TV Antenna's

davidmcbeth3 wrote:

warminmn wrote:When you have lightning rods on a roof, you are not supposed to use an antenna also on the roof, grounded or not. Some crazy affect occurs, or so I read when thinking about it. I am talking about old fashioned lightning rods at all the corners of a roof, with 1"? braided copper wire coming off the roof in several paces (100 year old technology) You do not want to get a direct hit of lightning on an antenna, grounded or not. I don't have time to dig right now but maybe later. perhaps I can find the weblink about the combination of rods/antennas.

Im on an old iron mine field here and get bad lightning so I don't tempt the devil with these things. Its not worth getting struck just to get another channel

Just have the wifey hold it wear rubber boots .... I'm sure she'll be fine.

Looking forward to you final results and conclusions.

Someone planning on going 'off the grid'?

franco b wrote: I have very little confidence in these tiny designs. If a signal contains a lot of junk, an amplifier just amplifies the junk as well.

I bought that for my Grandmothers, I knew that was going to work because she had similar one that worked. Like I said that amplifier actually seems to make it worse at my Grandmothers, I haven't had any success here without it though. I'm fairly sure I will need one if I can get this to work, going to be a lot of cable.

Not sure why but taking it out in the yard had negative effect and I was back to none. Tried it on the original TV in different position and managed to get it up to 2 channels, progress but still no good.

Never had trouble at the old house and that's only about 10 minutes away, I think wrong side of the mountain and the trees is the problem. The trees behind my house are huge and a few them could even hit it if they fell the wrong way. The chnannels I am getting might be from Scranton and that's clear shot without any mountain directly in the way and few trees.

Rob R. wrote:
About the lightning - you are supposed to ground the antenna.

Grounding the splitter count? I think it already is.

Rich you need something like this, see link, also you don't want to split the antenna feed, if you must use a distribution amp...

http://www.amazon.com/Winegard-HD7694P-High-Definition-Antenna/dp/B001DFTGR4

PS the bigger the better..

http://www.winegard.com/offair?q=offair

http://www.channelmaster.com/Outdoor_Antennas_s/20.htm

http://www.channelmaster.com/Amplifiers_s/23.htm

Not to change the channel of discussion but the FCC might very soon so all the channels you programmed in may disappear fairly quickly. You see, in its infinite wisdom (because money has nothing to do with it) the FCC is near the end of a program to buy up existing and unused frequencies to resell to wireless companies for hopefully billions more. Billions of dollars (see it has nothing to do with money) of wavelength frequencies have already been bought by the FCC. So those channels you programmed in will disappear with no guarantee of reappearing. Food for thought!
Snuffy

grumpy wrote:Rich you need something like this,

These larger antennas that look like old fashioned ones are saying "line of sight". I think my big problem is I'm on the wrong side of the mountain but I am near the top.

Rob sent me this link for address, the channels I'm getting are the ones north of me with no Mountain in the way.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5134e08fb3d62c

I think my uncle has a good antenna, maybe I could borrow it to see what kind of results I get.

Let me add to that, the days of over the air TV will come to an end sooner or later.. I think thats what your saying..

These larger antennas that look like old fashioned ones are saying "line of sight". I think my big problem is I'm on the wrong side of the mountain but I am near the top.

Yes it is line of sight, if you don't have it your out of luck...

snuffy wrote:Not to change the channel of discussion but the FCC might very soon so all the channels you programmed in may disappear fairly quickly. You see, in its infinite wisdom (because money has nothing to do with it) the FCC is near the end of a program to buy up existing and unused frequencies to resell to wireless companies for hopefully billions more. Billions of dollars (see it has nothing to do with money) of wavelength frequencies have already been bought by the FCC. So those channels you programmed in will disappear with no guarantee of reappearing. Food for thought!
Snuffy

Snuffy the space used by analog TV broadcasts was hogging a lot of space, with the ever growing need for more wireless bandwidth it was important to free up that space. With digital you can broadcast many stations over the same channel, that's why you might have 2 to 5 sub channels on the same channel. That space has been allocated for digital TV broadcast, it's not going anywhere. None of the channels in my area are analog and I would imagine there is few if any left across the country. Those would be the only ones that would disappear and only if they have not switched to digital.

As I understand it digital actually requires a less power for transmission and this is why so many people have had problems if they were getting good reception before with analog stations. The stations lowered the power too much.

Analog is gone... for the rest, it will all move to the internet, sooner or later.. satellite xmission is already on the way out for some apps..

The stations lowered the power too much.

No they have not, they use what is needed, digital need much less..

grumpy wrote:

The stations lowered the power too much.

No they have not, they use what is needed, digital need much less..

My understanding is many of them have underestimated how much power they needed to provide the same service. The other issue is with analog you may be able to get reception that is bordeline with a little interference but still a picture. That's not going to happen with digital, it's all of it or unwatchable.

Analog is gone, power level is irrelevant to distribution, and yes with digital, its all or nothing...

A big advantage for digital is that one station can have multiple channels instead of just one. For lucky people like me, we get a ton of channels. It is a disadvantage for many that live a long ways from any transmitter as they are screwed and get nothing.

Figure out the location of the closest transmitters to you. They are not always in the town they have the station at as they often group the transmitters together. the antenna web link will show you and google earth will too. Aim your antenna towards each close location and you will find out what you can get. Rescan your tv a few different times in different type of weather to learn its absolute limits.

If your tv is capable of saving the channel scans and will just search for new stations to add when scanning that is nice, because then you may be able to turn your antenna to get different stations, and not have to rescan to watch a show.

TV's can vary on what stations they get with the same setup. And if you are using a convertor box, some boxes are better than others. Older zenith convertor boxes are the best, and I think old insignia brand too.

I was looking at this link Rob sent me, I updated his with exact coordinates and adjusted it for highest section of the roof. Says I should get them, it's a few in the pink range I'm most interested in, those are also the ones that are in the direction of the mountain. Going up on the roof tomorrow with a TV, not sure why I didn't think about doing that today. If the neighbors were amused today they are really in for show tomorrow.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d5134ffcff3e6dc