all these people around the US that still have some TV's not on dish/cable, that currently can pick up their local analog stations just fine with their good ole rabit ear antennas, get screwed because the digital signal through these new converter boxes give you nothing but pixelation and audio cutting in/out?

There is a lot of antenna snake oil talk out there about you have to have a special antenna, which for the most part is BS. I live 20+ miles away from the towers broadcasting the digital signal. Are they not broadcasting at full power yet or what? I'm no putting an antenna on my roof/attic, just to make this work. What a joke.

"digital signal through these new converter boxes give you nothing but pixelation and audio cutting in/out?" I get that now with std, non-HD cable! Most of our local New Orleans stations are already broadcasting in HD, I get all of them over the air via a large Radio Shack antenna in the attic. It's actually pointed 90* away from where it should be and some nights I get better reception than others with lots of pixelation and broken audio, but less than the analog-over-cable feed. Sometimes it's picture perfect. So does that mean that the stations' a/d converters are crap, too?

Scott

I used a $30 antenna to pick up some OTA HD cahnnels whiel I was in college and my cable provider (that was included with my rent) did not have HD. Occasionally I noticed problems, but for the most part preferred the digital signal over a fuzzy analog signal any day

I caught a gardener snake last summer and put it over top of my antenna and the result is BS (Better Signal)

I hate to think how many tax dollars we're sending to freaking china for these bloody "conveter boxes" Which will fill our landfills within 2 years. People will A: get the dam things and have no use for them cause it's free from the gov't and must be gotten, B: get the dam things without knowing wheather they need them or not, C: get the dam things then get tired of f-ing around with 2 remotes just to watch tv, and finally just buy a new tv, filling the landfill with that too.
The parents got theirs and they seem to work better than expected, I'm gonna try to coax them into a sage tv- extender setup.

not much gets me wound up anymore but this does.

need a vallium

So I'm getting tired of the pixelation and broken audio even over our local cable and still tired of not getting all the digital OTA channels I should get. I am strongly resisting the cable upgrade to digital which will add ~$100/ month (Seriously, that would pay for an EP500 once a year, which I have a strong want for anyway, at least for the first year). I ran across THIS and thought what the heck, I can do that. I didn't have any coat hangers, but I've got miles of 12/2 romex. Long story short - I lost 2 channels I had with the attic antenna, got better reception on one channel and picked up 2 channels I didn't have before. The problem is that I lost the 2 channels I wanted to improve and could care less for the 2 I picked up.

So what's the real scoop on antennas for OTA digital reception?

Scott

90% of the population in the US already subscribes to satellite or cable, and the DTV transition is meaningless to them.

It is true that there is no such thing as an "HD" antenna. The brand-new "HD" antennas that some people have put up are identical to the ones sold 50 years ago.

The key feature of the TV antenna itself is whether it's tuned to receive VHF (2-13) or UHF (13-6x) channels. Everything else is a matter of height, direction, and cabling. Sites like AntennaWeb or TVFool (great site) can help you understand what you need to do as far as which channels you have a chance of getting and what you'll need to do to receive them. The further away you are, the higher and/or better antenna array you'll need to pick up the signals. If those two local channels are VHF, you need to make sure you're using an antenna that's designed to receive VHF signals. That may be why you lost the two channels when you made your own.

I have an AntennasDirect DB4 + ChannelMaster 7777 preamp/amp. Cost me about $100. The DB4 sits in a second-story window using old RG-59 cable (not as good as the recommended RG-6) to bring the signal to my den, a distance of about 75'. I'm able to pick up digital stations from up to about 60 miles away with perfect crystal-clear HDTV sound & picture while the same station's analog broadcast (from the same tower) is moderately snowy. Watchable, but snowy. Of course, that all depends on the station and how they're set up to broadcast. But it's not universally true that a DTV signal is weaker than an old analog one. Not at all.

Unless you live in a concrete bunker, there's really no reason why anyone shouldn't be able to pull in stations from 20-25 miles away with a reasonable little antenna, sitting on top of (or next to, or behind) their TV. I briefly owned this one, and it pulled in 25-mile away DTV stations beautifully.

If your local cable company's signal is crummy, that has nothing to do with the DTV transition. My local cable company is also terrible in terms of price and picture quality. I've been a very happy Dish Network customer for over 4 years now.

I live in a concrete bunker, in a depression, more than 60 miles from the closest HD broadcaster.

A little further south (maybe 20 miles) and I could pick up buffalo, a little west Rochester, south and east, Cleaveland.

I looked into antennas when I disconnected cable...

PeterC, it's flat between you and the tower, isn't it?

Thanks for the links!

And you live in Canada - stop stealing US broadcasts.

There will always be exceptions.

I'm friends with a guy that lives in a "hollow", or as he'd say, "a holler". His home is a good 40-50' lower than the surrounding land, down in a small creek (pronounced here as, 'crick') bed. Until the invention of DBS satellite service, he had to have a very tall tower for his antenna to be able to get anything. And the landscape here in Illinois is generally quite flat, though it varies. Compared to Tacoma, WA though, it's really flat.

I just don't particularly buy the argument that there are tons of antenna-TV people out there now who can get X analog stations now that won't be able to get X stations in digital once the DTV transition occurs. Yes, they may have to buy a converter box. Yes, that may be a bit of a financial and/or connectivity hardship for some. But I'm just sayin' that I live in a very rural area and it's quite unusual to see a farmhouse that doesn't have a DBS antenna.

Of course, if there's even one person out there that sees a hiccup in their TV viewing (and there will be) the media will pick up on it and it'll be a national disaster.

Peter, thanks for the links. I may try to get my existing antenna out of one attic and put it in another (one pointed towards New Orleans vs Memphis) and see if that helps.

Scott

I have no idea if this is the right place for this or not, but...

The conversation about FREE OTA HD led me to think about existing computers, antennae, DVR, information utility bills and the like.

Came across the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Network-based Dual Digital HDTV Tuner. I thought it was pretty cool. I'm not ready to give up D*TV yet or anything, but it did make me think.

How can you pick up "a little west of Rochester" and not pick up Toronto & Hamilton?
What area are you in?

Well, I just made my first DIY prototype HD antenna based on these designs. I live 30 miles away from the main towers and have tried many store purchased antennas. I even have an outside Terk TV55 antenna. I can get about 5 more channels with this thing INSIDE my house. Time to start my final outdoor version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrSak-Hiba0

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_dtv_antenna_steadyca.html

http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/television/04/DTV_Antenna_FINAL.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQhlmJTMzw

I've seen that around, and I may try one at some point. I keep thinking I should start using my computer to record shows. I was thinking I'd wait until there were more similar options, but we'll see if I can hold out.

Yep. That's just a 'bowtie' style antenna. A very tried-and-true design. They work quite well. The one drawback to them is that I'm pretty sure that they're just designed to pick up the UHF band. So if the other poster is trying for VHF channels, he may need to look at 'yagi' style antennas too.

Good luck! Careful placement is essential when putting an antenna in an attic. A fraction of an inch can mean the difference between getting and not getting a channel. I spent an entire afternoon tweaking and re-tweaking my antenna's placement. It was a tedious process. If you can, find someone to help you by monitoring the signal strength on the TV while you tinker up in the attic. That will save you a lot of time.

Beats the hell out of purchasing the exact same thing for $100-200 bucks at the store. All the digital channels are UHF in our area.