HD Antennas

[John Gilmer]

Gad!

Unless you HAVE to "see" over a hill, 200' is a little on the high side.

Best best is the combination of: 1) a "pretty good" UHF/VHF antenna (not specific to HDTV); 2) a amplifier right at the antenna; and 3) a rotator. With the amplifier at the antenna, it's still a good idea to use RG-6 quad shielded cable.

In practice, you only use the rotator a few times until you find where you can get a good mix of stations. For example, I live south of Baltimore and DC but north of Richmond and east of some VA public TV stations. I set the rotor to get the DC stations. Most of the time the rotor control isn't even plugged in.

Obviously, neither DC or Richmond (or Pennsylvania or Deleware or the Eastern Shore) are "line of sight" yet I can receive them. My guess is that the signals are bouncing off various geographic features (including the river and the bay) and, perhaps, the network of cell phone towers and the high voltage electric towers help the signal to "hop" over intervening hills.

But it's fun to play with the rotor. On occasion I have received TV from Pennsylania, Deleware, and the MD "Eastern Shore." But most of the time I just point the thing north and enjoy my 10+ stations. Some of the "public" stations have 4 sub feeds. The commercial stations mostly have 2 or 3. My guess is that I have some 30 "programs" available at any one time. That's close to basic (but not minimum) cable.

>

[Red Green]

Bob Villa wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Installed one of these, TV is econo digital. Transmitters about 50 mi away. Works fine. Attached to chimney. Total height above ground

15-18ft.

Check out multi-firectionals if you have transmitters in significantly different directions.

[Josh]

Correct -- here in Sacramento, 2 stations (the ABC and PBS affiliates) are VHF permanently (one back at their original channel 10, the other moved from 6 to 9). Annoying because they came in great with a small flat antenna on their temporary UHF stations, but I had to dig out the old rabbit ears to get them now.

In many places, stations moved away from VHF 2-7 (VHF-lo, which requires the largest antenna elements to receive), but even that isn't true everywhere.

And many (most?) markets had UHF analog stations for decades (I remember 18, 20, 22, 24, 30, 57, 61 growing up in the Hartford market), so I'm not sure where people get the idea that the analog=VHF and digital=UHF. Some people may be able to use a UHF-only antenna, but many need exactly the same combo they had before.

I suggest using

to determine what stations you can receive, where they are, and the type of antenna required.

There's nothing special about a "digital" or "HD" antenna, except perhaps that digital signals have some error correction, so there's a sharper "shelf" -- you may get a perfect picture where before you had a slightly fuzzy analog signal, but may get a very badly pixelated or no picture where before you had a very snowy but usable analog signal.

Josh

[Robert Neville]

I had a similar experience. I have a 10mi line of sight to the antenna farm (I can see the collision lights at night) and thought the amplified Philips UHF blade antenna would work well.

After the digital transition, one of the local stations returned to its VHF frequency, the remainder stayed UHF. Strangely enough, the station I had the most problems with was a UHF station. I finially took the blade down last week and replaced it with a smaller classic combo design. It works perfectly.

[salty]

Mountain in the way?

[Jay Hanig]

I just installed a Antennas Direct-ClearStream 2 Long-Range HDTV Outdoor Antenna-C2 that I picked up at Bestbuy for $100. I have to say I am totally satisfied with it.

Unlike my other interior HD antenna, this one isn't tough to aim... just point it in the general direction of the town where the stations are and it will pick up a strong signal.

One caveat: I read in one of the review of the product that using it with an amplifier somehow negates the signal. The folks who used an external amplifier were totally dissatisfied with it and couldn't pcik up any signal at all. Well, it works just fine without an amplifier for stations up to 50 miles. Read the buyer's reviews for more information.

One more caveat about buying from Bestbuy at all: I've been in the market for a new 46" HDTV for a while. Sunday, Bestbuy's newspaper flier advertised a Samsung for $1499. The exact same TV was only $1299 on their website with free shipping. But it gets better: you could order it online and then pick it up in the local store for that same $1299. If you just walked into the store without previously ordering the TV, you'd get hit with the higher price and nobody would say a thing.

I don't know if they still do this but their in-store website was different from the one that presents itself to everybody else on the internet. It looks exactly the same but the store site's prices are higher than the authentic internet site. Sneaky.

Jay

[LSMFT]

panel,

Go with Dish network and save a lot of headache.

[Jay Hanig]

That is an answer but not THE answer. Many folks might prefer to have more than one source of signal. I sometimes lose satellite signal due to rain fade. The HD over the air signal is always reliable.

In the past, I learned what happens to cable TV when hurricanes hit. It might be weeks before I get my service back. That's why I went to satellite in the first place. But satellites aren't 100% reliable either... close but not 100%. So I like the OTA backup.

The difference is the over the air signal is basically limited to ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the local public stations. So it's for backup only. Given the choice, I prefer satellite.

Jay

[Mark Lloyd]

Untrue. Some analog is on VHF, some on UHF. Some digital is on UHF, some on VHF.

Many (not all) stations are using UHF now, instead of VHF. This has nothing to do with digital, and started several years earlier.

Here, the channels that had analog on VHF, have digital on VHF. The channels that had analog on UHF, have digital on UHF.

Also, HD or SD has nothing to do with what antenna you need.

[bud--]

Troll

[aemeijers]

And unless they happen to want the cable/satt only stations (not everyone does, some merely want the big networks and local news), pay

30-40 bucks a month forever, versus paying maybe $100 once for an antenna. Plus, the Dish locals seldom include all the available locals, and only a few of the sub channels. And in some areas (like where my father lives), they still don't offer locals at frigging all.

-- aem sends...

[AZ Nomad]

That is only reasonable if you only have one tv in the house or don't mind paying double for two tvs, triple for three etc.

[aemeijers]

???? I have six TVs in house, and one 2-head receiver. Same price as single-head receiver, when I signed up. Unless you have a house full of rug rats that all want to watch something different, who needs more than

2 available live feeds at once? (actually 3, counting the OTA coming from the rabbit ears and converter box.)

-- aem sends...

[AZ Nomad]

Actually, a dual feed dish and a multiplexer will let you have any number of receiver. One feed does "counterclockwise" polarization, the other clockwise, then the muliplexer provides the right one to each receiver.

But it sounds really expensive.

I'm annoyed as hell at both cable and satelite. I expect to be able to record anything I can tune and I despise their insisting that the only equipment that they'll allow to function fully are tivos or their own similar crap.

Right now I'm using analog cable plus digital/hdtv off an antenna.

[Bob Villa]

As far as cost goes...it seems like WE have to pay for all the pirating of their signals (cable/sat)!!!

bob

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

It's been over a year since I've used satellite, but then most of these devices were NOT multiplexors but switches. Multiplexes (called 'stackers') existed but were expensive.

You may be able to use your own DVR (as long as it can control that cable / satellite box). It's SD but you CAN record widescreen. Amazon.com lists a DVR with HDMI input (although there's still the intentional defects in the signal, companies insist on calling "protection") but it's expensive.

Currently, the cable I get (Suddenlink) has 68 analog channels, although I found something on their website about that changing to 19 "sometime ion the near future" (which says NOTHING about time).

[AZ Nomad]

I have a mythtv system running with 2 analog tuners and 4 atsc tuners. The atsc tuners currently record OTA. It's ironic that cable is the poorer signal compared to the antenna.

Hauppauge makes a video capture box capable of recording hidef from component video. However, I'd have to rent two cable boxes and pay for for digital service. If I have to go that route, I might as well go with satelite as it would permit me to own my own equipment instead of renting.