OTA HD Antenna

Our OTA HD antenna doesn't work at all well.  It gets virtually no channels and half of what it receives are audio only stations.  For example it doesn't get ABC, NBC, PBS- CBS yes.  It's an RCA flat panel antenna...that's usually well rgearded.

Does anyone near our area- Prospect and Parker- have an OTA HD antenna that you can recommend?  Omni?  Range miles?   How high up did you position it?  How did you pick your make and model?  Get it set up? properly?

Just a few simple questions - right?

T I A

Almost everything you read on line about TV OTA antennas is bull*****.

There has been almost no change in the basic function of an OTA antenna in 65 years.  The content of the signal is almost irrelevant, because the signal itself for UHF and VHF is the same one grandma watched on her Philco.

You know where this is going, don't you?

It's going up on your roof, strapped to your chimney

and it is going to look like the one on every roof in every picture of the suburbs in the 50s.

The higher it is, the better your reception is going to be. Get the straps and a pole and put it on the chimney, or they make mounts that can screw into the side of the house (if you do this, put it on the east side of the house).

Then point it at new york, run the coax down to the TV, and enjoy 65 channels of free goodness.

The good news is the damn things cost, like, $25.00

If you do not like heights, your roofer can put it up there for not too much dough, or you can hang it in the attic if your roof is shingles (tile and slate pose issues).

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HOMEWORX-HDTV-Outdoor-Antenna/dp/B01C1YL16Y?ie=UTF8&SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B01C1YL16Y&linkCode=xm2&tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=node%3D667846011&field-keywords=antenna+pole

I agree with Max.  We put an antenna on our chimney (actually, replaced the old rusted one that was up there when we bought the house), aimed it at the Empire State Building, and ran the cable down to our basement.  We get a lot of channels -- I think more than 65 -- and they are extremely clear and the HD is better than cable.  Total cost was about $250, but we have saved so much more than that by not having cable.  We're in the College Hill area off Tuscan Rd.  

We put a Mohu HD OTA antenna up in a tree right next to the house.  It is pointed at NYC and it works very well.

I bought a $15 antenna from Amazon last year for our attic guest room's TV. It's just velcroed to the wall behind the TV and seems to get all the basic channels fine. We're at Richmond/Montague, so probably close enough to Prospect/Parker to be representative of the area.

I don't remember exactly which antenna it was, but it was one of the white/flat ones. It came in 3 different sizes/strengths and I just bought the cheapest one.

Newest adventures in OTAland.

As noted above our HDTV OTA didn't work well- marginal quality picture mostly and very few channels.  Last weekend I came across a hack that looked so easy that even I could do it- using stuff lying around the house.  Took all of about 15 mins including reboot and scan.  Result: 45 HD channels including 4 audio only; cost $0.  These are great- when working.

Almost all the channels have had some pixelation and freezing problems.  This is a very moveable famine.  For example(s)- ch 2 exc for 10-15 sec then pixels then froze for an extended time; midnight it was exc for an extended time;  Sat eve ch 13 was exc; last night notice box "No signal"  all night.  Ch 5 vg; ch 50 remarkable -both- since the beginning.  

Our circumstances: house sits on N-S line with chimney on south side- between 2 trees that played whack-a-mole very successfully with it.  I replaced it with attic antenna circa 1983.  This was replaced by cable 2001.  That was the first time either of us knew what a good picture is all about.  Now we're both enthused about HD.

Problem I'm trying to solve:  we'd like to get dining room tv off fios.  That tv sits on first floor NE corner of the house.  There are tooooo many obstructions in the way to run an antenna wire from 3rd floor to it and I don't want to run anything outside the house.  Current makeshift thingie- that's performing better than retail piece- has an amplifier.  It's positioned high in east facing window about 5 ft. away.

End of frustrated rant.

Just make sure the antenna cable is properly installed/grounded. I will say I have the Mohu HD in my den window and I am lucky that it picks up most of the OTA HD stations.

Mohu leaf worked fine for free HD channels simply affixed to a window.  

max_weisenfeld said:

Almost everything you read on line about TV OTA antennas is bull*****.

There has been almost no change in the basic function of an OTA antenna in 65 years.  The content of the signal is almost irrelevant, because the signal itself for UHF and VHF is the same one grandma watched on her Philco.

Just to clarify because this statement is not entirely accurate.  The signal is now a digital signal, and has been for almost a decade.  It is not in the least bit the same as the one you could watch on grandma's Philco.  If you plugged an antenna today into that Philco TV, you would get nada.  

What is the same is that most of the frequencies that are used for broadcast today are the same ones as before, except that much of UHF has been re-allocated to the cellular phone carriers.  Since the frequencies are the same, if you have an outdoor rooftop antenna, you can probably still use it, but it may behave differently.

The difference is on how the receiving equipment reacts to signal degradation.  Analog signal degradation = snow.  Digital signal degradation = dropouts, and eventually complete loss of picture.  Ie., what used to be tolerable in analog signal loss may not be tolerable in digital signal loss, and vice versa. 

But since most people don't have a rooftop antenna anymore, there are some upgraded technologies available in indoor antennas that can improve signal strength significantly over rabbit ears.

@Rob_Sandow, what this means, I suppose, is that if you have a new or old VHF antenna that works or used to work, it should still work. Correct? A UHF antenna is useless for VHF signals (which is what OTA transmissions are), but I don't think there were many UHF-only antennas. As I remember, there were VHF-only antennas (for channels 2-13) and combo VHF-UHF antennas. The latter should work, but the UHF elements of the antenna aren't helping. Chances are, they don't hurt, either.

I did nothing new today... virtually every channel was fab or better!  only 13 HD-nada.