Television Reception (Allentown, Scranton, Harrisburg: to rent, house, movies)

[MaverickDD]

My neighbor down the street claims he gets New York stations with a newer high definition long-range TV antenna mounted on his roof. We're in Bushkill — so as the bird flies it's less than 60 miles to the city.

What do you think? Believable or bunk?

[jtab4994]

Which stations? How clear?

When I lived in Flanders, NJ in the late 80's/early 90's I got all NY and Philly VHF stations just on my TV without any additional antenna despite being pretty far from Philly, so it's plausible. When I moved to Shawnee in 1993 I found that I could only get 2 Allentown TV stations and nothing else, so I was forced into getting cable.

It might be worthwhile to get an antenna so you can watch the Giants/Jets on free TV. NY stations were removed from Blue Ridge cable (demanded by the Scranton network affiliates) over a decade ago.

[Wells5]

The higher the altitude your house is, the better the local reception. But generally, the local channel signals are weak or non existent in the Bushkill area.


https://www.inmyarea.com/tv/cable/18324/providers



It used to be that you could get broadcast basic cable for less than $20 per month. Not now. Cable companies used to put their antennas near the transmitters and microwave the signal to their central distribution office. That was free. Now local channels send their signals up to a satellite, which then relays it to the cable TV distribution point. This provides local subscribers with a near perfect signal. The local broadcasters charge cable TV companies a fee for this, which keeps going up. Comcast Cable just gave notice that "broadcast TV" fee will be going up again this month.

[frank754]

I have a TV antenna outside my house in Wilkes-Barre, and get all the local channels for free.
Being in a valley here, I don't get the long distance ones. Transmissions of that frequency
range, and FM radio, too, are what they call "line of sight", meaning if you were at a high
elevation, and there were no geographical obstructions, you could receive signals from quite
a distance. For example, what they call the "2 meter band", which the police use at about
150 MHz, can only go "line of sight", so what they do is put repeaters on tops of mountains
which allow the signals to travel to the other side of the mountains and provide a lot more
area coverage, usually about a 50 mile radius in that case. One time a friend and I, when I
was living in North Carolina, went to the highest spot along the Blue Ridge Parkway, over
6000' in elevation, and set up our radios. He was using the 2 meter band, and due to no
physical obstructions, he was easily able to make a contact from far west NC all the way
to Myrtle Beach, SC, a distance of well over 300 miles. When I lived in upstate NY in the
80s, about 40 miles north of Binghamton, I lived in a tiny town that was at a higher
elevation than the surrounding area. I could just get the local channels on the TV, but
with FM radio, I could get a few of the stations all the way from New York City,
over 200 miles. One time I bought this tiny color TV the size of a transistor radio, and
even with just a short stick antenna, I was able to pick up a TV station all the way
from Harrisburg, PA, also over 200 miles away. Different band frequencies work in
different ways, as far as propagation goes. The AM radio band (550-1600 Khz),
is a daytime band for local stations, but at night (and I'm not sure if they still do this),
the FCC makes a lot of the local stations go off the air, and then you have a lot more
propagation so that you can pick up stations much farther away. For example one
time when I was living in California, at night you could often hear stations from
all across the intermountain west, as far as Utah. And one time when I was in NC,
I also tried this out, and from Asheville was able to hear an AM station at night
from Chicago (650 miles away), and it was a call-in talk show, so I called in with
my opinion and heard my voice come back over the radio. Now for ham radio
operators, the best band for long distance is the 20 meter (14 Mhz) band, where,
although things may vary from hour to hour and with the sunspots, you can almost
reliably make contacts with other folks all over the world, when a "path" opens to a
particular country and they come in loud and clear.

[quiet life]

Originally Posted by MaverickDD

My neighbor down the street claims he gets New York stations with a newer high definition long-range TV antenna mounted on his roof. We're in Bushkill — so as the bird flies it's less than 60 miles to the city.

What do you think? Believable or bunk?

Did you go watch his tv with only an antenna? I would say he's a snake oil salesman. I live in Tamiment and you need cable to get NY stations. However, if he could show you, then that could prove me wrong.

[fisheye]

Right now I believe BRC has a decent speed internet connection for a first-time customer price of $34/mo guaranteed for 2 years. If you have Prime already you can get a cheap Firestick. If you don't then there is Ruko for about a one-time price of about $30. Both will let you stream local and national news for free. And both provide many enjoyable hours of movies and TV programs for free - without paying for other streaming services. Peacock, Freebie, and Pluto are free streaming services with ads that can be added - I particularly like Peacock and Freebie. Premium, pay to rent or buy, services are also available.

Since 2009 TV stations moved to digital and away from analog. So many of the old-style antennas do not work, as I understand it. They made it harder to get 'free'.

[charmed hour]

Originally Posted by fisheye

Right now I believe BRC has a decent speed internet connection for a first-time customer price of $34/mo guaranteed for 2 years. If you have Prime already you can get a cheap Firestick. If you don't then there is Ruko for about a one-time price of about $30. Both will let you stream local and national news for free. And both provide many enjoyable hours of movies and TV programs for free - without paying for other streaming services. Peacock, Freebie, and Pluto are free streaming services with ads that can be added - I particularly like Peacock and Freebie. Premium, pay to rent or buy, services are also available.

Since 2009 TV stations moved to digital and away from analog. So many of the old-style antennas do not work, as I understand it. They made it harder to get 'free'.

Tubi is also a great free streaming app. Better than Freebie imo. But beware of streaming with data caps cause you can blow right threw your threshold. We have BRCTVs unlimited plan $79.99 a month including taxes/fees.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by charmed hour

Tubi is also a great free streaming app. Better than Freebie imo. But beware of streaming with data caps cause you can blow right threw your threshold. We have BRCTVs unlimited plan $79.99 a month including taxes/fees.

We have an unlimited plan via BRC for $64.95/month (discounted because we have cable TV). 500Mbps download.

Come to think of it, in the Video Conference/Streaming/Work From Home Era, BRC and others may only offer unlimited internet plans.

[DavidWebb]

If you want to get educated on antennas and the different types:

https://www.antennasdirect.com/

[psurangers11]

I used to live in Marshalls Creek and for many years we got both Philly and NY stations on top of local. It's now all Philly... but yet I have friends who live in Pine Ridge and even in Saw Creek that say they get both NY and Philly. Just depends on your exact location... but yeah you can go just miles down the road and it's completely different.