Question/problem about broadcast TV signal

[cleverhandle]

My wife and I still live in the dark ages of no cable, and have no particular interest in getting it. Up till about a year or two ago, we watched our occasional program on a spectacular late-70's vintage B/W set from K-Mart that we got from the trash. But then we caved and got a 20-something inch Sony Wega for DVD's and a PS2. Set it up and found that our reception was pretty crappy - VHF was mediocre and UHF was nonexistent. I figured that the thing probably had a crappy antenna, being that it was designed for the cable generation. So we set up the faithful K-Mart box next to the Wega for the sole purpose of watching UHF channels.

Finally, we decided tonight to move boldly into the color-TV era and got a nice, powered antenna. RCA brand, ~$60, separate UHF/VHF knobs, 45 dB gain - looks good to my uneducated eye. Set it up, power it up, still no UHF. Now, when I say "no UHF," I mean no UHF - the TV reports "no signal," and there's not a trace of a picture. Yet the 20+ year old K-Mart box right next to it get UHF just fine. Is there something wrong with the set rather than my signal? It seems insane that an old piece of crap could receive a signal while a modern antenna would not. Any other tests I could do to check things out?

 

[EyeMWing]

Link to antenna?

 

Just break down and pay $10 a month for channels 2-20 on cable.

Trust me, you'll thank me in a year.

 

[cleverhandle]

Ack... nevermind. I'm such a goon. A bit of research shows that any "recent" (read "less than 10 years old") cable-ready TV has a selector between antenna UHF and cable. Mine was set to cable. Switch it over, problem solved. God I'm a dumb-ass.

Anyway, I'm now looking forward to watching next week's episode of 24 in glorious color. w00t!

 

I can't believe you're actually using the Internet.

It's weird to me that someone would have a computer with Internet access before getting a color TV.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: jumpr
I can't believe you're actually using the Internet.

Yeah, yeah... I can't blame anyone for laughing at this one. I'm not even a stereotypical dumb AOL'er or anything - I run all kinds of services on a small static subnet, maintain decently complex websites, and do tech support as part of my job. TV is just a different world.

It's weird to me that someone would have a computer with Internet access before getting a color TV.

There's nothing good on TV (except for 24). Lots of good stuff on the Internet.