TV help?

[MoonCat]

My sister just bought a new digital TV with an indoor antenna and can't get it to actually hang onto a signal. Her old analog TV with its converter box did not have this problem.

When she does a channel scan, it picks up a couple channels for a few seconds and then they disappear. She tried moving the TV to other places in the room. No luck. The manual was no help. The store's only offered help was "bring it back." With a car, that's going to be a pain, and if it happens again, she'll just have to take the second back, too.

So, any other ideas?

[emax4]

When they originally come in, do they "stay in", and if so, for how long?

1. Does the TV act as if it can't pick up any channels?

or

2. Does it pick it off, show the channels that it did pick up, but then forget them if the TV is turned off and then on again?

Is the converter box still hooked up to the old TV or to the new TV? I'm near Pittsburgh, and when I had regular cable, a few channels came in HDTV, all the other ones were fine, but the locals came in clearly on one set of channels and analogue-y on the regular channels. If it's not hooked up, try hooking the outside cable to the converter box (It should be marked something like "IN from outside" or "Cable IN"), then the converter box to the TV's coaxial cable jack.

No converter box and just the antenna? I'd go into the TV's menu, see if you can find a setting for the antenna. Sometimes the TV can detect whether or not a coax cable is already attached, so make sure this is done before going to the setting. Once you have that antenna attached, find the setup menu for the antenna. You may find a setting for analog, cable, or digital cable. Try the one for analog first, see if it works. If not, go to digital (even though the analog antenna is connected) try that and see if it works. When all else fails, google it

[RealUnimportant]

Unlike analogue, which degrades gracefully & can even give a passable image without an antenna, digital is completely unforgiving & if it can't get the signal it needs, it'll just stop dead.

Some antennas aren't suitable for use with digital signals as they're too poorly constructed for a decent signal to make it through. Also, being indoors means that the signal will be obstructed by the building's structure. Local interference from other electrical devices, passing motor vehicles, or even people walking around in an adjacent property, can all impede the signal & cause a much larger drop in reception that you'd expect or even notice on an analogue receiver.

If she's used to a slightly snowy image, & is hoping to get a better picture from a digibox, chances are she's going to be disappointed...

[MoonCat]

It picks up a signal for just a couple of seconds and then drops it. I'll pass along your advice guys. Thanks!

[Chromatix]

Over here, indoor antennas are very unusual. A much better signal is almost always available from a rooftop antenna, which is usually a high-gain "tuned Yagi" type, attached to a short pole secured to the chimney.

If there are transmitters in several different directions and the full channel set is not available from any single one of them, you might need one of those antennas for each transmitter. It will probably be cheaper to have the installer fit and align all of them at the same time, if you don't want to climb up there yourself.