Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HDTV 'OFFAIR' ANTENNAS

antennaweb.org will tell you what stations are available in your area and what kind of antenna you will need.

This has gotten a bit tangled-up and contentious. There are no "HDTV antennas"; there are VHF and/or UHF antennas. HDTV can be broadcast by either a VHF or UHF station(note Jeff Kohn's reply)although in many areas they tend to be UHF at this time. Get an appropriate antenna( note the excellent antennaweb.org site mentioned by Jason).

Jkohn.. Ok, I did not say that R/S antennas were junk !!?? I said, stay away from them and their like.. Yes, they have a fine reputation for a good amount of electrionic gear, and that rep is well deserved.. But, they offer only ONE (1) model UHF ant, and that one model it lacking in too many ways to be considered for everyone with HD, unless you happen to live very close to the trans site, AND, are not concerned with the very limited gain it will provide.. This, due in part, to such things as the lack of any corrosive resistant coating, and, the wingnut type open to the elements 300 ohm antenna lead hook up.. Which will require a transformer to allow 75 ohm coax to be used.. Another weak link.. Not to mention the limited number of active elements..
Folks, my dad was a t/v tech back in the fifties, and I got a bit on an over view on basics anyway.. I used to put up 40 foot push-ups by myself ! You learn one very important thing doing that, don't install something that is going have you pulling the whole thing down again for repairs in a week.. It doesn't have to have to be gold plated, but it damn sure better be up to the challenge.. As a matter of fact, gold plated terminals would be a welcome addition to antennas.. And that's a fact..
If you are located close to the trans site, have room in the attic or garage for the ant, great.. No need to worry about the weather.. If not, and your ant goes up into the wild outdoors, you best know what you are doing.. Rain, cold and heat will find those weak links and kill low end gear quick, and your reception will pay for that..
To say R/S ants are as good as any other is like saying Ford Chevy and Dodge are all the same.. It just aint so.. There are so many different types of alloys used in the production of all the different types and styles of ants that we would be here for a month debating just that alone..
As to the performance issue with an 'expensive' ant? Well, if you are going to pay big for something, make sure it's the something that is going to match up with your needes.. Again, I am not advocating money as the end all to end all.. I have only been saying that you need to know what your needs are for your area, and take a close look at the gear you buy.. There is junk out there, ok, that's a fact of life.. Our goal is to weed it out, and not get burned paying more than needed in the process.. Just don't sell yourself short..
Glad to see you are among those enjoying the HD life.. It's a grand thing, eh.. I love it.. And it's only going to get better with time..

And i used to help my father put up houses when i was young.
Is there any kid out there that wasn't used for cheap hard labour at some point?

Ok so the HDTV signal is not digital and is simply then a what...wide band, more encoded info type signal to send the HD info to the receiver/tv?

And we've regressed back to the damn bunny eared tellys to view it?

Great, just great.
And here i just got rid of about 500 pounds of used aluminum bunny ears from my grammas garage.

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It's not digital, it's a very high end signal, originating from high end cameras, broadcast in the upper UHF band..

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First of all, although it's broadcast via UHF, 8VSB (the transmission format for ATSC aka DTV) is digital, hence the need for a HD tuner, your TV's analog tuner wouldn't be able to do anything with the signal. Second, the type of camera used for the source material is completely irrelevent; whether it's 480i film-based content, 1080i film, or 720p video, the transmission method is the same. ATSC supports some 18 resolutions, but they're all considered DTV.

And I'm not sure what you mean by the "upper UHF band", the exact frequency of the channel has nothing to do with the quality of the picture. (Although if anything it's easier to pick up higher frequencies, that's why VHF channel 2 is usually a bitch to pick up in analog). My HDTV channels are at VHF 9, UHF 19, 27, 31, 32, 35 and 38. Considering UHF can go as high as 69 those are not particularly high and one of them isn't even UHF at all.

As for antenna's. My Radio Shack antenna is in the attic so I didn't pay too much antention to how sturdy it would be in bad weather. It may be fine, but that's not really relevent for me. But I stand by my warning about those expensive non-directional antennas from companies like Winegard. I've heard of quite a few people returning them because they didn't work worth a damn only to find they get a stronger signal from the cheap directional yagi antennas.

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Ok so the HDTV signal is not digital and is simply then a what...wide band, more encoded info type signal to send the HD info to the receiver/tv?

And we've regressed back to the damn bunny eared tellys to view it?

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It is digital, but that doesn't change the type of antenna you need to pick up the signal. Where things are different is what you do with the signal. One big advantage of DTV is that you don't have to worry about ghosting, snow, or other artifacts that you get with analog OTA. You'll either get a perfect picture or you probably won't get anything at all.

If the idea of hooking up an antenna doesn't appeal to you, you can always hope that your cable company offers HDTV. Right now Comcast and Time Warner are rolling out HDTV services in many cities in the US. If I recall, you're in Canada though, so your best bet may be Bell ExpressVu satellite service, as I believe they are offering some HD channels. The nice thing about OTA is that it's free, though, and you don't have to worry about cable/satellite providers squeezing extra compression into the signal and degrading picture quality. In most cases with OTA you'll get the full 19mbs.

OTA isn't exactly free... set-top boxes are still several hundred bucks. :-(

Time Warner offers five or so channels in high definition here in Columbus.

Ok. So things are starting to become more clear.
It makes sense that HDTV would be digital in signal, hence the ability to reproduce a picture w/o any artifacts.
I can't wait for it to become more mainstream.

Those friends of mine that have the BellVu satellite tv, or something equivalent, have often complained of several things, but the most common being that there really isn't that many channels with HDTV. Reception on some channels they receive is no different than regular analog, coaxial cable.
I've been avoiding getting the satellite system for that reason and one other, the fact that you cannot receive many local or even national, popular channels.
For example, those in Canada should know that TSN is The Sports Network. They telecast the Grey Cup game back in November. Friends who owned the satellite system had to come over to my place to watch the game on big screen b/c their satellite system does not get TSN.
So much for the vaunted "200 plus channels" marketing motto.

My plan is to wait for the digital and HDTV to become either more popular or more mainstream and hence used by more telecasters before i sink my money into it.

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Those friends of mine that have the BellVu satellite tv, or something equivalent, have often complained of several things, but the most common being that there really isn't that many channels with HDTV. Reception on some channels they receive is no different than regular analog, coaxial cable.

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That's because those channels aren't HDTV.

HDTV is digital.

Digital TV is not always HDTV.

Blame the cable companies and their marketing departments for the confusion in that regard. The majority of cable channels are not in HDTV. So far, only Discovery Channel, HBO and Showtime have started selling HDTV content to the cable companies. I believe ESPN is joining shortly. Everything else is digital in name only. The cable company is taking the crappy analog feed these companies sell them, converting it to digital, compressing the hell out of it and transmitting that to your satellite dish or cable box. The result is usually a signal WORSE than the original for obvious reasons.

This is not the same thing as HDTV over cable.