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I live in an apartment complex in a village. I have two televisions, each have an indoor antenna.
I get excellent reception on most of the stations. The weather does affect certain stations, tho, and I've had to change the station at times (thus not seeing a program to end).
Cable is ridiculously expensive, repetitive with their programing.
Never lived in a home with cable... still have DSL for Internet.
Receive about 50 stations with my rabbit ears on the old 1980 Zenith... half the stations are in English!
As a kid the cable company was coming door to door and I remember the guy sitting at the kitchen table talking to Dad trying to get us to sign up... $7.95 a month and I remember Dad saying he was not going to spend $100 a year on the idiot box and that is how it started.
Seems like a strange topic for the retirement forum but I have noticed my willingness/ability/interest in adopting new technology has decreased over the past two decades. I am guessing others here may feel the same.
Anyone here use such an antenna?
How far are you located from the broadcast towers?
Are they as easy to set-up as the advertisements indicate?
We are looking to cut our cable and get TV via an over-the-air antenna if possible. We are 50 miles from the broadcast towers. I plan on placing it on a mast attached to the chimney and installing a rotator too.
Per the video it includes an on-screen channel and schedule display very similar to that the cable company provides.
Too good to be true?
We turned off cable and satellite in 2010. Haven't missed it yet. We have an antenna and ROKU. Our antenna is in the attic and works fine. We get about 10-12 channels. Where we moved from previously, we were about to get a ton of over-the-air channels.
We're building a house in the mountains of TN and won't be able to get channels with an antenna. We'll just have internet and ROKU at that point. I don't care to get back on the cable/satellite track again. It's a waste of money for a bunch of nothing.
I have a Mohu Leaf and it brings in about 50 channels and there is an on screen guide just like cable. BUT most of the channels are not channels you want. They are all trying to sell you something, things like Home Shopping Network. I got the antenna to get ABC, NBC, and CBS. I got 2 out of 3, the ABC transmitter is blocked by something. The video quality is great.
It does take some time to search for all the channels and tune them in but you do all that on the TV, not up on the roof.
First, a little fact which the marketing pukes don't tell you: There is no such thing as a 'digital' antenna. An antenna is an antenna is an antenna. The EM wave sent by a TV station is exactly the same as it was before the advent of 'digital' television, the only difference is the method used to encode the information carried by the wave.
I have been working with EM waves since the 1960s and became a professional in the field in the late '70s (radar and radio systems).
Quote:
Originally Posted by reed303
If ,as you say, you are 50 miles from towers, be sure to use the locator websites listed above to see if you are in reasonable range.
Also consider checking if any neighbors use OTA, and what is their experience.
This post notes the primary factor in your selection of an antenna- your distance from the transmitting tower(s) and the strength of the signal being transmitted. 50 miles is a considerable distance, but not impossible to overcome if you have the right antenna and the signal is strong enough, in fringe areas or conditions of low signal being transmitted you may need to install one or more in-line amplifiers as well.
You can pretty much forget any of the indoor antennas, and the small Clearstream outdoor antennas. You want one of the big boom antennas that have a lot of elements and the < shaped smaller set of elements. This antenna is directional and incorporates a certain amount of 'gain' to help with the received signal. You will also want a rotor to turn it if your stations are not all in the same direction. A significant annoyance with the digital receivers is that you will [probably] have to re-scan for channels every time you change the direction, if all of your stations are on the same line (unlikely) you will not have a problem.
The issue with distance is that the further you get from the transmission site, the more the signal strength drops- if you have a particular signal strength at a particular distance, when you multiply the distance by 2 the signal strength is divided by 4. For example: if you have a signal strength of 100 at a distance of 10 miles, and you double the distance to 20 miles, the signal strength drops to 25.
A company called Wineguard sells some excellent antennas that are well-regarded. They also sell a low-noise amplifier that works very well. This combination is probably your best bet to get decent reception.
In the days of analog TV, if you had a low signal you could still watch the program, though it could get a bit fuzzy and the sound quality would be degraded. With digital TV, if the processor in the reciever cannot decode enough of the signal due to interference (noise) the picture may become pixelated and the sound will drop out and in, in severe cases the receiver will report "No Signal"- this is a technical lie, there may be a signal present but the receiver simply cannot decode enough of it to make it usable.
Seems like a strange topic for the retirement forum but I have noticed my willingness/ability/interest in adopting new technology has decreased over the past two decades. I am guessing others here may feel the same.
Anyone here use such an antenna?
How far are you located from the broadcast towers?
Are they as easy to set-up as the advertisements indicate?
We are looking to cut our cable and get TV via an over-the-air antenna if possible. We are 50 miles from the broadcast towers. I plan on placing it on a mast attached to the chimney and installing a rotator too.
Per the video it includes an on-screen channel and schedule display very similar to that the cable company provides.
Too good to be true?
My story:
I've been using a couple of OTA indoor antennas (for the living room and bedroom) since I got rid of my cable service with Comcast over 2 years ago but kept the internet service. Bought the antennas at either Wal-Mart or Best Buy, don't remember exactly, but I get around 15 channels, most major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX) and sometimes get more than 20, depending on the weather. Get some out of state channels as well since I live very close to the state line (Fla).
Not missing cable service really.
First, a little fact which the marketing pukes don't tell you: There is no such thing as a 'digital' antenna. An antenna is an antenna is an antenna. The EM wave sent by a TV station is exactly the same as it was before the advent of 'digital' television, the only difference is the method used to encode the information carried by the wave.
The issue with distance is that the further you get from the transmission site, the more the signal strength drops- if you have a particular signal strength at a particular distance, when you multiply the distance by 2 the signal strength is divided by 4. For example: if you have a signal strength of 100 at a distance of 10 miles, and you double the distance to 20 miles, the signal strength drops to 25.
A company called Wineguard sells some excellent antennas that are well-regarded. They also sell a low-noise amplifier that works very well. This combination is probably your best bet to get decent reception.
In the days of analog TV, if you had a low signal you could still watch the program, though it could get a bit fuzzy and the sound quality would be degraded. With digital TV, if the processor in the reciever cannot decode enough of the signal due to interference (noise) the picture may become pixelated and the sound will drop out and in, in severe cases the receiver will report "No Signal"- this is a technical lie, there may be a signal present but the receiver simply cannot decode enough of it to make it usable.
Yes, I pretty much knew all that but didn't know if there was a difference in the antenna construction because of the tendency of "digital" signals to be unrecognized. I am surprised the Winegard antennas are 14 feet long!
Although we live ~50 miles from the broadcast antenna sites by road miles, by signal miles we are within 30 miles of the antennas. In the Detroit area all TV broadcast antennas are located in one suburban city, so rotator use will be minimal, unless I want to pickup a station from Toledo or Lansing.
We have a 'smart TV' and currently view streaming internet video, Netflix, AmazonPrime, etc., proramming by using our wireless router communicating directly to the TV.
Thanks for all the replies! It does appear the compact antennas with the claimed long distances are indeed too good to be true.
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