On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:17 PM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> We have also tried replacing our home-made antenna (a la the YouTube > instructions) with an RCA "super" antenna. Same results whichever antenna we > used, so the RCA antenna, with booster, goes back to Walmart tomorrow. No > real need to throw away $30 for nothing. When June 12 rolls around, a number of the current DTV broadcasts that are on UHF frequencies, which your home-made antenna is designed to receive, will switch to VHF frequencies. That home-made antenna is not designed to work on VHF. > The next move will be to buy some more antenna cable and try extending the > antenna outside, and above the level of our (flat) roof to see what > difference that makes. This is all pretty ridiculous, but at this point it's > the principle of the thing. If the antenna works outside the house, we'll > have to think about whether, or not, we want to get a "real" adjustable roof > antenna for another couple hundred $$$s. What a rip-off this whole thing is > turning out to be. You will most probably need to get an external antenna if you want the best reception possible. This was true even back in the "good old days" of nothing but analog TV. However, you will certainly not have to spend, as you put it, "another couple hundred $$$s" unless you decide to go fulll tilt from the outset. All you will need is a regular VHF/UHF TV antenna. There is no such thing as a specially designed HDTV or DTV antenna no matter what the ads say. Just get an antenna that has sufficient gain to enable you to receive whatever stations you can reasonably expect to be able to receive. You'll need that cable, but you can get it cheap if you look around a bit. A rotator? Maybe, but you can add that later if you install now with an update to a rotator at a later date in mind. I use the Channel Master 4228 which works well on channels 7 through 69. This is an 8 bay bowtie antenna, basically designed for high-gain UHF reception, but providing good VHF coverage down to channel 7. It does not work that well on the lower band VHF channels of 2 through 6. To my knowledge, no TV stations in the DC/Baltimore area are going broadcast on any channel below 7 anyway after June 12. Here is a link to an XLS database of channel assignments for stations all across the country: http://www.rabbitears.info/ss/DTV-Channels.xls Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
