On the Finicky Nature of Antennae and Digital Television

I may never completely understand why my TiVo HDXL DVR works poorly, if at all, with any specially made Digital TV Antennae I have tried. I may also never fully understand why my TiVo works well with my ancient (30-year-old) rabbit ears (when they have been properly aligned). The most frustrating thing I may never entirely understand is why I can properly align those rabbit ears so that the TiVo says all the channels are getting 90% reception or above and then a few weeks later reception goes to pot on one or several channels.

I most recently had to realign the rabbit ears a week or two ago. Unfortunately, as I discovered last night, it was too late for the "Quartet" episode of "Endeavor" on PBS. About an hour into the program the picture degenerated into several streams of random-looking blocks and the sound disappeared entirely. I missed the last third of the episode.

My experience has been that when the alignment of the rabbit ears loses its charm, small disturbances in the surrounding space are enough to upset reception. It may be as simple as a person standing up and walking around. In this case I suspect the disruption occurred when I returned from dropping off our team's 48 Hour Film Project entry and reclined in my La-Z-Boy. Apparently in some configurations of the rabbit ears the reclined metal frame of the La-Z-Boy acts as a jamming mechanism for certain TV channels. They are rendered like so much smoothie whirling away in a blender. So, unless I see it in reruns, I guess I'll never know what happened in the case of the spy dressed in a Giant costume who shot a little boy.

GM