BrianMe

Decent OTA HDTV Antenna and receiver

What is a decent, middle of the road, antenna and receiver to get over the air HD on? Preferably an indoor antenna.

Thanks!

Brian

David_Rivshin

I can't help you with OTA tuners, but the RadioShack double bowtie antenna is highly regarded and fairly inexpensive. I have one, and it's definitely much better (many times the signal strength) than the cheap rabbit ears + loop that it replaced. It is directional, so you'll want to go to www.antennaweb.org to figure out which direction to point it at. Infact, go there and figure out if a small indoor antenna like that is in the realm of reason for your situation. The nice thing about the RS antenna is that if it ends up not being strong enough for you you can just return it to your local RadioShack store.

Note that the vast majority of OTA ATSC stations are broadcasting in the UHF band, so UHF only antennas are often recommended. However, check antennaweb to see if any in your area are broadcasting in the VHF band, in which case you'll need either a VHF/UHF antenna or a separate VHF antenna and a splitter/combiner.

Good luck
-- Dave

Dan Driscoll

Dan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin

Julian Reville

I just got an OTA box last week, and LG LST-4200A; off of eBay. I'm in an urban area, so I ordered a Winegard MetroStar 2000 omni-directional outdoor antenna. It hasn't come in yet, so I'm making do with the OTA box hooked up to my outdoor FM antenna, an omnidirectional turnstile model.

Even with this far-from-optimal antenna, the LG picks up 6 digital channels (all UHF) and 7 analog channels (a mix of VHF & UHF).

Julian Reville

Well, I got the Winegard Metrostar 2000 yesterday, and while it DOES work, I am somewhat disappointed. The reception of digital channels is only slightly better (using the signal strength bar on the OTA box) than I was getting using the FM antenna, and the reception of analog stations is about the same.

It IS omni-directional though, if that is a help to anyone, and I guess that is the reason it doesn't have great reception in any one direction: it's trying to bring in signals from all directions. For the money ($75 plus shipping) I think it's over-priced.

Back to the drawing board: I may try a good directional UHF antenna pointing at 110 degrees and a low band VHF pointed at 240 degrees, with some kind of coupler that will allow them to feed down 1 75ohm coax.