OTA Television Reception Issues

[whirlcool]

It's been two years now since we "cut the cable" from DirecTV. To tell you the truth we don't even miss it. We do like having the extra $93.00 per month though.

When we first went to OTA television we used a Winegard Flatwave Amplified antenna. This is like a transparency 8"x10" piece of plastic that you mount on the wall or window to receive television signals. We are 37 miles from the transmitter, flat terrain. This antenna worked fine and pulled in most of the stations in our area including all the ones we watched on a regular basis.

Then the state expanded the road behind our house. What was once a sleepy country road that had about 100 cars a day on it was made into a 4 lane freeway with a 60mph speed limit on it. Lots and lots of trucks use the road. One of the first things we noticed that whenever a Walmart truck goes by, we lose the signal on our television set for about 30 seconds. The screen goes black and then a message pops up saying "Signal Not Found". In 30 seconds or so the picture flutters and returns. Also when changing channels we had to get up and readjust the antenna slightly to get a good picture. We just got used to it. But I did notice in the neighborhood that if you saw a Color TV box in front of someones house awaiting garbage pick up, there would soon be a new antenna on the roof.

So I decided to try to upgrade the antenna. We put a Winegard HD7694P antenna up in our attic. It was very easy to do. The antenna just snapped to the open position and I reused the cable that DirecTV had installed that goes down to the TV set. There is a website (www.tvfool.com) that will tell you what compass heading to set your antenna to for best reception and I did that. The entire install took about 15 minutes.

I went downstairs, rescanned for television stations and got all the old ones, plus some new ones. One of them is about 100 miles away! I noticed the picture on the set was clearer and no more drop outs or picture interruptions at all! No more having to readjust the antenna when switching stations either. I never realized how often I had to do this until I no longer had to.

This reminded me of when my parents got their first color television back in 1965. The appliance store they bought the set from (Zenith dealer) connected the set and the picture was snowy and had a ton of ghosts on it. The delivery guy told my mom that we needed a new antenna, the old one wasn't strong enough for color. When my dad came home that night he really blew a gasket. He called the salesman that sold them the set and chewed him out for not warning him that something like this may happen. So he decided not to do anything about it and decided that the picture on the set was good enough for us.

But being a virgo and somewhat of a perfectionist it wasn't good enough for me. So I went to the library and over the next few weeks researched what makes a good color tv antenna. Using the money from my part time job, I replaced the circa 1951 antenna they had with a new Winegard Colormaster antenna. I also replaced the old twinlead wiring with 75 ohm coax. When I was done the picture on the set was near perfect. No ghosts, no snow, just a nice clear picture. I wondered if my dad would notice the improvement so I didn't mention to him that we had a new antenna. Would you believe that he never said a single word about the picture. Not one word. I wondered if he even noticed.

 

[rp2813]

The Flip Side

No roadwork here, but we did recently have some roof work done.  They offered to take down the mast and 1970-ish and older roof antennas and haul them away, so I told them to go ahead.  It really looks much better up there with all of that mess gone.

 

Only one TV (the 1950 Admiral in the guest room) was hooked up to the roof, and since a set in a room across the hall pulls in most stations with rabbit ears and a UHF bowtie, I was confident I wouldn't be any worse off using that same arrangement in place of rooftop gear.

 

I ran a check after the Admiral had been disconnected from the rooftop antenna, and reception was almost nonexistent.  This confirmed that in spite of deteriorated leads, the rooftop system had been pulling in a reasonably good signal.

 

So, I connected the vintage bakelite Radion rabbit ears that I'd only been using as a prop, fully extended them and snapped a bowtie onto one ear.  I'm getting better reception than I was from the roof antenna!

 

I pulled up tvfool.com and verified I'm receiving every channel within about 60 miles, but only from points north.  None of the stations with transmitters to the south that serve the Monterey/Salinas market can be pulled in without a rotating rooftop unit, I guess.

 

Weather conditions and air traffic can sometimes cause problems and I suppose an antenna in the attic could eliminate that, but for now the rabbit ears are getting the job done well enough.

 

[gansky1]

We cut the cable back in April and I'm using a (generic? Amazon.com) boosted signal antenna I found for $35. We're in a hilly part of the state along the river and are also down in a rather low valley. The signal we get is pretty good for most stations, though there are a couple that tile out now and then, so I've been shopping for a roof-top (or preferably attic) mounted antenna that would serve the whole house through the existing coaxial spider web left behind from the cable install. Thanks for the website, I was wondering how and where to place the antenna.

Does anyone have any personal recommendations on a larger, whole house antenna? I've just begun my research. A few months ago, I saw a NIB roof-mount antenna from the 70's at a sale, should have grabbed it.

Our neighbors have an old antenna in their attic that they use for their whole house and it works perfectly. We were both smiling at our 1080p picture quality several guests have commented on vs. the 720p picture through the cable system. And I'm happy keeping the $108 a month, too!

 

[launderess]

Have Never Been So Happy With Televison

As when we went OTA and cut the cord so to speak.

Yes, you have the occasional problems with weather, traffic, and other interference. But as one who grew up in the 1970's before cable existed this is nothing new. We kids dreaded having to get up and move around the grandparent's "rabbit ears" to get a better picture on the set. But if you didn't move fast enough when one of them spoke a back of the hand clipped your ear. *LOL*

Have not fired up my VCR or DVD to watch any of the extensive collection of recorded and purchased things since going OTA. Unlike when we had cable and there was literally nothing on television, OTA never fails to provide something. Decades, MeTV, CosiTV, AntennaTV, Movies! and a few others are just wonderful.

Sat down a week ago or so and watched "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever"... Have not seen that film in ages and was so thrilled to be able and curl up with snacks and *Barbara*.

 

[rp2813]

I cut off the UHF portion of the old '70s rooftop antenna for possible future use in the attic.  It was all I could salvage since being out in the elements, so to speak, for all those years had taken its toll, plus it was thrown down from two stories up onto the asphalt driveway.

 

I've seen new rooftop antennas that are compact and don't use a mast.  That's the most I would ever consider putting back up on the roof, but would give the attic system a go first.  However, I'm not enthused about having to string 300 ohm antenna leads again.

 

[kb0nes]

Greg,

You can use pretty much any standard old school TV antenna but the frequency allocations are skewed a bit today. Most all the low band VHF channels (the ones under 100Mhz) have been vacated depending on what was decided for your area. Here in the twin cities channel 9 (~190Mhz) is as low as we have in use currently. The advantage in this is that your antenna doesn't need the longest elements anymore since these were for the low channels that are no longer in use.

Use this link to Antennaweb to determine what you have going on in your area:

http://antennaweb.org/Address.aspx

If you have stations that are far out and approaching from different directions a directional antenna with an old school antenna rotator could be fun.

In generally I believe that one should steer clear of any amplified or boosted antennas, the preamps (or their power supplies) can fail and they are prone to overload and distortion if you have nearby strong RF signals. Superior antenna performance comes from lots of conductors in the air to catch the signal, not tiny silicon bits to attempt to amplify the weak signal along with any noise.

Keep in mind that the frequencies are higher overall. This makes the use of good quality cable and shorter runs advantageous. Also UHF tends to suffer extra attenuation passing through buildings or wet asphalt shingles so indoor antennas suffer more.

Be wary of antennas that claim to be HD antennas and are marketed as such. From the Antenna/RF standpoint the modulation makes no difference be it HD digital or old vestigial sideband AM analog. Lots of unscrupulous marketing exists trying to sell new HD Digital antenna for way too much money, don't fall for it!

By and large once you can overcome the issues of dealing with predominately UHF signals, HD Digital is far easier to get a solid picture from. Multipath distortion, ghosting and noise are gone. As long as you have enough signal to get a reasonably clean data stream, the picture is as good as it will ever be!

 

[wayupnorth]

I still have DirecTV in a grandfathered package that never included locals and I wont complain on the price of it but it has gone up and most of the programs now are reruns, which is not their fault as they just broadcast it. The old man put a cheap $7.77 K-Mart antenna on the side of this place back in the late 60's. I get locals fine except during wind, heavy rain or snow, just when you have to be inside. Before the digitalizing of tv signals, I never had a problem. Now there seems to be something the weather has to do with reception over the air at least around here.

 

[whirlcool]

Use 75Ohm coax instead of the 300Ohm lead. The 300Ohm stuff picks up interference and loses signal along the line of transmission. 75Ohm coax is shielded and won't pick up interference. Most new antennas today are set up to use coax as well as current television connections as well.

 

[wayupnorth]

I have regular cable COAX wired right to that old antenna, not the old 2 strand antenna wire that it was originally put in with many years ago. I think this cheap old antenna is on its last legs as the wind tends to move it more. Now with digital tv, I will have to pay more to get more. And for the next 4 months, we will be inside here up north trying to be warm and mad at all the reruns on tv you have seen yesterday.

 

[a440]

Bought this ClearStream Digital Antenna from Sam's almost 3 years ago.  Although it states that it catches channels from 70 miles away....we catch stations on a clear day over 400 miles away!  We have it attached to a pole that is taller than the house in the yard.  Live near the Atlanta Airport.  We catch Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and on a good day a couple of stations from New Orleans!  I just took the main cable that came from the jerks at Comcast and put the feed into the antenna.  Every jack in the house is live now.   Very happy!!!  The only change that might come is when Google Fiber is live in my neighborhood.  It appears that it will be so cheap and digital television is part of the internet package.  Will cross that bridge when I come to it.  Otherwise I am very happy with this antenna's performance.

 

http://https//www.antennasdirect.com/store/ClearStream-4-Ultra-Long-Range-Outdoor-DTV-Antenna.html

 

[whirlcool]

Lots of people are cutting the cable these days. You'd think the cable/sat companies would be worried about this, but they don't seem to be. I read somewhere that in 2014 along over 3 million people "cut the cable" and got off cable/sat television. That's a hunk of change in revenue right there.

Just set up a good antenna for your area, get a video streaming box for use with the internet(wifi) and you'll have tons more of a selection than you'll have with the cable companies. It looks like television on demand (watch what you want when you want) appears to be the next big thing.

 

[kb0nes]

A couple extra comments to add:

Tim mentioned that he didn't have reception problems before the signals went digital. It's not the change in the modulation that caused the problem, it's that all the channels moved onto UHF RF channels when the change happened. It is confusing now that we have "virtual" channels. For example the TV says its channel 4 but in reality channel 4 is on RF channel 16 now. The antennaweb.org site will show your local channel situation.

The digital signal does have to be solid to give a flawless picture, but if you have a marginal signal causing digital TV to look bad, analog TV would look bad too. UHF has struggles compared to the common old low band VHF channels, but from what I have seen digital transmission actually outperforms analog pretty handily. A big plus for digital is that most noise and multi-path issues that would have messed up analog are basically gone now.

The feedline question of 300 ohm twin lead vs RG-6 coax. Twin lead will actually have about 1/2 (or less) the loss of the coax. RG-6 will lose ~5db per 100 feet at 500Mhz, 300 ohm twin lead will be close to 2db loss. Coax has much higher capacitance so its losses will increase faster with increasing frequency. The rub with twin lead is that its performance is degraded if it is wet or covered in ice. Also near proximity of a balanced feeder to metallic objects will skew the balance of the line (don't tape it to the mast!!). If the line is balanced it won't radiate or receive noise on frequency due to cancellation in the circuit, but throw off the balance and it can be a problem. Coax is pretty immune to its surroundings which is a huge advantage! Another issue with 300 ohm lines is that you will need a transformer to match the impedance into your TV and transform from the balanced line to the unbalanced coax (that is where a BalUn gets its name. You may or may not need a transformer at the antenna too depending on its feed point impedance. Even with the transformer losses at both ends, if you have a long run of feedline, 300 ohm twin lead may have lower losses overall. Coax is so much easier to work with that the twin lead is basically extinct today though. I do use some 450 ohm twin lead feed line for some amateur radio antennas I use at times due to the insane low losses but they are hard to work with.

 

[ovrphil]

Reply #9

Excellent reception. I nearly bought this, but living in a "compartment" we can't put it outside or at least easily. But I may try it out, even though I get alot of channels with a modest flat GE24804 Antenna on top of the tv.

Frys has the Clearstream 4 - and sometimes they have open box units that save even more. Right now, their price is $109.

http://frys.com/product/7922760?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

[whirlcool]

At my parents house we tried regular 300 Ohm twin lead and then upgraded to foam filled 300 Ohm twinlead. We still had a lot of snow in the picture. When we replaced that with 75 Ohm coax with adapters, the interference went away. We had a 110 foot run of cable going from the south side of the roof of a two story house down to the first floor on the north side. Plus the neighbors house was a full story taller than ours. That extra story was a big flat wall that was right next to our antenna. That's where out ghosting came from. Multipath reflections. After trying several antenna brands we finally found a Winegard model that was directional enough to eliminate the ghosting problem. I see that digital television doesn't have ghosts.

It seems with digital stations they either come in properly or not at all. A few can come in but pixilate now and then. One thing I have noticed with digital television transmissions. The "bandwidth" of the signal seems to be much narrower.
For example, I'm pickup up channel 34 in Bryan, Texas. That's 50 miles away. If I move the antenna 1/2 inch in either direction the station goes away completely. It used to be with analog transmissions if you are pointed in the right general direction it would work, but digital transmissions need a little bit more exacting antenna pointing.

 

[rp2813]

Allen, your story about channel 34 captures what I deal with here since there are three separate transmitter clusters for our viewing area and I'm often faced with pixelation or lack of signal on a few in order to gain reception from the relatively many.  Only under the most ideal weather circumstances -- and that does not necessarily mean clear skies -- can I manage to pull in almost every available station. 

 

I remember some old instructions for stringing 300 Ohm antenna lead advising to give it a twist every few feet to help reduce interference.  Back in the pre-cable days, the '50 GMC would pull up the driveway and static from its ignition system would interfere with both the audio and the video on the TV.

 

[gusherb]

My dad put a big giant antenna in the attic when they built the house 25 years ago, along with a signal amplifier and ran RG59 all over the house. Needless to say our analog TV reception was always perfect, except in the basement which was about a 100 foot run from the antenna and had a few splitters in between.

Now that analog TV is dead, and analog telephone may as well be, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for analog. I forget the name of the event but when it happened we'd be able to pick up stations from South Bend almost crystal clear even with the antenna pointed at Chicago. It was so neat to watch because it would fade in slowly over the course of an hour or two and some of the local stations would start to fade out. With digital you'd never know anything was even going on until you lost signal all together.

 

[kb0nes]

Jonathan, the event/phenomenon you are recalling is likely trophospheric ducting. This happens with a inversion happens in the upper atmosphere forming a 'duct' that traps the radio waves and allows them to bend away from their line of sight ways. With the proper conditions 500-1000 miles is common. Tropo ducting is generally better at UHF then the lower VHF frequencies. HD digital transmissions can duct, but since it is somewhat of an all or nothing mode, you won't see it fade in and out like the old analog AM TV did. But if you get a solid duct you can DX (distant station) with digital TV too.

There are lots of folks that have directional FM broadcast antennas up and play with receiving distant stations. I have one friend that has a stacked pair of 20+ foot FM antennas. He receives FM stereo from a nearly 200 mile radius most days and out to a thousand miles on good days.

RF is a fun thing. As a ham working into Europe with a wire in a tree from MN with less then a watt of power is pretty dang cool. All my flashlights use more power then that!

 

[whirlcool]

Fortunately all the stations in the Houston market transmit from one antenna farm southwest of the city. (183 degrees) and College station is northwest of here (340 degrees) our antenna picks up both without using a rotor. So the antenna we have seems to pick up stations in front of and to the rear of where it is pointing.

The Channel Master company used to make a 7ft parabolic dish UHF antenna. You'd see those mounted on buildings that contained bars. They were used to bring in TV signals containing sports games from other cities for the patrons to watch. Usually they'd be up on a tall tower too.

 

[gusherb]

Phil

Thanks for reminding me what that was I couldn't remember at the time I wrote that. I do remember the channels that were fading out in favor of distant stations were indeed UHF channels. That was so cool to watch happen.
I kinda miss analog TV.