My search for an antenna is over! (1 Viewer)

[Norris]

This past week I went and bought 4 different antennas from Radio Shack (1 was a special order that I'll need to cancel) to get OTA HD broadcasts. From reading this forum I concluded that antennaweb.org is a great reference site to start with. However, the info provided does not (and cannot be expected to) take into account the local environment. I got the biggest antenna RS has to offer and it was not feasible to use, I looked around my neighborhood and NOBODY has anything like that on their roof. Seems like nowadays everyone has 2 (yep that's two!) satellite dishes mounted, why? Since my house faces north, it was a no brainer to get this stealth-bomber-looking antenna

http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...5Fid=15%2D2185

I have it INDOOR in the loft facing north, and I got pretty much every digital stations that matter. There are no houses in front of mine, I feel very fortunate for that. CBS is hard to get, but it's possible. I am able to receive the majority of the stations listed here

http://www.checkhd.com/CH/Channels.aspx?SiteId=1000000

One thing I don't understand is that the actual station # does not match the #s listed at the TitanTV website. So for those of you who cannot or are unwilling to put up the traditional "fish bone" antenna, there's hope!

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Glad your antenna search is at an end.

On the channel number issue--the actual channel the digital signal is broadcast on is not the same as that of the station's analog channel. To avoid confusion, part of the digital spec is the ability of the station to add information in the broadcast signal that will cause the channel number displayed on your digital tuner to match the analog channel number everyone's used to with a decimal point and another number added to denote a digital broadcast and a particular subfeed. Digital broadcasting allows more than one feed to be broadcast on the same frequency, with each feed carrying a separate program (called multicasting).

As an example, my local ABC affilliate's analog broadcast is on UHF channel 30. It's digital broadcast is actually on VHF channel 9, and they run 3 separate feeds. These show up on my guide as:

30.1--the HD feed--scanrate 720p with 16/9 format, which shows HD when ABC is broadcasting it and an upconverted simulcast of the analog channel's 4/3 picture (with black bars on the sides) when ABC is not broadcasting HD.

30.2--a continous loop of the analog channel's most recent news broadcasts--scanrate is 480i and format is 4/3.

30.3--a low quality picture taken from a camera mounted on top of the talles building in downtown Fresburg.

Note that not all local stations are using this "remapping" feature, some do at times and not at others. My local CBS analog channel is 47. Their digital feed (only one in this case, 1080i, otherwise same setup as 30.1) is actually broadcast on UHF channel 34. It shows up on my stb as 47.1 most of the time, but can switch over to 34.2 at any given time.

I have 2 spanish language channels that show up at both their actual and virtual channel numbers, adding even more confusion.

This same remapping feature can also be used to send guide data to your receiver, but not all stations are using this capability hence 30.1 will have program descriptions like the analog channel does, but 47.1 (or 34.2, whatever) will only say "regular programming" on my stb's guide.

With time and experience all this will be sorted out by the stations. Meanwhile it's important to know both the actual broadcast frequency of your digital channels as well as the virtual channel numbers.

 

[Bill Will]

Some nice info from both of you guys