Indoor TV Antennas

[Dean Hoffman]

Consumer Reports has some advice. March 2023

[Karl]

Will ATSC 3.0 broadcasters start charging for Gilligan's Island reruns?

[rbowman]

My outdoor antenna is a rabbit ear meant to clamp to the rain gutter of a truck that I bought in the '90s on a piece of 1" PVC. It works.

When the digital switchover happened I was amused to see the new 'digital' antennas designed to replace the old 'analog' antennas. I suppose you can sell anything to the clueless.

[Retirednoguilt]

I strongly disagree with one of the statements in the consumer reports article. The article says in part, "Multidirectional antennas, which receive signals from all directions, could be better for urban locations..." In my personal experience, in two quite different indoor environments but in the same urban metropolitan area, using the same TV, that a mutidirectional indoor antenna was almost worthless due to severe reception problems from multipath reflection interference. One setting was on the second floor of a wood framed single family home with aluminum siding. The other setting was on a mid-level floor in a high rise multi-unit brick facade condo with steel girder framework and reinforced concrete floors. In the first case, the TV and antenna were located adjacent to an outside wall. In the second case, the TV and antenna were adjacent to an inside wall. In both cases, a unidirectional antenna provided far superior reception (although aiming the antenna for different stations was highly inconvenient and often required a few minutes of playing around to get precisely the best direction.

I came to the conclusion that although over-the-air reception in urban areas was often difficult in the age of analog TV, it was often satisfactory. However, with digital TV, absent the ability to use a directional roof antenna with a rotor, preferably on a mast, urban over-the-air reception is much more problematic.