Are some better than others?

[freedml]

Are any OTA digital tuners better at bringing in marginal signals than others? I have several marginal digital stations I would like to tune. (yes, I already have a huge antenna pointed in the right direction)

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by freedml

Are any OTA digital tuners better at bringing in marginal signals than others? I have several marginal digital stations I would like to tune. (yes, I already have a huge antenna pointed in the right direction)

HDHomerun seems to be the crowd favorite for questionable signals.

[Brent]

I'll second the vote for the HDHomeRun. Do you have CableTV at all?

[pjpjpjpj]

Thirded. I am all-OTA, and I have 2 HDHRs. They do a pretty good job of locking onto distant signals.

Of course, I like to think it's my expert builds of my homemade antennas.

The other benefit with HDHRs is that, since they are networked, they don't have to be at the server. I put mine just below my attic (where the antennas are), so as to shorten the coax cable run (since the coax is very lossy on OTA signals). I let the (basically lossless) Cat5E cable do the long run back to the server.

[SWKerr]

I have been trying to get my OTA to work perfectly for quite some time now. My problem is not signal strength but Multi-Path. I have tried to hook on to more distant stations so I do have opinions on that as well. I have amassed a number of these thing at this point and interestingly the cheapest was the best. I also have a number of antennas as well. A pole mounted Pre-Amp will help a lot with signal strength. (about $50).

Most of this experence was with BeyondTV but I expect the overall performance would have been the same.

VBOX Cats-Eye USB 3560 - Strength(Good) Multi-Path(OK)
VBOX Cats-Eye 164e - Strength(Good) Multi-Path(poor)
DVICO Fusion HDTV5 RT Gold - Strength(Poor) Multi-Path(Poor) * This thing sucks
Hauppauge HVR-1600 Strength(Good) Multi-Path(Good)
The winner
AVerTV Combo PCIe - Strength(Good) Multi-Path(Great)


I would love to hear from someone about how the HDHomeRun does with multi-path problem. I still think there is a better card out there since the tuner in my Samsung TV still does a better job with the multi-path problem and it is several years old. The HD-PVR and DirecTV HD have eliminated much of the pain associated with this for me but the pure OTA ATSC picture still looks better and networks are still about 60% of my recordings.

[Polypro]

I don't know if this counts, but I have a Weingard Square Shooter aimed ~150 degrees away from my towers...I'm grabbing the signals off a neighbors house. I have a Fusion 5 Gold and an HDHR and signal strength/picture quality is great.

P

[david1234]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Of course, I like to think it's my expert builds of my homemade antennas.

I'd love to see some pictures.

Right now my antenna is a double bowtie- built on a 2x4 with a cookie cooling rack for the reflector, and some old 12gauge copper I stripped from some romex for the elements. cost me 5 bucks for the 75-300 ohm connecteor from radio shack, but everything else was in the garage. I was really surprised by how well it handled the multipath from our oak tree that was killing my rabbit ears

Kind of like a a db2 (http://www.antennasdirect.com/DB2_Indoor_antenna.html), only cheaper and uglier.

[bjterry62]

I receive my HD TV from the Boston towers 38 mi away with this little guy. My house is at 385 ft above sea level and there are no hills between me and the towers. Tuning with Hauppauge 1600.

BT

[ewelin]

Originally Posted by bjterry62

I receive my HD TV from the Boston towers 38 mi away with this little guy. My house is at 385 ft above sea level and there are no hills between me and the towers. Tuning with Hauppauge 1600.

BT

Howdy Neighbor... Just curious, how are the over the air HD channels around Boston? I'm right on the Cambridge/Belmont line, and my house actually has an old antenna in the attic that is setup and I'm considering buying an HD tuner to possiby use it. Just wasn't sure if it'd be worth the effort or not.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by david1234

I'd love to see some pictures.

Right now my antenna is a double bowtie- built on a 2x4 with a cookie cooling rack for the reflector, and some old 12gauge copper I stripped from some romex for the elements. cost me 5 bucks for the 75-300 ohm connecteor from radio shack, but everything else was in the garage. I was really surprised by how well it handled the multipath from our oak tree that was killing my rabbit ears

Kind of like a a db2 (http://www.antennasdirect.com/DB2_Indoor_antenna.html), only cheaper and uglier.

I never took any pictures (I should have).... I am currently using two antennas, one for each of my HDHRs.

One (facing about 190 degrees from north) is an unreflected, vertically-stacked DB8. Basically, two DB4s, one above the other, on a vertical mast (6-foot 1x4). While not the optimal way to do it, I just gave each DB4 its own balun, 3' of coax, and connected them with a splitter. I went with unreflected and vertical because I am picking up channels from about a 45-degree range (not all in one direction), but none too far away, so it covers those channels nicely (vertically-stacked has a wider reception plot than side-by-side, which is more narrowly-aimed). It even picks up two VHF-hi channels (which it "shouldn't"), so you can tell I am pretty close to the antennas (~15 mi).

The other antenna is a grid-reflected (yaffa block panels!) single-bay Gray-Hoverman (SBGH). I made it from the dimensions off of that site. Rather than do all of the PVC work that they show on that site, I just mounted the driven components on (yet another) 1x4, ran a 2x4 on its side down the back of it, and mounted the grid to that (perfect spacing). It faces about 10 degrees from north, picks up channels from a different city, which is much farther away (~45 mi), but because of the distance, all of the channels are in a single direction, thus I could make a more directional (reflected) antenna.

On both antennas, I used 10ga Romex house wiring for all the driven elements. I found that it was beefy enough to stay in shape on its own, but soft enough to make small adjustments and corrections by hand (when, you know, I took it up to the attic and immediately dropped it). Each antenna has about 10-15' of coax that runs to the splitter and short coax that comes with the HDHR.

Both have now made it through all seasons flawlessly (reception-wise), so I don't appear to have any tree issues (leaves appearing/disappearing).

I should also mention that I knew nothing about antennas - neither science nor craft - about 9 months ago, but there is a lot on the internet to learn if you are interested. A lot of it is fairly straightforward.

Sorry if this is way off-topic, or TMI - PM me (or start a thread about it... it IS "hardware") if you have more questions.

[stanger89]

Just another dito:

I've had a Vbox DTA-150 and a Avermedia A180, and I could never get reliable reception with them even with "good" signal strength. Borrowed an HDHomeRun from a coworker and, with no other changes, everything's perfect.

I'd definitely rate the HDHR way above the Vbox 150 or Aver A180.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Just another dito:

I've had a Vbox DTA-150 and a Avermedia A180, and I could never get reliable reception with them even with "good" signal strength. Borrowed an HDHomeRun from a coworker and, with no other changes, everything's perfect.

I'd definitely rate the HDHR way above the Vbox 150 or Aver A180.

I would second this. I had several Cats Eye - USB tuners and got very bad reception (worse than my original CRT HD TV got). Changed to the HDHomeRun and get very good reception - Much better than my CRT HD TV and on-par with my newer LCD TVs.

Keep in mind that the newer the HD chip the device is using, the better it should be with signal strength and multipath.

While the HDHomeRun isn't brand new, it seems to have a decent chip in it. Apparently the older Cats Eye devices had older chips that don't have the better technology now available.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by sic0048

While the HDHomeRun isn't brand new, it seems to have a decent chip in it. Apparently the older Cats Eye devices had older chips that don't have the better technology now available.

Well, there's actually two versions of the HDHR, rev1 (numbers < 103*) uses an older demodulator, this is the version I've got currently. Rev 2 uses a brand new Micronas demodulator.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Well, there's actually two versions of the HDHR, rev1 (numbers < 103*) uses an older demodulator, this is the version I've got currently. Rev 2 uses a brand new Micronas demodulator.

So which ones are having the problems? The older Rev1 ones or the newer Rev2 ones?

Or are both about the same? Just curious.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Brent

So which ones are having the problems? The older Rev1 ones or the newer Rev2 ones?

Or are both about the same? Just curious.

Me? Neither, my old Avermedia and Vbox cards were having trouble. I borrowed a Rev 1 HDHR and it solved all my reception problems. I'm just thinking how much more robust a Rev 2 would be