This clown isn't talking about satellite TV he's complaining about over the air broadcast digital. He's right that digital TV is all or nothing, you have a picture or you don't but I think the story is BS.
I don't know if anyone here tried it but it's great. I have satellite through the rest of the house and a TV with rabbit ears in the office. I can almost get 3 or 4 analog stations (they're more snow than picture) but i get 17 digital channels all with a crystal clear picture and several of them in high def.
Which is why I think it's another bullshit story. I haven't seen any degradation from bad weather and the simple fix is GET A BETTER ANTENNA.
That is the way I interpreted the problem as well.....the DUmmie is receiving a terrestrial DTV signal, which is no more or less susceptible to rain fade as an analog signal, except for what is called the "cliff effect". Cliff effect in DTV is where the signal degrades to a point where the receiver is no longer able to assemble a picture, therefore it reverts to a "Black screen" until it begins receiving enough data packets to assemble a picture again on the screen.....frequently just before the "cliff", the picture will pixellate, or "freeze" momentarily, then go to black. The principle is the same as with digital satellite reception, except when viewing a terrestrial broadcast the transmitter power levels are vastly higher than those from a satellite.
I work in the business, and we rarely encounter a situation such as the one that the DUmmie describes due to storm activity......I suspect that one of the following events happened during the storm......
!. Broadcasters now (in order to save on capital expense) have developed "combined facilities", where four or five or more completely separate TV stations transmit their signals from a single facility, with one tower holding multiple antennas. In a situation like this, a severe storm may knock out the power to this large facility, which will take all of the transmitters for several stations off the air. Most of us have auxiliary generators, but some don't, and if the site has one generator, and it fails to start (which they occasionally do, Murphy's Law).....everyone is again....SOL, until the power comes back on.
2. The DUmmie lives in a "fringe" area, and is too cheap to purchase an adequate antenna for DTV......if using a poor antenna, which is operating on the ragged edge of producing enough signal under optimal conditions, you might go to black during a storm, but a well designed antenna should work through any atmospheric activity, due to the fact that DTV signals are very robust especially if you are receiving them in the "A-grade" signal area, which is anywhere within approximately a 20-mile radius circle around the transmission site.
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