Question about modern TVs and digital antennas etc

Design, and figuring out how to figure out what it is you don't know you need to figure out. Seems like now that digital is here, every single house and family has a different issue.

This should have been sooo much easier.

 

Honestly, the biggest problem is fashion. People (and housing associations) have decided that rooftop antennas are "tacky" thus everyone attempts to use indoor antennas out in the deep suburbs, or put antennas in attics - behind multiple layers of shingles. Everyone realizes that you can't have a satellite antenna inside of an attic, but they think a TV antenna can operate just as well indoor. But the higher the frequency, the less well it can penetrate structures.

Since we're talking about UHF only for 99% of the channels in the US, you can use small antennas. You just have to be prepared to mount them outside.

Here's a very small antenna:



It's $12.99. It's about 6" square, it has a small thin cable. Just mount it on the side of the house towards the stations.

 

I'm in the same boat, no cable. Just keep torturing the rabbit ears.

 

OK, here's a typical "rabbit ears" antenna.



The two rods are the VHF component, and serve no purpose at all for the vast majority of people and you can keep them pulled in. The loop is the UHF antenna. Position it perpendicular to the broadcast towers.

 

It seems like companies across the board are putting less importance on quality of antenna reception. I got a newer, equivalent model of Infiniti car, and I could barely pick up stations I could pick up beautifully in the older model in the same situations. I got a new Yamaha receiver for my indoor stereo, and, using the same antennas, situated identically to the old Yamaha receiver, AM stations come in weak and with a lot of static and FM stations are much harder to pick up. Similarly my newer Samsung TV has a lot more trouble picking up TV stations, using the exact same antenna and placement as my old equivalent model. It is beginning to be predictable that if I want to get something new, I can expect diminishing in quality of reception, as well as many other things I liked about older models. The era of thinking newer models of anything are better is long over. Newer models are usually bad news and dictated by companies needing to cheapen things up, reduce their costs, and increase prices to enhance profits to increase their stock prices.

 

Have you tried getting your antenna just outside the window? In my experience, it makes the biggest difference in signal strength. You can run a flat cable adapter under the window so you don't have to make any holes in your walls. The cheapest antenna will perform better outside than inside. And try moving it around to different locations. You would be surprised at how much difference a couple of inches in one direction or another can make.

 

While I believe the difference is the amount of amps as well as the SNR, Signal To Noise Ratio, built into the receiver, I agree that by casual observation, it seems like the newer the receiver, the lower the power (for comparable equipment).

I have a couple of old boom boxes that I use for listening to sporting events, etc.

My smaller 1981 Panasonic analog boom box gets far better reception in the same location than my larger 2002 Sony digital boom box. I don't have the actual specs on their power variance, but as similar products, the minimum standards appear to be much lower with later models.

Don't know if that is just anecdotal or relatively true.

 

I don't understand how an advanced country like the US has these issues with OTA reception. I live in Spain, a country I think is subpar regarding broadcasting. I live around 30 Km. away from T.V. stations repeaters, have several buildings between the repeaters and me and with a roof top antenna I get around 90/95 % of signal so I seldom have any glitches while watching T.V., far from the two or three glitches and hour Vidiot describes. I get 28 channels both SD and HD channels, I guess European DVB is using a better error correction system than ATSC but I don't know for sure.

 

I've never seen the glitches Vidiot describes since all the broadcasters went to full power. But then, I'm a dedicated city dweller, and have always lived less than 10 miles from the broadcasters I want to pick up.

 

I use to watch a politics talk show on an HD channel on Saturday nights that lasts 5 hours and I don't remember when was the last time I saw a glitch while watching this program. And even on the very ocasional glicht this is only noticed on picture not on audio, this must be because the use of Dolby Digital + which is used here on most HD channels.

 

Even in close proximity to the transmission, anyone dwelling in a masonry house or structure, typically will experience a much weaker and inconsistent signal. My understanding is that it is due to the metal lath that surrounds the building, supporting the masonry (stucco, brick or stone).

Living in a stucco home, I never had any problem with an analog signal, but the digital signal is significally weaker. I too am about 4 to 10 miles from the transmitters.

 

Digital can be more susceptible to multipath. Situations were you would only get ghosting on an analog NTSC signal can overwhelm the ATSC tuner.

People should realize that if you want an excellent over the air signal, you really need to put an antenna outside.

 

There are a few misconceptions posted in this thread. The first is that there are mostly UHF stations. While that would be nice, the fact is that there are markets with important stations on VHF. And there will be even more with the imminent repack of TV signals after the FCC decided to sell off spectrum space to wireless carriers.

And the repack is only temporary as sometime around 2020, they're going to muck up digital TV again with ATSC 3.0 tuners that are not compatible with our current tuners. Yep. More government-sponsored converter boxes are headed our way.

All of that is so broadcasters can up their signals to 4K.

 

Everyone should check their market with a tool like this one. There are no VHF stations in Kansas City or Chicago, the two places I live. But you're right, there are some in some big markets like New York City, where there are 4 out of 25 stations one can pick up with an outdoor antenna.

I'm a total cynic about the need for 4K in the home on any screen smaller than 10 feet. But I do want to see newer compression algorithms used and greater dynamic range. But the main reason is to sell spectrum off to make more data available to high speed cellular services.