HDTV indoor antenna?

Matthew

Matthew

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Matthew
I'm about to get an extra TV to put into a spare bedroom on the 2nd floor. Mainly would be streaming to it, so no need to hook it up to our cable system with another box. But it's also a chance to test out the OTA signals available. I've seem some DIY HD antenna designs and some pretty cheap passive and amplified antennae that can be stuck onto a wall or window. If this works out well enough, there's even the potential for cutting the cord on the main TV - but I want to know how well this setup is actually going to work and figured this would be a good opportunity to test. Not interested in an attic installation, that's too much work for this old man.

Any ideas or recommendations?
 
I got a Mohu antenna for about $20.
 
Matthew said:
That's +2 on the Mohu (+3 if you count my own thoughts).
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Mohu is about as good as it gets for indoor antennas, but I wouldn't rank it as orders of magnitude better performance. Depending on where you live, you might just have to bite the bullet on an attic or rooftop installation.
 
I've got a 1947 TV UHF antenna hooked up to one of my TVs. Get about eight channels.
tricraft.jpg
My guess is, it doesn't take much.

Ron Wanttaja
 
The clearest view of the sky from that room is to the west. The majority of the stations in my area are to the N/E.
 
asicer said:
Mohu is about as good as it gets for indoor antennas, but I wouldn't rank it as orders of magnitude better performance. Depending on where you live, you might just have to bite the bullet on an attic or rooftop installation.
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Some models are really cheap, too, so they are what I am interested in using for testing. The problem we have is that we rarely watch any network shows other than local news. So even free tv won't get us the channels we normally watch without needing to stream or make some other arrangements.
 
asicer said:
...
If you really like what you see, then hook up an Silicon Dust HD Homerun to your home network. Works even nicer if you have a Roku.
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Thanks for that info, I didn't know that was a thing.
 
Back in the late 1970s I built a Heathkit TV and needed a UHF antenna. I built a horn antenna out of cardboard (for shape) and aluminum foil (active part) for virtually nothing. Used 300 ohm twin lead for a transmission line to the TV (matched the impedance of the antenna). The opening was roughly 2 feet by 2 feet. The two active elements were triangles, about the separation between the two leads of twin lead transmission line at the feed end, about 2 feet apart at the other end. The triangles were about 2 feet in length, but I don't think there is anything magic about that dimension. Make the opening larger if you need to work lower frequencies. It was ugly, but in the attic who cared?
 
(Former broadcast engineer, MSEE, current Extra class ham) There is nothing magic about antennas and the antenna has no idea what kind of a signal it is receiving. Hucksters who claim magic antennas are to be avoided. Channelmaster is a brand that has been trustworthy for decades. From a quick glance at their offerings (https://www.channelmaster.com/TV_Antennas_s/35.htm) I personally would try the StealthTenna 50 or the MetroTenna 40. I would avoid the flat ones if at all possible. At TV frequencies, transmission is basically line of sight, so amplification will have marginal value.

Generally bigger is better. Regarding orientation, an ounce of data is worth a pound of SGOTI advice. Just experiment to find an orientation that gives good signals and is acceptable to the wife.
 
airdale said:
(Former broadcast engineer, MSEE, current Extra class ham) There is nothing magic about antennas and the antenna has no idea what kind of a signal it is receiving. Hucksters who claim magic antennas are to be avoided....
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As a former broadcast engineer, MSEE, and current Advanced Class ham, I agree with you!
 
asicer said:
It helps that we're still using the same frequencies as 70 years ago. :)
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Not exactly. The VHF Low Channels (2-6) are gone, VHF High (7-13) still in use, and the UHF Channels (used to go to 83) end at about 38 (guess what they took that spectrum for).
The changes make TV antenna design simpler (and generally cheaper, since you need less material). But yes - a 70+ year old UHF antenna would probably work just fine with
adequate signal strength.

What is different is that many if not most of the broadcast stations have multiple subchannels - typically 3 to 4, but I have seen up to 12. A few of said subchannels have interesting content
(to me, anyway).

Dave
 
I have the Winegard Flatwave Amped taped to my wall and it pulls in most HD channels well.
 
cessna182b said:
Not exactly. The VHF Low Channels (2-6) are gone, VHF High (7-13) still in use, and the UHF Channels (used to go to 83) end at about 38 (guess what they took that spectrum for).
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2-6 are still there. A local station just got moved there as part of the Phase 9 FCC Repack. Also, it currently ends at 51 as the repack isn't finished yet.
 
rtk11 said:
I have the Winegard Flatwave Amped taped to my wall and it pulls in most HD channels well.
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Winegard is another long time respected brand.
 
airdale said:
(Former broadcast engineer, MSEE, current Extra class ham) There is nothing magic about antennas and the antenna has no idea what kind of a signal it is receiving. Hucksters who claim magic antennas are to be avoided. Channelmaster is a brand that has been trustworthy for decades. From a quick glance at their offerings (https://www.channelmaster.com/TV_Antennas_s/35.htm) I personally would try the StealthTenna 50 or the MetroTenna 40. I would avoid the flat ones if at all possible. At TV frequencies, transmission is basically line of sight, so amplification will have marginal value.

Generally bigger is better. Regarding orientation, an ounce of data is worth a pound of SGOTI advice. Just experiment to find an orientation that gives good signals and is acceptable to the wife.
Click to expand...

Palmpilot said:
As a former broadcast engineer, MSEE, and current Advanced Class ham, I agree with you!
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As an EMC engineer, BSEE and Amateur Extra class ham, I also agree with you.

cessna182b said:
Not exactly. The VHF Low Channels (2-6) are gone, VHF High (7-13) still in use, and the UHF Channels (used to go to 83) end at about 38 (guess what they took that spectrum for).
The changes make TV antenna design simpler (and generally cheaper, since you need less material). But yes - a 70+ year old UHF antenna would probably work just fine with
adequate signal strength.

What is different is that many if not most of the broadcast stations have multiple subchannels - typically 3 to 4, but I have seen up to 12. A few of said subchannels have interesting content
(to me, anyway).

Dave
Click to expand...

asicer said:
2-6 are still there. A local station just got moved there as part of the Phase 9 FCC Repack. Also, it currently ends at 51 as the repack isn't finished yet.
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I don't think the VHF low band TV channels have been eliminated yet. But, the upper UHF channels have been re-assigned to mobile phones and other purposes. That said, a cheaper antenna should work fine. Line of sight is still line of sight.
 
It'll work ok from your house Matt, most of the time. It'll annoy you when it doesn't. I had two of them, one of them was defective shortly thereafter. It worked pretty well even in a basement window on the North Side of the house. I ended up putting a proper one in the attic, as I had a piece of Coax to use. It can still knock out once in a while, but it is rare.
 
ja_user said:
It'll work ok from your house Matt, most of the time. It'll annoy you when it doesn't. I had two of them, one of them was defective shortly thereafter. It worked pretty well even in a basement window on the North Side of the house. I ended up putting a proper one in the attic, as I had a piece of Coax to use. It can still knock out once in a while, but it is rare.
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As long as I can get 9.2 so I can watch Adam-12 and Hogan's Heroes.
 
For $10 (or free if you have a few basic things lying around) you can build your own antenna that will work much better than any of those crappy flat pieces of plastic and as well as many expensive respected commercial antennae already mentioned. Search for "DIY Hoverman" or "diy stealthhawk antenna. " I've built both, and I live in a fringe area, down in a valley, relying on second reflection reception for quite a few stations.i get ABC,NBC,CBS,FOX,PBS,CW, and about 18 additional related subfeed channels with either antenna, although the Hoverman is better and more reliable in bad conditions.
 
asicer said:
2-6 are still there. A local station just got moved there as part of the Phase 9 FCC Repack. Also, it currently ends at 51 as the repack isn't finished yet.
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Maybe not everywhere - but where I live (fringe of the L.A. coverage area) all of the major channels have moved to the UHF spectrum. They still go by the traditional channel numbers that people know them by -
but those are now "Display Channels". The actual RF Channels are quite different. Examples are "Channel 2 (KCBS) - now RF 31, "Channel 4" (KNBC) - now RF 36, "Channel 5 (KTLA) - now RF 35.

Dave
 
cessna182b said:
Maybe not everywhere - but where I live (fringe of the L.A. coverage area) all of the major channels have moved to the UHF spectrum. They still go by the traditional channel numbers that people know them by -
but those are now "Display Channels". The actual RF Channels are quite different. Examples are "Channel 2 (KCBS) - now RF 31, "Channel 4" (KNBC) - now RF 36, "Channel 5 (KTLA) - now RF 35.
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They are "Virtual Channels", not "Display Channels" (I did some PSIP work for ATSC stuff a while back).

The local station that moved to the lower VHF band as part of the phase 9 repack now has a center frequency of 79Mhz, so channels 2-6 are definitely still part of the TV spectrum.
 
The nomenclature used by Rabbit Ears (which is what I prefer as a reference) is "Display Channel" and "Physical Channel". I prefer to use "Display Channel" and "RF Channel" because they are more descriptive.

The only Low VHF channel still operating in my coverage area shows up as 6-1 (KZNO at Big Bear Lake - runs 3 kW ERP). Compare that to a Megawatt for KTLA. I don't count XETV in Tijuana, Mexico, also 6-1,
which I can sometimes receive.

i note that the outdoor TV Antennas offered for sale these days mostly omit the Low VHF Channels. No doubt that saves a lot of aluminum. Indoor antennas often don't specify what their frequency ranges are
(but the sellers tend to make all sorts of wild claims regarding performance). OTOH, old fashioned rabbit ears are still widely available - and will work if the signals are strong enough.

Dave
 
cessna182b said:
The nomenclature used by Rabbit Ears (which is what I prefer as a reference) is "Display Channel" and "Physical Channel". I prefer to use "Display Channel" and "RF Channel" because they are more descriptive.
Click to expand...
I prefer to use the nomenclature used in ATSC A/65 and ISO/IEC 13818-1. Those are the official standards.
The only Low VHF channel still operating in my coverage area shows up as 6-1 (KZNO at Big Bear Lake - runs 3 kW ERP). Compare that to a Megawatt for KTLA. I don't count XETV in Tijuana, Mexico, also 6-1,
which I can sometimes receive.
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You got me curious so I checked the FCC CDBS. There are currently 42 stations in the lo-VHF (channel 2-6) band. A good number of those seem to be either or owned&operated by or affiliates of major networks.
 
If you have an attic, I would put an amplified antenna there and use a splitter to incorporate the antenna signals on the cable. Then you need splitters at the TV outlets. I used this setup for my satellite service and it worked great. I tried the Terk antennas but had much better reception with the Winegard antennas.
 
For a while I had a neat little device that was an OTA HDTV receiver that streamed over my home network. I put it and a small antenna up on the shelf in my closet and I could watch it anywhere.
The only real issue is that there's just not much on the OTA around here.
 
Digital signals tend to be more "fragile" than the older analog signals. Hence, it may be necessary to go with an outdoor antenna. Great if an indoor antenna works for you - just don't fall for the hype.

I've got an older Channel Master 4228 roof antenna, about 75' of coax, an amplified splitter, and then coax feeds to each set. I found that there was LTE interference (installed an LTE filter), and am still getting some other interference affecting one of the RF channels (I can see something moving around on a spectrum analyzer but haven't tracked it down - yet) that's enough to cause occasional dropouts on that channel. With the exception of a couple of public stations, all the other local stations transmitters are within a mile or so of each other. The digital signals can be a bit more fragile to "unintentionally radiating" stuff in the house - that becomes particularly true if your antenna coax has badly installed connectors and the like. I am 12 miles, line of sight, to the TV towers, but lack full fresnel clearance on part of the path (not counting the trees). The longley-rice projections show that the signals should be fine where I am.

Aside from the one flaky channel, the other channels are rock solid & strong.

The amplified splitter makes a little difference on the longer runs (and makes up for the splitter/power divider), though it is easy enough to overload the amplifier if one is not careful.

Scan and rescan is the word of the month - one market near me just shut off their "pre-repack" digital transmitters this week.
 
Depends largely how far you are from the transmitters. When I was in Northern VA right by IAD, we just through a cheap antenna up on top of the TV set (and not exactly close to the window) and it worked fine.
Now I'm 30 miles north of CLT, and elevation helps more than getting it outside (at least in my wood framed house). As I said it's up three floors on the closet shelf. Still the pickings are slim so I eventually got a dish.
As soon as they get real internet here, I'm cutting the "cable."
 
wsuffa said:
Digital signals tend to be more "fragile" than the older analog signals. Hence, it may be necessary to go with an outdoor antenna. Great if an indoor antenna works for you - just don't fall for the hype.
Click to expand...

Interestingly by the math, and because of inherent error correction, all else equal digital is receivable further than analog in “perfect” condition.

But human eyeballs and brains do a great job as DSP filters and we’ve all watched a slightly noisy image before in the analog days, or even a horrible one, and as long as the audio isn’t overly affected we fill in the missing data or ignore it. Ghosting, white/black dots, etc... our brain still sees the images transmitted just fine through them.

But with digital when the mathematical error correction can’t do it any more, the receiver goes black and you fall off the “digital cliff”.

The other thing local stations who stayed on VHF found out the hard way, is that VHF has a lot more man made noise and interference here, which sucked the line where that digital cliff happens, a lot closer to the transmitter sites than their math model intended. The UHF stations get the benefit of digital error correction going further, the VHF noise keeps the VHF barely able to make their published coverage areas.

Spent their money on the wrong band. All the big guns bought Harris. Nice transmitters. Very modular. Not cheap.
 
denverpilot said:
Interestingly by the math, and because of inherent error correction, all else equal digital is receivable further than analog in “perfect” condition.

But human eyeballs and brains do a great job as DSP filters and we’ve all watched a slightly noisy image before in the analog days, or even a horrible one, and as long as the audio isn’t overly affected we fill in the missing data or ignore it. Ghosting, white/black dots, etc... our brain still sees the images transmitted just fine through them.

But with digital when the mathematical error correction can’t do it any more, the receiver goes black and you fall off the “digital cliff”.

The other thing local stations who stayed on VHF found out the hard way, is that VHF has a lot more man made noise and interference here, which sucked the line where that digital cliff happens, a lot closer to the transmitter sites than their math model intended. The UHF stations get the benefit of digital error correction going further, the VHF noise keeps the VHF barely able to make their published coverage areas.

Spent their money on the wrong band. All the big guns bought Harris. Nice transmitters. Very modular. Not cheap.
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More to it than that. At UHF, trees and leaves/needles provide higher, and in some cases, much higher attenuation. VHF is more susceptible to manmade noise, UHF is more susceptible to weather, trees, and building materials. Propagation is worse at UHF (higher loss), which is why UHF gets higher power. You get the benefit of better line-of-sight (including better Fresnel zone clearance) for UHF where you live, despite the issues from Lookout. Not everyone gets that. But the antenna requirements up on the mountains west of Denver usually mean directional antennas, and it's a bit easier to do on UHF.

UHF also allows high antenna gain on both ends.

The real drawback stations on VHF have is the receive antenna gain and directivity. Most antennas are optimized for UHF (a change from the old days). Plus all the other stuff. But given that *most* TV service is delivered via cable or satellite, it's not as big a deal as it once was.

Despite the error correction, digital is still more fragile than analog. We'll see how Version 3 does, but the older version does suffer when the signal varies as if the receiver is "in motion". If you live in a community with lots of trees, wind moving the leaves can be enough to override the error correction, especially if the signal is weaker to start with. Not everyone has that issue, though. It's all about bit error rate now.

It was proven long ago that folks will watch a snowy analog signal if the content was compelling. With digital, it's there or it's not.

And if you're on satellite, there's the issue of rain fade and sun outage.
 
IMHO: the 91XG is the finest tv antenna available. It allows me to receive over 50 channels here NE Ohio. Attic mount, no amplifier
 
wsuffa said:
More to it than that.
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You know you had me at this. ;)

Yeah. Tons of geeky RF fun with broadcast.

My problem is lightning. I want a solid outdoor setup but I know the second I put it up if I don’t ground and protect it properly, Thor will assuredly take out my house.

He’s tried before. It was expensive.

And I need a lot of gain to the horizon to get the Denver stuff. Colorado Springs is better even, just due to terrain.

The dish for internet on the roof peak is bad enough. That little gas discharge tube the company put on it ain’t gonna do much if it takes a strike.
 
denverpilot said:
You know you had me at this. ;)

Yeah. Tons of geeky RF fun with broadcast.

My problem is lightning. I want a solid outdoor setup but I know the second I put it up if I don’t ground and protect it properly, Thor will assuredly take out my house.

He’s tried before. It was expensive.

And I need a lot of gain to the horizon to get the Denver stuff. Colorado Springs is better even, just due to terrain.

The dish for internet on the roof peak is bad enough. That little gas discharge tube the company put on it ain’t gonna do much if it takes a strike.
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We put gas gaps on a 5 tower AM station in Missouri. Ceramic gas tubes. A week later 2 of them were vaporized. I mean, the wire and the metal base were there, but no sign of any ceramic - not even a shard - anywhere.
 
NorthEast Ohio said:
1X
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NorthEast Ohio said:
IMHO: the 91XG is the finest tv antenna available. It allows me to receive over 50 channels here NE Ohio. Attic mount, no amplifier
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FWIW I settled on one of these: https://www.televes.com/us/144282-dinova-boss-mix-antenna.html and am quite happy with it. I wanted both VHF HI and UHF channels, and this one provides it.
Mine is outside - on a vent pipe mount on the roof of the house. The number of channels received changes with the weather - but I have counted over 60 on a good day. Most of them I would never
bother with - but there are a few gems mixed in with the rubbish.

Dave
 
Half Fast said:
As a Senior Member of the IEEE, an MSEE, and an Extra class ham, I agree with you, @Palmpilot , and @airdale .

:D
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I'll see your SM and raise you to a LSM of the IEEE. And a past Society President. But, you've got me with the MSEE. :p

Absolutely, lightning protection in the Denver area is critical. When we lived in the area a bit over 35 years ago we lived west of Littleton. One of the early purchasers in Governor's Ranch. One evening my wife was out on the patio (covered) turning something on the BBQ when the house behind us got hit by lightning. The stroke took off some bricks from the chimney of that house. You've never seen anyone open a sliding glass door, come into the house and close a sliding door so fast. A few days later a house on the next street got hit. Took out virtually everything electrical in that house. I figured that if the storms were an artillery spotter, I was in trouble. "Split the difference and fire for effect!"
 
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