Gary's advice about an 8 bay bow-tie UHF Channel master antenna would be your best choice, and you should get a mast amplifier for the UHF antenna because of your distance from the broadcast towers. One thing I would suggest is googling to find all your Digital TV stations in both Washington and Richmond just to make certain that none of the channels you want are in the VHF Ch 2-13 range because then a UHF only antenna might be a mistake. You will need a rotor if you want both cities as I suspect that they are in opposite directions but you could go with the antenna pointed at Washington and forego Richmond stations. You would be looking at around $150 for the antenna and amplifier if you do it yourself. you may need some new mounting hardware. Don't buy Radio Shack stuff if you want the highest quality and if you are unsure about how to do this hire a professional and have them do it right.....A digital tuner for OTA channels is very good advice and you won't believe the quality of OTA digital and HD if you have an HD tv. Very shortly, inexpensive digital tuners will become available as part of the digital transition. Perhaps by next February. ----- Original Message ----- From: morningglorydesigns To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:23 PM Subject: [TVRO] Antenna Question
Because our antenna (and amps?)was damaged in a hurricane Isabel and we no longer get local stations well, we considered going to small dish or cable. However, we decided that we want to keep the 4DTV and replace the antenna. I realize that these antenna questions are not directly related to C-Band, but for most of us with C-band, our systems involve having an antenna for local channels. Is it better to have an antenna professionally installed or are the results of installing it yourself usually good? My husband was not able to loosen and turn our present antenna because it has been on top of our house for 13 years. We had it installed with our C-band system. We have a 2 story house and the antenna is at the edge of a gable. There are supposed to be 3 amps or boosters, but my husband has not been able to find them. Is it best just to replace the whole system? I don't want to spennd unnecessary money, but I want to be happy with the results. We are 40 miles from Washington DC and 65 miles from Richmond. We have an omni-directional antenna and focused on the DC channels. Is it expensive or complicated to add a rotor? Comment on pizza dish and cable: They advertise lots of channels, but to get the simple programming we want (like DIY, SCI, HGTV), we'd have to get an expensive package. Truthfully, looking at the Dish Network 100+ package made me angry. Most of the 100 channels were useless. With either pizza dish or cable, we'd have to pay ~$60 a month. Although they have a couple of sports channels we'd like, it's not worth switching - and I feel like they arrange their packages so that you pretty much have to get an expensive plan to get anything good. Serena [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
