HD antenna installation

micky wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Not a good idea. The cartons may alter the dynamics of the signal you are trying to receive. If you have any reception problems, that may be a cause.

Reply to
Jack Meoff
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True. There's no such thing as a "HD antenna" either. HD refers to display resolution, and the antenna has nothing to do with that. However, I was SURE that advertisers would make both claims.

Here, most stations used (and still use) UHF channels. The ABC channel was an exception (temporary channel = 10, regular channel = 7). I have a UHF-only antenna that picks up NBC and CBS, but not ABC.

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Reply to
Mark Lloyd

I believe the government site is better than antennaweb.

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If I give them my street address, I get a different list than if I simply give my zip code. I find it much more accurate than antennaweb.

When antennaweb recommends omnidirectional indoor antennas in some cases, I'm very skeptical. When they make recommendations in terms of antenna color coding, I'm very skeptical.

Antennas are often advertized in terms of miles. That's nonsense. The FCC groups stations by the calculated signal strength at the user's site; I can even click a button to get the decibels for a station. That's what the consumer needs to know. It correctly shows that I may do fine with stations 70 miles away but not with one 11 miles away.

The FCC shows the carrier channel for each station. That's likely to be different from the DTV channel number. If I miss a channel when I scan, and the FCC shows I should have a good signal, I can probably get it by pointing my antenna in that direction and punching in the carrier channel.

By showing the calculated strength of signals from various stations at your site, he FCC site can help you figure out if there's something wrong with your setup.

Reply to
J Burns

Unfortunatly DTV in the US is very suseptable to multipath. With analog, m ultipath caused ghosting but the picture was for the most part watchable an d ghosting had no impact on the sound. With digital, multipath instead of ghosting, causes blockies and total loss of reception including loss of the sound. But digital can give an excellent picture with a weaker signal as long as there is little multipath. So the best defense against multipath i s a directional antenna amimed correctly. But if the reflection is inline with the desired signal , there is not much you can do except hope the engi neers develop better demodulators.

Mark

Reply to
makolber

The other problem with the web site is it doesn't know about repeaters. I get my TV signals from repeaters on Grizzly Mountain, directly West. The web site thinks the signal is directly South towards Bend, Oregon.

Pretty useless!!!!

Paul

Reply to
Paul Drahn

K22IL-D: 250 watts, 23 meters. Maybe they couldn't afford to submit coverage data to the FCC. Did you give them your street address?

Reply to
J Burns

The 4-bay bowtie had a great reputation for UHF analog. IIRC, everybody made it the same: 4 wire "cat whiskers" in front of a mesh screen.

When DTV came in, all the manufacturers seemed to make little modifications to the original design. I wonder if they were refinements to reject secondary paths a little better.

My problems seem to be weather-related, so I suspect that they occur when multipath distortion comes inline, from similarly strong reflections at different atmospheric levels.

Reply to
J Burns

That 5-10 miles may make a difference, so may the construction of your atti c. If you have a metal roof you will be attenuating the signal to near use lessness.

There is really no difference between an attic antenna and a roof antenna o ther than mounting and location. (likewise, there is no difference between an old school TV antenna and a "HD" antenna whatsoever. Difficulty: since the changeover to digital, channels no longer directly correspond to frequ encies, so e.g. "Channel 2" may actually be a UHF frequency in your area.)

For good reception, very little beats a proper outdoor antenna mounted abov e the roof, although if you go that route make sure that it is properly gro unded.

nate

Reply to
N8N

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is helpful for this.

Reply to
Arthur Conan Doyle

There are VHF high band channels being used. I don't know if any use the low VHF low channels using even longer elements. I only have one, channel

13 high band. On my rabbit ears, I pull out 1 1/2 foot or so for 13 . It's also got the UHF loop which is not adjustable except for rotation.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

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