Is there any reason to keep this antenna?

What do you plan to do when your cable isn't working?

And are you sure your cable has all the stations your antenna has?

In Baltimore, that's not the case. When the Orioles or the Ravens are on tv, and you don't want to watch, cable doesn't have the DC stations, but my antenna gets them fine.

Reply to
mm
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Hi,

I have one of these puppies on my roof (the picture is not of my roof).

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that is currently serving no function as I have cable. It does serve as a convenient ledge for birds with all the predictable consequences. Is there any reason whatsover to keep the antenna there, e.g. for a broadcast HD tv signal, or can I remove it without any future regrets?

Thanks!

Aaron

Reply to
Aaron Fude

No reason whatsoever. You cable provider will provide HD signals. The only caution I would suggest it to make sure that when you remove the mast, that you don't disturb something that will cause the roof to leak. Things will be generally badly rusted, so a hack saw and bolt cutters are your friends. Don't forget to pull down the feed line, as well.

/paul W3FIS

Reply to
professorpaul

on 7/18/2008 8:51 PM Aaron Fude said the following:

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No, you can remove it. That way, you can put a few more satellite antennas up there.

Reply to
willshak

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I'd use it for the free OTA DTV broadcasts.

Reply to
Bob

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Put it on Craigslist..some will pay you $$ for it, if for no other reason than its Aluminum

Reply to
Rudy

I have The DishNetwork (satellite) I use the antenna for "local HD" channels and dont have to pay "Dish" for the "locals"

Reply to
Rudy

I'm keeping mine, will probably even upgrade it, even though I have dish. Every time wind blows hard around here, I keep getting the damn 'searching for signal' box on the screen. I need a backup. Plus, like you said, for the locals. I get the dish local package as part of the bundle I'm on, but it isn't ALL the locals. Sometimes one station preempts something I want to watch, but the same network the other direction doesn't. (Yes, I went out and bought a couple of the cheap converter boxes with the coupons, but they can't nail all the area OTA stations- that is why I need to upgrade the roof antenna.)

-- aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

I would keep it for a couple of reasons. If your cable goes out, it would act as a backup to get the major local channels. Plus, your cable provider compresses the HD signal quite a bit to cram all the channels on one cable. Whereas over the air signals you get from your rooftop antenna receives clear uncompressed signal from the transmitter directly by the TV station. And like the other poster said, depending where you live, your cable provider might not provide all the local channels. Plus, you might pick up a station far away to get some freebies, for example an out of market NFL game or an MLB baseball game.

Reply to
Mikepier

Uh, HD is highly compressed over the air as well. Fits into the same bandwidth as an analog broadcast signal, and there are often several subchannels carrying different programming. The local channels don't usually get compressed at all.

Not bloody likely with HD. Picking up the nearby stations is enough of a challenge. It's not like analog broadast where the signal degrades by getting fuzzy--with HD the degradation goes from perfect picture to nothing with no gradations in between.

Reply to
J. Clarke

antenna looks like VHF most digital channels are UHF, so existing antenna may not be useful.

if your dish goes iout when the wind blows you likely have a tree obstruction......

dish can be relocated to elminate that problem.

I moved my dish from the front corner of my home o the back deck to clear a tree across the street.

right after that my neighbor cut it down because ti dropped leaves in the fall. very sad beautiful mature tree......

but my dish on deck is actually better location.

Reply to
hallerb

You'd be surprised. . It depends where you are and how strong the signal is. Some people get a lot of stations OTA with just rabbit ears. The OP would have to hook it up to his TV and do a scan.

And the fact that OTA are compressed might be true, but its less than what the cable companies do.

Reply to
Mikepier

Absolutely. I've spent many of the past years just using a single wire 3 feet long or more to get OTA stations. Now that my input is a coaxial connector, I use a thin wire that will fit into the center hole and be gripped by the things in there.

A two foot wire is usually too short to get channel 2. Anything above 5 and the wire doesn't even have to be 2 feet long. My wires are usually on the floor or dangling down from the tv, but on the roof would be better.

So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the antenna in the picture worked well with VHF frequenies. I'm sure some of the elements on the antennas are specifically for UHF.

Compression was objected to on the assumption that the person was trying to receive HD. He may be happy with SD for out-of-town games that he can't get another way.

(I now use a PHillipds DVDR to get digital programs and it receives either but turns the HD into SD, so I have no idea if they are broadcast in HD or SD.)

And I mentioned that when a local game I didn't want to watch was on, I could watch DC stations. As to the reverse, currently, some DC cable providers have Baltimore stations, but I doubt all do or that it is guaranteed to last.

Also, I can watch DC teams on DC stations when they're not on Baltimore stations. All over the air.

Reply to
mm

People who have investigated find that the local channels are generally not compressed beyond what went over the air, it's cable-only channels such as sci-fi that have the heavy compression. I'd be real surprised if the cable companies had equipment in their local offices that could add additional compression in real time to an MPEG compressed datastream.

Reply to
J. Clarke

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