Are the digital signals as strong as the anolog signals

[William]

I've been reading that the digital signals can't travel as far as the anolog signals do. Is this true?
I live out in the middle of nowhere, and I don't really want to buy a big antenna to watch the stations broadcast in town.

[SWHouston]

William,
Wow, I envy you, I’ve been wanting to get a few acres out a ways for years. Privacy, no traffic, but, that has positive and negative issues.

Digital Signals can travel just as far as Analog, BUT, that’s in a straight line. Analog allowed the signal to roll over the curvature of the earth. Digital won’t. It’s line of sight, or nothing ! That’s about 70 miles, according to Mother Nature and the laws of Physics, and therein lies the problem.

The more distant you are, the more obstacles can be in the way, and unless the transmitter’s very tall, and your property is on high ground, anything beyond that is probably not going to happen.

Actually, you don’t have much choice, but again, there are a LOT of antennas available. You need to buy one that will make the “trip” on it’s own.

No doubt you’ve looked your location up on a Locator, seen which “color” you are, or, have the distances of the transmitters, and then select an Antenna of proper size to make the trip. I’ve given this formulae before, but here it is again, IF you’re choosing by distance rather than color.

Miles to Transmitter x 1.5 = length of Antenna Boom in Inches. (applies to Yagi Antennas)

What this formulae does, is put the transmitter in the Antenna’s “sweet spot”, the (approximate) widest part of it’s Beamwidth (eye). You therefore can see the most area, in the area you’re interested in, making the “aiming” a little easier, and encompassing as much area/spread for several Transmitters.

Now, you got to choose an Antenna, with a wide enough “eye”, to see the range (in Azimuth) of Transmitter locations. Highly Directional Antennas, have a very “narrow” eye. Omni’s can see it all (almost), but Omni’s and Multi’s don’t have the “reach” as do the Directionals. All this is why you see SO many choices in the Lists*. You got to do some “homework” if you want your system to really do well. So, you may not have much of a choice about the “size” of the Antenna, and that depends on how far you are from the Farms.

This has probably brought up a lot more questions, but, I’ll let you ask them as we go.

Have a good Day !

PS: Come on guys, your opinion/comments count, CHIP IN !
Lists* = http://www.hdtvantennalabs.com/index.php & choose color.

[tlp95129]

The RF signals are the same frequencies. Analog used channels 2-69. Digital after the transition will use channels 7-51 (the low VHF signals won't be used with a few exceptions, and channels 52-69 were auctioned off earlier this year to Verizon and AT&T). So the propagation of the signal should be dependent on only two things - frequency (channel) and transmitter power. There are some nuances like polarization differences, but in essence, little will change.

Transmitter power seems to be set both by FCC rules to prevent adjacent channel and adjacent region interference. The budget of the station and the area they want to cover can also come into it if there are no FCC limits.

What has changed is the receivers. The new digital tuners seem to be really superb at pulling the signals out of the air. Digital also uses a new signal modulation scheme, 8-VSB. I'm not sure if that improves things or not.