OTA Television Antennas

L

Leonard Caillouet

Guest
If you are using over the air TV, what antenna are you using? Indoor, outdoor, both? I have one that I built in the attic but it is very directional and I am looking for something that might be less fussy about which way it is pointed.
 
I have used indoor HD antennas and the specs mention it has signal booster.I will never use indoor antennas again as they don't work as advertised. We have lost the signal so many times and when digital freezes is much more annoying then the analog fussy snow screen. I think attic or outside is the way to go. I never had problems with my attic one before we got Directv.
Can you place the attic one outside? The size matters too for the range.
 
I have a directional one I built and have in the attic, but in my case the directionality is good since all the towers are about 50 miles south of me in essentially the same location.

How close are your towers? Does yours use a reflector? If you don't use a reflector and the towers are close enough, I would think you'd get less finicky reception.
 
I have about as bad a direction problem as possible. I can get a few local signals with omnis, but three times as many with a better directional antenna. I am just looking to see if there are any recent options that I have missed. Even marginal improvement can get a few more channels here.
 
One of the best mapping tools is at Antennas Direct. It has a lousy listing of the stations but I like the map offering. This is my situation.
upload_2017-6-10_11-49-41.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If you want a good list of channels that might be available to you I prefer the list format at receptionmaps.com.
upload_2017-6-10_11-54-47.png
 
Can you see a difference between a local HD channel that's pulled in via antenna versus one on cable/sat?

My biggest complaint about my cable customer experience is that FOX NFL looks terrible. Blocky and super compressed. I've always been curious about the prospects of tapping an antenna just for football.
 
When you have a good signal, OTA is usually the best image available. There are many variables, however, and RF over the air can be unpredictable unless you have a very good antenna relative to the available signal. I have Cox cable and it is pretty good, but Fox is not the best under any situation, including OTA. I don't see much difference unless there is a problem.

The reality with OTA is that many people are in a situation like me where there are transmitters in different directions. This means you have to go with an antenna that is not directional, or use a rotator on a higher gain directional antenna. This means that some people will have to choose which channels they orient the antenna to or sacrifice channels at a distance with a less directional antenna.

The physics have not changed and there will always be the trade off between gain and directionality, but the options on multi-directional antennae have improved in recent years, so I am going to give the current products a fresh review. I fully expect to find that there may be marginal improvements in the indoor antennae available but as I said, the physics remain the same. A bigger, more directional, and higher antenna will get you more signal. You can only do so much indoors with the signal that is there. But many people can get some good options with a simple indoor antenna, so we'll see what is currently available.
 
Not what I was hoping to read. FOX NFL needs to upgrade its HD broadcast capabilities. The PQ in my home is about as bad as it gets...which is disappointing because the conference they cover is the conference I watch. :-/

I think an antenna review would be a fascinating read... and a potential buyers guide would be welcomed information!
 
I have a cheap RCA indoor antenna that I need to point at the signal. When it is working the picture quality is great. I do need to step to a better indoor antenna as I rent and don't want a permanent install.
 
Not what I was hoping to read. FOX NFL needs to upgrade its HD broadcast capabilities. The PQ in my home is about as bad as it gets...which is disappointing because the conference they cover is the conference I watch. :-/

I think an antenna review would be a fascinating read... and a potential buyers guide would be welcomed information!

You could call your cable company and complain about the reception of the channel. Years ago I complained, and they sent a tech out. The tech ran a new cable to our unit, and then called in, and they fine tuned the channel I was complaining about. It was better when he left.
 
With signals coming from various directions, the best we could ever do got us all but one or two local stations from a given antenna position. When moved to allow those stations to get signal, then one or two others would drop out. It was quite frustrating.
 
What we get with indoor "non-directional" antennae varies a lot. Luckily most of the towers are not that far away even if they are in a bunch of directions. We have to carefully orient the antenna to get up to 12 channels. I can get a few more with the attic antenna I built but it is highly directional. I may just break down and get a rotator for it.
 
We went back to basic level cable just to get local channels awhile back. The local provider gave us a deal: internet plus two boxes of local cable for the price of internet only (before discounts).
 
We have an OTA antenna on top of the house, but haven't used it in years. We are on the fringe, but we always got all four networks with it. I think it is better than cable, but about the same as Dish or DirecTV when we had those. The only problem is we couldn't record it. Nowadays though... the flat panel displays do not have an ATSC tuner included, so you have to get an STB to use an antenna.

I have pretty much quit recording anything and will watch it via Netflix, Hulu or Amazon... via the Roku. Our cable company also has TV Anywhere, so we can watch a good bit of it via the Roku as well.
 
I have an article and reviews of several indoor OTA antennae just about ready. I have to beg patience, however. The thing that I have (re)learned is how much signals vary, particularly with an indoor antenna. The weather has been very variable here for the past few weeks, making tests and comparisons harder. I am going back over a couple of the products to be sure that I am giving them a fair test, considering the recent reception has been really poor overall.

I can hint at the results, however, and say that my universal answer if right once again...the question, and a good part of the article is just what does reception and choice of antenna depend upon.
 
We have 3 HDHomerun OTA tuners which each have 2 HD tuners, and I can record to our NAS with them. I am going to be selling them as I will not be able to use them in Mexico since I am not fluent in Spanish, and will be getting Sky Satellite most likely.
 
I swear I posted a picture of Leonard's OTA Antenna setup.... oh yeah! Here it is.
 
We use the Mohu Leaf. See link on amazon for more details. It is indoor antenna and I get 115 channels.
 
I'm using a Clearstream 2V on the roof and picking up pretty much every station available in the market.

When I bought the house, I had DirecTV. A few months later decided to kill it. I pulled the dish off the roof, put the antenna where the dish was mounted and used the same cable. The towers I'm looking for are about 20-35 miles from me in the southern sky. Some straight south, and some southeast/southwest.

Originally I had put up the Clearstream 2, and was having problems with the ABC station and a few others. So I went to Radio Shack and bought the huge aerial antenna like what we used when I was growing up (before cable and satellite). I put that up there and it didn't do any better.

So I did my research and found that the Clearstream 2 was VHF only, and the stations I was having problems with were UHF (or vice versa, I don't remember). So I found the Clearstream 2V, went and picked it up at Best Buy, put it on the roof and immediately had strong signals on all channels.

As for quality, I still think the antenna has the highest quality image. I use a TiVo for recording, but I'm using that less and less, with streaming options becoming better.
 
It's pretty amazing how small that 2V is... are you streaming content also?
 
It's pretty amazing how small that 2V is... are you streaming content also?

Yes, I got in early on DirecTV Now, so I have the 100+ channels for $35/month deal. I only use the DTVNOW app for live sports, otherwise I use the provider logins and the AppleTV's TV app, which works fantastically to bring in content from all the providers, plus Hulu and iTunes. Only thing I wish it would pull in that it doesn't is Netflix.

So I have a Bolt in the sunroom which powers a TiVo Mini in the theater, plus an AppleTV at both locations for streaming. Anything on the networks I watch on the TiVo to save bandwidth. The AppleTVs are for Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Fargo, etc.

With the TiVo interface and the AppleTV app, other than combining the two, I can't imagine a simpler, easier interface setup. Too bad the new AppleTV isn't offering an OTA tuner. ;)
 
Are you a former cable subscriber?
 
Back
Top