Broadcast TV Antenna

Art VanDelay

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Art VanDelay
Im thinking of giving Direct TV the boot. Looks like I'll probably go with Roku. I would still like to have the ability to pull in a few local stations - what antenna would you recommend ? You guys are my Geek Squad :)
 
Im thinking of giving Direct TV the boot. Looks like I'll probably go with Roku. I would still like to have the ability to pull in a few local stations - what antenna would you recommend ? You guys are my Geek Squad :)
depends on where you live, the small ones that look like a big thin plastic mouse pad works for me to get all the broadcast network stuff. I think I payed under $20 for it.

I have one tv with a simple telescoping antenna like what you'd have on an old fm radio that screws straight into the coax port and that one works fine as well. maybe a $5 or less: upload_2017-1-9_10-59-51.png

try https://www.antennaweb.org/ to see what you can expect to receive
 
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Im thinking of giving Direct TV the boot. Looks like I'll probably go with Roku. I would still like to have the ability to pull in a few local stations - what antenna would you recommend ? You guys are my Geek Squad :)

Maybe pay a visit to a local TV station and talk to the techs and see what they'd recommend?
 
How far to the broadcast antennas and how clear is the line-of-sight to those antennas? If it's a clear, short range shot a set top antenna may be adequate. I use some sort of wire grid I paid $50 (too much) for just after the analogue broadcasts were supposed to be shut off. The antenna instructions said strictly outdoors but I put it in the garage attic space. At first it was a dismal failure and would only pick up a couple stations. Now that it's years later and all the broadcasters have their problems sorted out it works great. I'm about 10 miles from most of the antenna farms with a clear shot.

My new neighbors just put up an outdoor antenna. Looks a lot like mine. They've got it pointed somewhere north of Morrison rather than Mt. Zion. Guess that's working out for them but at least half the local stations have antenna space on Mt. Zion or just south of there.
 
I use the amplified Leaf antenna as well. I am fortunate to be positioned between 3 or 4 major markets so I get a lot of content. I hardly ever feel like I don't have enough to watch, when I do Netflix usually fills the void.
 
I'm using the same Radio Shack mast mount FM/UHF antenna I have mounted in the attic when analog TV was still in effect. Works great.
 
My new neighbors just put up an outdoor antenna. Looks a lot like mine. They've got it pointed somewhere north of Morrison rather than Mt. Zion. Guess that's working out for them but at least half the local stations have antenna space on Mt. Zion or just south of there.

4, 7, 9 are on Lookout Mountain (technically it's the front face of Lookout but it looks like it's on Zion) with 7 & 9 making the mistake of staying on VHF and they share an antenna via a combiner and 4 is on top on a smaller but equal gain UHF antenna, 31 is northwest of there. 2 is -- I forget -- some little station is over on Mt Morrison (co-located with a crap ton of City of Denver public safety stuff), and 6 is oddly still downtown. 12 is up on Squaw Mtn on the far north end of the top ridgeline in their own building north of the public safety stuff.

They may have aimed it for "most number of stations" if they were trying to suck in that station on Morrison. They'd easily get Lookout pointed that way on anything other than a really sharp patterned long boom yagi. And 31 has a LOT of power on UHF so they usually fill in fine from up northwest and 12 has altitude. The tough one to get into the same antenna pattern as the others is if you live way north or way south and want 6. Then you're playing "find the peak and avoid the null" off the side of the antenna while pointing at the stuff on the mountains.)

If you ever want a tour of the 4, 7, 9 shared facility, I know the CBS engineer. He's a very cool guy and loves doing show and tell. The combiner for 7 and 9 looks like a plumber went crazy with six inch copper pipe.

Also if you switched it digital real early, they didn't so much "get their problems sorted out" as they all had to wait for the spiffy new transmitters from Harris. Harris won a contract to do all three at the site so they all ran on "backup" tube transmitters which put out insane levels of power but not as high as their final power levels on the Harris modular transmitters. Those things are cool. 1000W removable modules. Punch a button on the LCD on the front, tell it which module you want to pull out, it powers that one down, output power drops by 1000W (minutes losses in the cabinet) and an LED lights up saying you can pull the module now.

Harris made a LOT of money selling modular solid state monster transmitters during the change-over. Amazing considering they were nearly dead in the public safety marketplace and definitely dead in the telecom space, and nobody was buying their gear. They found a way to shift to broadcast in a big way during those years. Underbid a lot of folks and cranked up production.
 
image.jpg
Just build one. My father cobbled this together the last time he visited so he could watch the football game.
 
THIS is what I have.

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I also recommend the CHANNEL MASTER DVR to record OTA in HD.
 
THIS is what I have.

6761173_sd.jpg;maxHeight=550;maxWidth=642


I also recommend the CHANNEL MASTER DVR to record OTA in HD.

I have one similar to this. It is smaller it is like half. So only one Figure 8 looking antenna. Most of the towers are about 30 miles from my house. The antenna go 60 miles. I am completely satisfied with it the signal is good the quality is awesome.
 
I actually hung it upside down in my garage so that it wouldn't be messed up with any sort of weather and it has no issue going through the walls and whatnot
 
What's television? Oh, wait. It's that thing in the living room I never turn on.

mscard might call it "the boob tube".
 
Yup, same here. It's in an "attic" area just above a coat closet in the living room, but is patched in to all of the cable in the house. It picks up every available station reliably, even in heavy wind/rain. We're about 15-20 miles from most of the towers, but in a bit of a valley as far as line-of-sight goes. We have a Roku 3 in the bedroom, and an Amazon FireStick in the living room. The FireStick has Kodi loaded on it, so the amount of available movies/tv programming beats anything you can pay for. However, we do have Amazon Prime/Hulu as subscriptions, so that generally takes care of most of the day-to-day stuff, even though that same programming is available on Kodi for free. I think the Roku is a more well-designed from a user-interface standpoint, but they both work well and do their job.
 
Im thinking of giving Direct TV the boot. Looks like I'll probably go with Roku. I would still like to have the ability to pull in a few local stations - what antenna would you recommend ? You guys are my Geek Squad :)

I am outside St Louis and have an Antennas Direct DB8 on my garage roof. Pulls in 14 or 15 full and low power stations ranging from 29 to 41 miles away with 40+ program streams.
 
I tried one of those powered antennas that was rated for 60 miles and got snow. I returned it. I would say that I'm about 40 miles straight line from the broadcast antenna but behind a high point of ground.
 
Obviously the tv would have to be turned upside down. Captain Obvious (@mscard88) should be along soon to confirm this.
This is absurd. The picture would run out of all the holes that are on top. Look on the bottom. Are there any holes? I rest my case.
 
This is absurd. The picture would run out of all the holes that are on top. Look on the bottom. Are there any holes? I rest my case.
That is why you apply a sealant of some sort. Do I have to think of everything? Lol
 
Also you may not get signal if the station's antenna is right on top of you. My father could explain it more then I ever could.
Something about some effect on the something going to the something.......

We have that issue at my parents house as the antenna is about 2 miles away and 2000' above us.
 
I tried one of those powered antennas that was rated for 60 miles and got snow. I returned it. I would say that I'm about 40 miles straight line from the broadcast antenna but behind a high point of ground.
Does your TV have a built in tuner?
Mine doesn't and I got snow.

Then someone from the 21st century said "Either get a real TV, or go buy an external tuner"
$34 later, and I got TV now.
 
Does your TV have a built in tuner?
Mine doesn't and I got snow.

Then someone from the 21st century said "Either get a real TV, or go buy an external tuner"
$34 later, and I got TV now.
If you are asking if it searches for channels on its own, yes, and it couldn't find any. My TV is only about 3 years old.
 
Your neighbor's 10 year old kid can fix that in a jiffy.
Maybe, but I don't know any 10-year-olds around here...

I really doubt that I can get an over-the-air signal without investing in a large attic or roof antenna, and I'm not going to do that at this point.
 
Sounds like an easy fix of switching the tv to digital tuner from analog. Easy peesey. (45 years old btw, not 10) lol
 
I tried one of those powered antennas that was rated for 60 miles and got snow. I returned it. I would say that I'm about 40 miles straight line from the broadcast antenna but behind a high point of ground.

Umm, if you got "snow" your TV was in analog mode, not digital. No such thing as "snow" in digitial... (barring the occasional block error). :)
 
Umm, if you got "snow" your TV was in analog mode, not digital. No such thing as "snow" in digitial... (barring the occasional block error). :)
Maybe I didn't get snow, but the receiver searching through the channels couldn't find any. I could be mistaking it for the snow I got on my older TV when I tried the rabbit ears.

A friend told me to try the powered antenna so I did, even though I was doubtful.
 
Maybe I didn't get snow, but the receiver searching through the channels couldn't find any. I could be mistaking it for the snow I got on my older TV when I tried the rabbit ears.

A friend told me to try the powered antenna so I did, even though I was doubtful.
Yeah, I was just pulling your chain. :) Thus, the smileys.
 
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