Digital broadcast television is all about reception.
To get over-the-air channels in standard or high definition, you need a properly deployed antenna. Other factors, such as your geographical location and any physical obstructions in your vicinity, can affect your reception.
I’ve been lucky in this regard. In three locations in or near downtown St. Paul, I have been able to pull in most or all available digital channels using a low-cost indoor Radio Shack antenna hooked up to a low-cost digital-converter device or a plug-in computer tuner.
As a result, I’ve become a big fan of free high-def TV as an alternative to costly cable. (You can read about all my DTV adventures, among other DTV-transition topics, in articles and posts here or here.)
But not everyone sees such good results, as you would have gathered from this blog post and this related article. Some people may need fancier antennas and may still see issues, especially if they’re on the outer fringes of the Twin Cities.
Even in the heart of the Twin Cities, close to Shoreview television transmitters, many will have reception issues. This can be due to signals bouncing around in areas with lots of buildings close together. Those near hills can have reception interference, as well, with their direct line of sight to the transmitters blocked.
Stephen Margolis has seen this first-hand. The retired electrical engineer has spend a lot of time driving around with digital-television equipment in his trunk, just to see how DTV reception fairs in different places. I mentioned him in this article.
Margolis’ recent testing has revealed several problem areas in the east metro. He writes:
I suspect that the dead zones in St. Paul are:
1) the rectangle bordered by Bayard and Eleanor on the North and South and Fairview and Cleveland on the East and West.
2) West 7th between Montreal and St. Paul Avenue and St. Paul Avenue between West 7th and Cleveland.
Both of these are in the shadow of hills.
West 7th Street in St. Paul is at an elevation of about 810 feet above sea level. It runs along the bottom of a hill in Highland Park, and the top of this hill is 970 feet above sea level. Hence, there is a hill 160 feet high between West 7th Street and Shoreview.This would be West 7th Street between Montreal Avenue and St. Paul Avenue. St. Paul Avenue, which intersects West 7th, is also about 810 feet above sea level, and is at the foot of the same hill.
At the corner of West 7th and St. Paul Avenue, there are two garden apartment complexes which have very tall antenna towers -- maybe 100 feet (I will try to get a better estimate). These must have been installed long ago to provide Community Antenna Television (CATV) sending analog TV to these two apartment houses.
Bayard Street in St. Paul is 887 feet above sea level in the shadow of the campus of The College of St. Catherine which is about 933 feet above sea level. Hence, Bayard Street is in the shadow of a hill 46 feet high between Bayard Street and Shoreview.
