People with OTA HDTV tuners...

[tbike06]

How is the picture quality on non HD OTA channels? Is it good?

 

[jemcam]

OTA? WTF is OTA?

 

[Wonderful Pork]

over the air.

 

[jemcam]

Originally posted by: Wonderful Pork
over the air.

Oh. Okay, this thread may now proceed.

 

[sdifox]

OTA= Over The Air. Your HDTV should have an ATSC tuner already so you just need an UHF antenna to watch OTA HD. That is of much higher quality than cable and satellite offering since they compress the hd signals to cramm in more channels so they can charge you more.

Analogue SD signal would suck.

 

[ivol07]

Yes, quality is still good. Each station broadcasts an analog and a digital signal. So even it it's not in HD you tune to the digital station and it looks near HD quality.

 

[Staples]

Like analog or digital but non HD?

 

[zephyrprime]

Of course it's good. Better than the corresponding analog OTA channels. You don't have the static, The color range is more accurate, and the image is more stable.

 

[vi edit]

The hardest part for me was locking in on a signal. I'm kind of in a low point and have lots of trees around me. Once I got decent signal strength NBC's late night football game on Sunday was very crisp and clear. It was comparible to the Cox HD feed that I had from my previous cable subscription.

The hard part is that not all HD content is equal. Some stations simply have better original quality than others so you have to know if the original source was good to begin with.

 

[archiloco]

better than the cable HD channels, some pixilation at times but not as much as cable

 

[radioouman]

Colors are more stable. Black is actual black. No static.

 

[Reggae4k]

OTA digital signals are definitely better than analog. there is no static and noise. you will never get snow. its either you get the signal, or you dont.

OTA HD is also the best quality HD you can get besides hd-dvd or blu-ray.
better than cable, better than sat because OTA signals are not compressed like cable or sat.
cable and sat have limited bandwidths so providers will compress the signal so they can stream more channels.

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
The hardest part for me was locking in on a signal. I'm kind of in a low point and have lots of trees around me. Once I got decent signal strength NBC's late night football game on Sunday was very crisp and clear. It was comparible to the Cox HD feed that I had from my previous cable subscription.

The hard part is that not all HD content is equal. Some stations simply have better original quality than others so you have to know if the original source was good to begin with.

Some HD channels use part of their bandwidth on the same physical channel to also broadcast (multicast) another SD channel and that hurts HD quality. In my metro area, the best HD picture is from PBS because they're the only station that doesn't split their channel. They actually broad cast 2 digital channels. 1 HD and 1 that multicasts 5 SD channels.

 

[wyvrn]

It's been pretty good in Dallas. Most athletic events are in 1080i HD and look pretty sharp, plus they are widescreen The big 4 stations also have a lot of TV shows in HD, like Boston Legal, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, etc.. It's nice to have a crystal clear 50" display that I can view from across my living room without using my glasses.

Oh yeah and I watched Fashion House last night and there is nothing like scantily clad gorgeous women in high def!

Satellite TV in comparison looked like shat on my big screen. Satellite only looked decent on 32" and lower TVs. It's compressed so any size over that looks like they ran the signal through a screen door.