HDTV Antennas (1 Viewer)

[Philip Hamm]

If you're getting rid of cable altogether and want local channels on all the TVs in your house you may have an issue with the Zenith antenna or any antenna marketed as a "HDTV antenna". As I understand it, the Silver Sensor is a UHF only antenna. Most likely your local CBS,ABC,NBC, and possibly FOX and PBS afiliates are on VHF.

I am doing a similar thing. A few months ago I bought a Channel Master 4221 and installed it in my attic in order to recieve HDTV broadcasts. UHF antennas are extremely directional, and I found that if I moved it I could pick up two different markets. I'm in an exceptionally good reception area. So I bought another and have them on a switch. Then, my next step was to split the signal all over the house to see what the UHF capabilities would be on my other sets. The results were favorable!

I use Dish Network, and since I'm in such a great reception zone, I've decided to pick up an Antennacraft CS600 for VHF. I'll eliminate my second Dish receiver ($5/month) and local channels ($5/month) and use an antenna for all my locals. My antennas are installed in my attic and I have a very nice distribution system with a patch bay installed in my house. Since you're only 19 miles from the stations, you should be able to do the same thing as me, assuming you have the attic space, distribution capability, and reception (reception is based on a whole host of factors not just distance).

If you can do something similar, go for it! And, if you can, plug the antenna into your FM Radios, VHF and FM live on the same bandwidth - this is one of the reasons I'm doing this, to get perfect radio reception all over the place. Assuming you have cable through the house, you should be able to hook an antenna to whatever cable distribution system there is.

I haven't set mine up yet, I have the VHF antenna coming in the mail. I hope to do so this weekend. I hate the concept of paying for locals from Dish when I can get them perfectly for free.

 

[Chris Huber]

Thanks for the write-up Philip. Now, does that antenna have the digital out connection needed for HD? Also, can the cable going from the attic to the basement, for HD, be like 50-70ft? That seems like the signal would degrade. Plus, I don't know how I could even run that cable down to the basement...

 

[Philip Hamm]

There is no "digital out" on an antenna. It's just an antenna, I plug it into the antenna input on my digital receiver. My patch bay is in the basement, there is cable going to the attic and to the antennas. There may be some degradation, but not enough to matter to me. I run the antenna into a Channel Master distribution amplifier in order to handle the long runs back to the TVs.

 

[Robert_J]

Run the cable outside? Sewer vent pipes? Along A/C runs? Some houses have closets on top of each other. Just run the cable inside and through the floor/ceiling.

-Robert

 

[Chris Huber]

Hmmm, sears didn't have it. I am trying to find somewhere local that has this product. I am having no luck...

 

[GordonL]

That Radio Shack double bow-tie antenna that Robert-J referred to is worth a try also.

 

[oryan_dunn]

While its true that the local broadcaster wont compress it, they can devote less bandwidth to the HD signal to provide room for SD channels. This will make the HD feed pixelate more often. In this case, a slight compression by the cable company will be better than the pixelation of the local feed.

 

[Philip Hamm]

No it won't. The cable company is getting the locals from an antenna and relaying that information. Cable will never offer more bandwidth than local OTA, assuming a perfect reception of the OTA feed.

If you are in a situation where you can only get something like a 50% signal from the OTA transmitter and the cable company gets a 100% signal and relays that there could be common situations where cable works better than OTA. This is probably the case most of the time. It's the same as regular NTSC in this regard. However, it's possible that the re-compressing of the HD signal by the cable company will result in a degraded signal. Just like NTSC again, cable locals often do not look as direct antenna feeds with a really good antenna.

 

[Allan Jayne]

Cable TV operators can and do compress the video signals, both SDTV and HDTV. Among other things the consequence is that you must use their cable box to tune in all the digital channels (and all of the scrambled channels and perhaps some of the analog channels above channel 13)

Sometimes an analog channel is comb filtered and digitized after reception from the source and then transmitted to subscribes in a proprietary digital format. Usually the HDTV signals come down the cable in a different format from over the air broadcasts, I suspect the reason is that in over the air format two signals on adjacent channels cannot be tuned in without getting interference.

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[scottS]

You might also want to consider AntennasDirect 2 or 4 bay UHF antenna. I don't have one (I have a combo UHF/VHF) but I've read some good things.

http://antennasdirect.com/DB4_HDTV_antenna.html

I think it is similar to a ChannelMaster 2/4 bay setup.

scott s.
.

 

[Chris Huber]

I just picked up an RCA HDTV amplified antenna... It says "Syncronized to HDTV frequencies on channels 14 adn up."

What does that mean? Can this recieve HDTV below channel 11? Like NBC channel 3?

 

[Citizen87645]

UHF

I recommend going to antennaweb.org and seeing the frequency assignments for your locals. That way you can know whether to buy a VHF, UHF or combo.

 

[Robert_J]

WAVE-DT channel 3 is actually UHF channel 47.

-Robert

 

[Chris Huber]

Alright, so the RCA antenna I has is powered/amplified. If I turn the power off on the antenna down in the basement, I get nothing. If I turn it back on I get Digital HD stations.

Now, I've heard people talk about the Zenith Silver antenna being better then any others. If I got that one, would it get any reception in the basement? It is NOT amplified, right?

 

[JeremyErwin]

Garbage In, Garbage out. In all probability, the RCA antenna element is poorly designed--a glorified loop, perhaps, while the Zenith Silver sensor is pretty decent. Many HDTV tuners don't reject noise all that well, and amplified antennas rarely have low-noise amplifiers.

 

[Chris Huber]

http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cl...enna&scoring=p

The RCA is a flat panel with 2 antenna on the side and advertized as low noise. It's gets really decent HDTV on my sytem. Just wondering if the Zenith would do better or worse with no amplification?

 

[Citizen87645]

If the signal is solid I don't see any reason to switch. You either get it or you don't with HD.

 

[GordonL]

The Silver Sensor is also available amplified. I saw this at a Walmart B&M for around $30.

 

[Chris Huber]

Nice find GordonL. Didn't know that was out there...

 

[JeremyErwin]

Of course, but a better antenna may get more stations-- an extra PBS station here, a semi distant local that always seems to have the "good" games there. And although receiving two networks stations may seem rather useless-- it's always nice to have a backup in case the engineer falls asleep and forgets to "throw the switch".