DTV has reception problems....................................
tvbroadcast.com
Introducing Cliff
With some fanfare and with dignitaries and pundits in abundance, a major city broadcaster takes a test run on DTV and some of it's potential money-making features. To those who viewed the test, all went well. Quite well.
But after the sun fell and rose again, this station's engineering team took an ENG van out along some of its radials, to see how good the picture looked outside ground zero. Lo and behold, they pulled into a highly populated suburb of this major city and discovered they couldn't receive the signal!
Yikes, the cliff effect had made an official, unpublicized, not applauded, appearance.
Try as they may, the engineers couldn't get the signal, even though (except for some trees) the location was line-of-site to the antenna. Until, that is, they hoisted up a high gain, narrow beam-width (say, 30 degrees) receiving antenna. Viola! A signal. Looked good.
But lest the engineers on this radial celebrate too soon, they had some strange (artifact-like) thoughts.
While they could see the picture, would this mean viewers would need a Sutro Candelabra-type mast holding a high gain antenna for every local station in the market? Nope, there's cable TV in this city, so not everyone would be affected.
But what about the cable system(s)? Would they also need additional antennas? And, heaven forbid, would they balk at something as old as must carry when stations start doubling up on the market's total available signals? Hmmm.
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