What TV do you have? To receive local channels these days, you need an ATSC tuner and an antenna pointed at the station with no intererence. The digital signal is sufficient signal or no signal. Use antennaweb.org or tvfool.com to determine what antenna and direction it needs to point to get the stations in your area. antennaweb is very conservative in the stations that it will suggest you can receive even with an external antenna (assumed). An amplifier may be useful to increase the signal if you share the signal between TVs. If the tv only has an NTSC tuner, you need a converter box. The ones that were available with the government coupon only provided SD signal out.
For HD you need at least 720 lines of pixels (from top to bottom of the screen) in the screen resolution. If the resolution is less than that, you can only get SD (480 resolution). For HD content from a set-top box (dvd player, cable box, etc), the unit matters. So what is your source? There were some where the component video output was limited to the same as the composite video cable. Thus they only carried 480. However, more modern sources will provide up to 1080i on either the component video cables (3 RCA jacks red, blue and green), DVI or HDMI. However, if you use an adapter (to go from DVI to HDMI for example) or have a long cable run, you may have signal loss and lose some resolution. Check the device manual for specifics on what signal resolution will be provided by any cable choice. HDMI will always carry HD signals.
I hope this helps.
Cindy Wells
Go to menu then tuning,set from cable to air,for local channel.you can't get true HD for cable because cable is an analog signal
110 views
Usually answered in minutes!
×