Review on TV antenna

Ralph Mowery:

Sorry. Just that I'm more conservative(in a common-sense way) about technical matters than certain members of Congress are about everything else(!). That's why I push big-ol jet airliner shaped antennas whenever someone I know wants to go OTA, instead of those weird shaped $19.95 price-point profit leaders.

I'm s'damn conservative I still have a Pro- Logic surround receiver at the heart of my entertainment system! Why? Modern receivers don't have enough analog(rca) inputs to connect all of my *perfectly- functional-analog-audio-sources-thank- you-verymuch!* to them. There's more HID-ME jacks on the back than I know what do do with. lolol!

Ralph Mowery:

Sorry. Just that I'm more conservative(in a common-sense way) about technical matters than certain members of Congress are about everything else(!). That's why I push big-ol jet airliner shaped antennas whenever someone I know wants to go OTA, instead of those weird shaped $19.95 price-point profit leaders.

I'm s'damn conservative I still have a Pro- Logic surround receiver at the heart of my entertainment system! Why? Modern receivers don't have enough analog(rca) inputs to connect all of my *perfectly- functional-analog-audio-sources-thank- you-verymuch!* to them. There's more HID-ME jacks on the back than I know what do do with. lolol!

PaintedCow wrote: "My antenna amplifier is not noisy at all. I get excellent picture and sound. It's mounted right at the antenna. My nearest tv stations (except PBS) are all at least 50 miles away. Without the amp, I only got half "

Make/model of your antenna?

Your "skip" was most likely due to a temperature inversion between different layers of the atmosphere, not the skip you get on HF frequencies like on CB.

Propagation via a temperature inversion works for UHF as well as VHF, so it is still possible. The problem is that your HDTV is programmed to only see channels it found in the scanning process. You would need to re-scan during the temperature inversion in order to find more distant stations.

Fred

If you are really interested, you could manually add any channel that you might be likely to get if the inversion is right. UHF is pretty much line of sight tho and the problem with digital is you get it or you don't. There is no "snowy picture" stuff. These days, I suspect DXing TV is just being able to say you got a carrier.

Fred:

That's why I always suggest throwing the

BIGGEST BADASS antenna you can at it. :) Minimize skips and pixelation. You can always add an attenuator later.

Well it is true that OTA TV looks better than cable or satellite because it is not heavily compressed. But any decent antenna provides this, nothing in the advertised antenna is so special.

I put up an antenna and dropped satellite TV and I get about 70 channels (counting the sub-channels) but about half are in Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean, which are not of much interest to me.

Of course .

Huh? You don't address my question. Why would digital tv be different from analog wrt using an amp to get distant stations, like

PaintedCow, you're the one that said that was so, but I don't understand why.

Not just here but everywhere it woudl help if you would quote more of the previous post.

How much experience have you had with stations 30, 40, 50 miles away?

Amplifiers work well and are often the best possible method of getting such stations.

Even if I could duplicate what I have now by buying an antenna twice the size and mounting it on a 30 foot mast , why would I do that when I can get the same result with a maybe iirc $30 amplifier?

And I don't get any noise. I didn't with analog and I certainly don't with digital.

Micky wrote: "Even if I could duplicate what I have now by buying an antenna twice the size and mounting it on a 30 foot mast , why would I do that when I can get the same result with a maybe iirc $30 amplifier? "

Gain theory. Maximize gain before you hit an amplifier. Otherwise you are just amplifying the effects of a weak signal. I'm about 40 miles outside of Manhattan, and I get everything out of there just fine without an amp, along with a couple stations from Long Island and NJ.

I have good desired channels on old 12 and 13 VHF. I think 5 take that space.

I looked at amazon reviews on motorized product. Mixed, but mostly say cheap junk. I was always interested in that product.

I can get near 40 channels on cheap indoor amplified antenna. An older RCA rabbit ears also works good. I went out to get another RCA current model for another tv. Could not get any VHF reception on 5 PBS like station. The amplified antennas seem to pick up the VHF band. I looked inside that rabbit ear base. Saw possible solder bridge, bu that didn cure problem. I returned item, and no replacement for fear of defective design. It also seemed lesser quality than the one I bought several years ago.

Greg

You make amplifying a weak signal sound bad. It's actually good.

Your reason is that you amplify noise, but that applies little or not at all to digital signals.

How big and how high is your antenna?

That's mostly because the TV antennas in NY are high up on the Empire State Building.

An amplifier can work well in some situations, but it does need a decent signal at its input.

Sam E:

You said it!

One analogy of using an amplifier with a less than ideal antenna:

Trying to use the EQ on a mixing board to improve the sound of a source picked up with a poor choice of microphone or bad mic placement. Pick a better mic or relocate the existing one before trying to "fix in the mix"

Same thing with the antenna: Pull in enough signal to begin with before deciding to amplify it.

Yes, you want the strongest possible signal, but you are stuck with what you get. Amplifiers generate noise, but feedlines also generate noise. Having an amplifier at the antenna results in an improved signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver, compared to having the same amplifier at the receiver end of the feedline. This is especially true for signals that were marginal to begin with.

Fred

Freddie MacK, et al:

Example of antenna to steer clear of:

Freddie MacK, et al:

Example of antenna to steer clear of - unless you live 20 blocks from the transmitter:

Where do you mount(position) the amp module? What's the tech spec of amp? S/N ratio, gain on VHF or UHF? power fed by coax or separage power cord?

Fred wrote: "In article ,

- show quoted text - Yes, you want the strongest possible signal, but you are stuck with what you get. Amplifiers generate noise, but feedlines also generate noise. Having an amplifier at the antenna results in an improved signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver, compared to having the same amplifier at the receiver end of the feedline. This is especially true for signals that were marginal to begin with.

Fred "

You may be raising the signal higher above the line & receiver noise, but you are also amplifying any noise *in the signal itself*. THAT is why I advocate maximizing gain first, via the biggest antenna you are able to/are permitted to install.

Again, the only situation in which I would recommend an amp is when feeding multiple receivers(TVs, recorders, FM tuners, etc). NOT to make up for a dinky(read: low-gain) antenna.