HD antenna installation

I bought a GE Enhanced TV attic mount HD antenna (60 mile range) from Wal-Mart.

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I have two TVs in the house, a 42" Sony and a 32" Vizio. My plan is to install the antenna and run a coax cable from it to the junction box where the cable comes into the attic.

1) Can I use one antenna for TVs?

2) Does it matter which side of the attic I install the antenna? I think the stations are closer to the opposite side of my ranch house than the cable junction.

The instructions are mute on these questions.

Reply to
badgolferman
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Start here:

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pay attention to the links to other sections about choosing antennas and general installation hints.

Go here to verify whatever you choose in hardware has a chance of picking up a signal

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Reply to
Steve Stone

Also antennaweb.org

If your signals are weak and the coax runs are long, you may want an amplifier near the antenna end of the cable. But put it where you can get at it easily in case it needs service. . Mark

Reply to
makolber

And since he's already got the antenna, the easiest thing to do would seem to be to just hook it up temporarily with a splitter and see if it works OK or not.

Reply to
trader_4

Yes, you will just need a cable splitter

Best to go up there with the antenna and a cell phone and have someone view the reception Vary the location and orientation until you find the area of best reception...could be anywhere.

Reply to
philo 

Per badgolferman:

I am using one rooftop antenna for effectively four TVs: two actual televisions and two tuners that feed my Tivo-on-steroids PC application.

I find that I need an amplifier. But I also need to split the coax...so I bought a splitter that does double duty as an amplifier.

If the in-attic antenna does not work out, consider a rooftop antenna installed/aimed/tuned by a professional.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

There are MANY issues. Trial and error is the best plan.

The environment and direction of the TV stations are important. That antenna is likely to be directional. May be a problem if your stations aren't in the same direction.

Antennaweb.org is a good place to start.

It's likely that you can find an antenna position that works for each TV station. Problem I had was finding a single position that worked for ALL TV stations. I had an outside antenna with a rotor, but that's no help if you time-shift and record several at once.

Reflections are likely to be more of a problem than signal strength. With my early ATSC to NTSC tuner/adapters, I found that attenuating the signal helped. I ended up with several tuners with different attenuation optimized for different channels.

Inside the attic can be a problem depending on the composition of your roof, the metal running around inside the attic, metal gutters, etc.

Trial and error is the best plan.

Reply to
mike

I tried out the attic antenna today. It is supposed to have a range of

60 miles and the broadcast towers are around 25 miles south of me. I pointed it in that direcection and hooked it up to the attic amplifier where the cable comes in. I then auto-scanned for channels on both TVs.

A total of 8 digital channels were detected. Only one of them was HD and that was the ABC affiliate. All the other channels were local useless ones I would never watch. I went back up there and moved the direction of the antenna around a few times and rescanned. Not much changed. According to the antennaweb.org site all the major affiliates should be easily reachable for me.

I am dubious of the attic antenna although my friend who lives 5-10 miles closer to the towers is pleased with his. I may get an outdoor type and try that next.

Reply to
badgolferman

When I went digital, I took my TV out to a tree, connected 25 feet of coax to the antenna, threw a rope over a branch, and hoisted the antenna. I could aim it by a cord tied to one corner. That let me test with a straight connection and nothing to block a signal.

Your problem could be the amplifier. I'd test the antenna with just a coaxial cable.

Reply to
J Burns

Does antennaweb.org indicate that there is more than one antenna farm near you?

Do you have hills or large trees between you and the antenna farm(s)?

What do you mean by "All the other channels were local useless ones" ? You have 7 independent stations not affiliated with any network?

I'm in the Philly area 25 miles from the main antenna farm and get all the main OTA stations with just old fashioned rabbit ears on the first floor..

Reply to
terrable

A good idea.

Another idea would be to take that long piece of coax and run it up to the attic, and bring up a small TV, so he can look at the picture himself and not go through someone else. (I have a cable jack up there from when I spent a lot of time in the attic, but a temp cable is just as good.)

Definitely. I bought an antenna amp from the sale table at Radio Shack. It was 8 dollars marked down from 30 or so!! Looked new. With my attic antenna and the amp, I could get almost all the DC stations now. (Strangely I don't get channel 20 which iirc is in Baltimore where I live. But I never watched it much anyhow. )

Something went wrong about 2 months later, and I could only get Baltimore again. There was no difference if the amp was in the circuit or if it wasn't. Bought a new amp from Solid Signal. So many choices, I ended up buying the very same amp under a different name. It wasn't very expensive (about $35 or 40) and I knew how well it worked before it broke. I wonder if this one will break too, or if Radio Shack knew something when the cut the price by 75%.

The first time I put both parts of the amp in the attic close to the antenna. The second time I read th e instructions and it said to put the power supply half closer to the TV, or in my case the DVDR. (It runs the power up through the co-ax, at the same time the TV signal is going down it.

BTW, if worst comes to worst it's possible to use two antennas, connected through a splitter (which in this case is a merger or something!) Both can be directional or one can be dir. and the other omnidirectional. The amp should go after where the splitter joins them, unless one antenna has a built in amp.

Are splitters for antenna signals different from other similarly looking splittlers, because frequencies are different? I never paid attention.

Reply to
micky

Good luck but I suggest keeping your expectations low if you expect stable reception (no audio dropouts or video pixellation) on all major channels. I live within 8 miles of the network stations' broadcast towers, all of which are within a 5 degrees arc. I'm in a major metropolitan suburban area. Even with a professionally installed carefully aimed roof antenna on an extended mast, I didn't have reliable reception on the majority of stations that use the UHF band. Reception was better in the winter (no leaves on the trees to absorb signal?) but still not acceptable regardless of whether I used an amplifier or not. I suspect that even though the antenna was directional, multipath interference from busy fixed wing and helicopter air traffic in nearby airspace was largely to blame. Despite investment in the antenna, I gave up and got FIOS. Only the digital signals that were transmitted on the VHF frequencies were rock stable via over-the-air reception.

Reply to
Peter

Per Peter:

That makes me feel lucky.

We are West of Philadelphia in a town called Paoli (zip 19301).

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says we are about 13 miles from our major stations - and I suspect they all use the same antenna farm, or at least antennas close to each other in a place called Manayunk.

Our rooftop antenna has been working well since summer of 2008. We get the major channels (3, 6, 10, 12, 17) plus a few others.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Before I got a DTV, I got a Phillips "HDTV" set-top amplified antenna. For analog TV, I was amazing, as good as a rooftop antenna with an amplifier. Then I got a DTV. That antenna was terrible. I guess it wasn't good at rejecting multipath distortion, which can wreck a digital signal.

It worked better with the amplifier power supply unplugged. DTV can do fine on a weak signal.

A splitter will mean 3dB attenuation. That may be OK with DTV, but 2 antennas seems to ask for multipath distortion.

When we first got a TV antenna, there were 3 weak stations 3 directions. Rotators were expensive and prone to trouble. Our mast had 3 fixed antennas and 3 transmission lines leading to a switch on the back of the TV.

I've considered using 2 fixed antennas. I'd use 2 coax lines and a coax switch.

I haven't noticed, either, but quality can vary. When my BIL went to DTV, he bought a balun at Radio Shack to connect his cable to a 300-ohm antenna. He couldn't get anything. I unscrewed the cable and put my finger on the center conductor. He got several channels.

I gave him a spare balun that cost about 1/4 of what he'd paid. It worked. With baluns and splitters, it might pay to buy a spare of a different brand.

Reply to
J Burns

BTW., my large multi-arm antenna in the attic is just sitting on one or two large empty cartons. That's just as good as a mast, isn't it?

When I had a small round remotely-rotatable amplified antenna in the attic, I screwed a 2 foot piece of metal tubing to a rafter and attached the antenna to that. but since this big one doesn't rotate, I saw no reason to use a mast. Yes?

I meant to say that it worked fine this way**, but maybe the amp power supply broke because the attic gets fairly hot. The old amp power supply smells burnt now, and the other half doesn't.

**People with antenna on masts don't do it this way, because they have no AC receptacles on the roof or at the top of the mast!

Sometimes. Before the amp, I got a lot of feeze frame for 1 to 5 seconds, or sound on/off/on/off.

Now I get all these stations from 50 miles away, but one of the channels in Baltimore, whose antenna is on "television hill" maybe 12 miles away, has the sound on/off/on/off and blotchy picture much of the day. It does this no matter where I set the amp adjust knob on the antenna amp.

I think without the amp it worked better, but all the other stations work better with it.

I saw it recommended somewhere. Maybe at solidsignal.com, but maybe not. But multipath is another reason to take a tv into the attic to aim antennas there.

Talking about a co-ax switch reminds me. I haven't been using one much lately, but I have two antennas myself. One is the one I've been talking about and the other is a 6 or 8 foot piece of single strand (insulated, fwiw) wire that just lies on the floor in the bedroom, or maybe it's run across a dresser. It plugs into the center hole of a co-ax switch, and when the antenna amp was broken, sometimes gave a picture on more stations than the large, multi-arm attic antenna.

Now I think it's plugged into the input co-ax connector for the digital to analog converter set-top box that feeds my VCR. The set-top box has a better tuner than the Philips DVDR with Hard Drive. I use the vcr for tapes and its settop box when I want to record one station and watch another. That's rare.

But you're not saying they're designed for lower or higher frequencies? Just that the quality can be bad?

Reply to
micky

You can try the outdoor type IN the attic. Even a pretty big one.

So you think it was the aircraft themselves, and not all the radio transmissions they were having?

Reply to
micky

I know about Paoli. It's in Pennsylvania.

My friend who lived in Reisterstown MD could get channel 50 in Lancaster.

I live about 5 miles south of her and can never get it. I used to be jealous, but now I get enough stations.

Reply to
micky

Two things come to mind:

1) Some roofing materials are worse than others for blocking signals, especially metallic radiant barriers.

2) Is the antenna for both VHF and UHF -- check antennaweb to see if you need both ("RF channel" 13 or below). I've seen some antennas advertised as "digital" (there's no such thing; they're all just hunks of metal) that were UHF-only. In my area at least, during the transition period all of the "temporary" channels were UHF, but several stations moved back to VHF after the cutover, disappointing some who bought the UHF-only ones from companies that should have known better.

As others suggested, it may be worth taking the TV outside with a ladder and trying there, to see if it's the roof interfering. FWIW, we're about 25 miles from the transmitters, no mountains in the way, and get all of the local affiliates with a pretty compact cheap antenna I got from Home Depot.

Josh

Reply to
Josh

...unless the cartons hold metal. :)

I have an omnidirectional FM antenna hanging from the rafters by strings.

I once took an ion generator to the attic because it was great for settling the dust I stirred up pushing the rock wool insulation around to do wiring. I forgot it. When I remembered, the heat had wrecked it.

I'd unplug the amp for that channel. An adequate signal may pass through the amp.

I ended up using a 4-bay bowtie that I used to have 10 feet above the chimney with an amp for analog UHF. When I got a DTV, I hoisted it to that height and scanned with it pointed in various directions. I listed the channels and found that I could get them all indoors on the ground floor.

I may rotate the antenna depending on weather. With a distant transmitter, the strongest signal can bounce off the sky. In some weather conditions, it's erratic, and I do better turning the antenna 45 degrees to catch the bounce off a building.

By "switch" I mean a thing that looks like a splitter, with fittings to screw on three cables. With a splitter, the three circuits are on the same transformer. With a switch, one antenna won't interfere with the other.

I looked at amazon. Few advertise 1, 2, or 3 GHz. All should be adequate for DTV. If it's not designed well or quality control is poor, an impedance mismatch could cause reflected energy. That could make a mess of reception on some or all digital channels.

Reply to
J Burns

I agree he should try it without the amp. That's what I would always do first. I don't have a lot of experience with indoor vs outdoor, but the couple of times I tried it, I did not see much difference in reception. I think if the height is about the same and there is just typical wood construction involved, the reception will probably be similar, meaning if he can't get most channels now, I doubt moving outside is the issue.

Reply to
trader_4

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