Remember free TV?

It’s still around. In fact, since May, four channels are available through ARCS, the Alaska Rural Communications System.

KHNS engineer John DeRosa, who maintains ARCS equipment in Haines, said a new digital signal started beaming from near the station’s transmitter site on FAA Road the first week of May.

But like pre-cable television service, viewers will probably need an outdoors TV antenna to get a picture.

They will also need a digital television or a digital converter box, if their sets are older. Televisions that have both analog and digital receivers inside them also may have to be programmed to find the new digital channel.

DeRosa compared the state’s TV service to radio broadcasts or solar energy. “ARCS is free, but you have to do something to get it.”

DeRosa, who lives at about 1 Mile Small Tracts Road, uses a TV antenna the size and shape of a pizza box on an eight-foot pole outside his home that he said gets a clear signal and all four channels, although when it rains it doesn’t seem to work.

“It’s the old-fashioned, TV way,” DeRosa said, describing antenna-adjusting scenes where one person stood outside a home moving an antenna, yelling at a person watching the television, “Can you see it now? Can you see it now?”

People may have to experiment, he said. “Remember when you were a kid and you touched the TV a certain way with one hand and your dad said, ‘Don’t move.’ It helps to almost think of this as magical.”

Unlike with the old analog system, poor reception won’t look so much like a squiggly picture as a pixilated image, DeRosa said.

One hitch, he said, might be finding a TV antenna in Haines. “We need somebody in town to do antenna installation.”

DeRosa said he has been impressed by the programming on channels including ARCS, PBS, 360 North and University of Alaska. His wife enjoys the British shows at night, he said. “The programming is good stuff. It’s really superior.”

Walter Betz, who lives on Bear Trail Lane, a spur off FAA Road that’s just a few hundred feet from the transmitter, said he hasn’t yet picked up the signal. Betz said he watched ARCS for years with just a rabbit ears-style antenna, but the signal started fading about 10 years ago.

Betz bought a flat-screen, digital television, and even tried a digital antenna and amplifier, which didn’t help, though when he sent the equipment to a friend in the Lower 48, the friend was able to capture dozens of additional channels.

Betz said an ARCS technician he spoke to on the phone said he shouldn’t need more than rabbit ears because of the model of his television and his short distance to the transmitter tower. He said he’s leery about investing money into an antenna system that may not work and would like to speak with other viewers who’ve been able to get the new service.

“I haven’t even found anyone in town who knows what I’m talking about. They’ve got their satellite TV or whatever, but I don’t want to spend $100 a month on TV,” Betz said. “I just want to talk to someone who’s had success with this. It’s like chasing a ghost.”

ARCS offers a troubleshooting line at 888-840-0013 or go to http://www.arcstv.org.

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