you have one.

TRAIL-EXPLORER-Jim I talk to my antennas all the time here - "How you feeling today Bub..." hehe... I thought everyone did that...

Roy Ken

[trail-explorer]

DWeikert wrote:
The antenna doesn't care...

I've never seen an antenna that had "feelings" such as care, love, hate, mood swings, etc.

[cubbear]

I bought insigna from best buy with builtin dvd player. I run it with a 12 volt plugin. it 24" great picture I think I paid about $160.00

[trailgranny50]

Our old camper had no antenna so I added a cable port and installed a digital TV, extra receiver we weren't using in the house (Dish 211k) and replaced the old Weingard carryout that required power and cable with a Tailgater that only requires the cable and it works great for us as we have a Gen for boondocks and use camp power otherwise. Our camper doesn't have its own battery so 12v not on the radar. Whatever floats your boat. By the way. We also don't have to pay the extra bill for service for camper, just the standard receiver cost on our house bill. Always thought it was a rip off to have to pay for a receiver in the camper when away from home and not using service there but still paying for it.

[DWeikert]

robsouth wrote:
From what I have read here and other places, there is no such thing as a "digital antenna", only those sold as such. As stated, if the one you have works well now, it will work well with new TV. It may take a little fine tuning to aim it properly toward the desired station.

This.

The stations still broadcast using the same frequencies and that is what determines the antenna you need. The antenna doesn't care if the data is modulated from a digital or analog signal, that is the job of the tuner.

[mooring_product]

I just did this. I went with a 110v TV because we are always camping with power. (AC in Florida is a must)

I got 19 channels in the FtLauderdale area and only 4 in the Key Largo area. I may try the antenna upgrade to see what more I can get.

[K_Charles]

Your converter box is switching the digital signal to analog now so your antenna works fine for digital.

[robsouth]

From what I have read here and other places, there is no such thing as a "digital antenna", only those sold as such. As stated, if the one you have works well now, it will work well with new TV. It may take a little fine tuning to aim it properly toward the desired station.

[Tom_M1]

If your analog TV is working fine there is no need to change your antenna. Just hook your new TV to your existing coax cable. You do not need the converter box. Best Buy has some Insignia brand TVs that can run directly from 12 volt.

[MrPhelps]

We were in the same situation. I just converted mine last fall. I bought a KING Digital HDTV Antenna Replacement Head and installed it on my existing analog mast. It worked really well and the installation was very simple.

I replaced the analog TV with an 110V digital from Costco and use a small inverter. Power draw is minimum. Bought a very cheap ($20) separate DVD player.