DTV INFORMATION

13WMAZ is now broadcasting a 100% digital signal. If you already have a converter box or a TV with a digital tuner and you watch TV with an antenna, you need to perform a channel rescan to receive 13WMAZ at its new digital home, channel 13.1.

If you still can't see our signal, it may be because of your antenna. You must have an antenna to pick up our digital signal. Here's some basic information to help:

Try Double Scanning

Some boxes may not tune us in at 13.1 unless the old channel 4 location is erased from the memory of the box. To double re-scan, unplug the antenna, then scan so it picks up nothing, then unplug the converter or DTV set, plug it back in, then rescan.

For more information and instructions on double scanning, click here.

The Type Of Antenna I Need

13WMAZ's digital signal is in the VHF band. The other Macon stations are in the UHF band. So what you will need, then, is an antenna that can receive both VHF and UHF signals.

Does this sound familiar? It should, because it's also exactly what you have needed to receive analog over-the-air television for the last 40 years! So if you already have an antenna system, you may be all set for DTV. If not, installing one is no harder than for analog.

Setting Up Your Antenna

There are some differences between the analog and digital signals that can make a difference in how you set up your antenna and this concerns antenna amplifiers and signal strength. In the analog world, more is generally better. In the digital world, enough is all you need. While nearly any decent antenna used for analog reception will work for DTV, the same is not necessarily true for amplifiers. The reason is that the DTV signal requires extremely linear amplification, more so than the analog signal. Non-linear amplification introduces distortion into the signal. Analog is more forgiving than digital. Excessive non-linear distortion of the DTV signal appears as bit errors to your receiver. If the errors overpower your receiver's error correction capabilities, you get either no picture or severe picture blocking and stuttering.

Using An Antenna Amplifier

Your DTV receiver requires only enough signal to allow its error correction circuitry to function properly. Any signal above that is not used and will not improve the picture quality. Your DTV receiver has some sort of signal level indicator. Generally, this is a computer-generated number that is a combination of the actual signal strength and how hard the error correction circuitry is working. If the signal level is high, but the error correction circuits are working very hard, the value will be lower than if the signal level is lower but the error correction circuits are doing less. You should check your owner's manual for details on how your DTV receiver calculates its signal level. So the trick is for your antenna to deliver enough distortion-free signals, but not too much.

In general, there are only two reasons to use an amplifier: you are far away from the transmitters and even with a large antenna, the signal level is too low or you are distributing the signal to several rooms in your house and you need to compensate for the cable loss or both.

For more information on setting up and choosing the right antenna, visit www.antennaweb.org