OTA Reception

[Spectrum]

I've been having more and more issues with clear QAM and wanted to try switching to OTA for locals. I went to Walmart last weekend and got one of these to give it a go.

My results were not so great which is kind of not surprising. I live in a small urban canyon with a few 3-6 story buildings and parking garages but I am less than 3.5 miles from all the transmitters that I care about.

Here is a link to tvfool with transmitter directions and distances. I just checked the signals using the ATSC tuner in my TV and got the following results.

Channel      Signal Strength (0-10)
   6.1                  8
   8.1                  6
  10.1                  2-8 but no video or audio
  20.1                  5
  43.1                  3-7

This is with the amplifier on the antenna set to about 50%. With it any lower the signal strengths on 8-1 go into the dirt and it's completely unwatchable. Going higher on the amp doesn't yield any more improvement.

Over the weekend I actually had the antenna hooked to my Sage box and tried a few test recordings. There was noticeable artifacting and audio dropouts on every channel I tried.

Before I write this off as a lost cause, does anyone have any ideas on what direction I should go to troubleshoot it? I'm close enough to the transmitters that my received signal may be overpowering the tuner and I'm in a bit of an urban canyon so I may have multipath issues. I don't have any test equipment, so I don't know what to do now short of throwing hardware at it. An attenuator is a definite check, but I don't think I can find one locally.

Any ideas before I just let it go?

[gplasky]

I would have went external. Can you take it outside and put it on the roof? Might be worth the effort to see if an external one would work for you.

Gerry

[Spectrum]

Not easily.
I should have mentioned in the original post that I'm in a ground floor apartment and I doubt the owner would let me mount one on the roof. I might be able to rig something out the window but I'd rather keep it inside if at all possible. I'm not averse to using a small outdoor antenna and doing a ceiling mount, but that would still leave the signal going through brick walls.

[stanger89]

If you're that close I'd probably try an antenna without an amp. The problem with such an amp when you don't need it is it's relatively likely it's making your problem worse rather than being neutral.

[GKusnick]

Some months back we had issues with OTA reception in my building after a big windstorm. I went up on the roof with the TV guy to help troubleshoot and what we found was that signal quality (as distinct from strength) was very sensitive to antenna position. Just moving the antenna back and forth by less than a foot or so made the difference between getting and not getting some channels. Note that I'm not talking about rotating the antenna, but actually physically moving the stand from one place to another.

Presumably this is due to multipath effects setting up interence patterns in the waves. You want to find a spot in the pattern where one path predominates and delivers a clear bitstream, as opposed to signals from several paths adding up to a strong carrier but with the bitstreams out of phase and garbling each other. Unfortunately there isn't really any sort of test equipment that can map this out for you; you just have to push the antenna around until you find the sweet spot by trial and error.

[PiX64]

Not to throw a wrench in your plan but take a look at this post. I am 60+ miles away from the city where most of my channels come from, and with a home built indoor antenna which cost less than your 29.99 phillips i get phenomenal reception, no amp, hooked directly to hdhr & hauppauge 2250..

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48146

Hope that helps

~Pix64

[stanger89]

If your stations are all in roughly the same direction, something like this would probably be more than sufficient:
http://www.amazon.com/Terk-Technolog.../dp/B0001FV36E

I got one (came with an ATI HDTV Wonder) and it could pick up some of my stations, which are I want to say like 30miles away. It didn't pick them up great but I'm sure it would be fine for <5mi.

Otherwise maybe something like this (which I have no experience with):
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp...0Antennas&sku=

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If you're that close I'd probably try an antenna without an amp. The problem with such an amp when you don't need it is it's relatively likely it's making your problem worse rather than being neutral.

That's what I was afraid of. The Philips has a power button on it and turning it off tanks everything so I don't think it can really be run completely without the amp.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Some months back we had issues with OTA reception in my building after a big windstorm. I went up on the roof with the TV guy to help troubleshoot and what we found was that signal quality (as distinct from strength) was very sensitive to antenna position. Just moving the antenna back and forth by less than a foot or so made the difference between getting and not getting some channels. Note that I'm not talking about rotating the antenna, but actually physically moving the stand from one place to another.

Presumably this is due to multipath effects setting up interence patterns in the waves. You want to find a spot in the pattern where one path predominates and delivers a clear bitstream, as opposed to signals from several paths adding up to a strong carrier but with the bitstreams out of phase and garbling each other. Unfortunately there isn't really any sort of test equipment that can map this out for you; you just have to push the antenna around until you find the sweet spot by trial and error.

Moving around I can get channel 10.1 to show up, but only close to the floor and in the middle of the room. Everything else stays about the same.

Originally Posted by PiX64

Not to throw a wrench in your plan but take a look at this post. I am 60+ miles away from the city where most of my channels come from, and with a home built indoor antenna which cost less than your 29.99 phillips i get phenomenal reception, no amp, hooked directly to hdhr & hauppauge 2250..

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48146

Hope that helps

~Pix64

I've seen these homade jobs before and I may rig one rather than ordering an outdoor antenna just to see what kind of results I can get. The Philips was just a shot at seeing what would happen and if it worked all it took was a trip to the store, not pulling out tools and making a mess

Originally Posted by stanger89

If your stations are all in roughly the same direction, something like this would probably be more than sufficient:
http://www.amazon.com/Terk-Technolog.../dp/B0001FV36E

I got one (came with an ATI HDTV Wonder) and it could pick up some of my stations, which are I want to say like 30miles away. It didn't pick them up great but I'm sure it would be fine for <5mi.

Otherwise maybe something like this (which I have no experience with):
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp...0Antennas&sku=

Problem with both of those is I'm stuck if they don't work well, no easy return path

Thanks for all the suggestions!