Digital Television Antennas

[Duchess Jack]

I got rid of DTV 5-6 years ago (no HD feed on the satalite) and got rid of cable a couple years ago (evil worthless aholes who need to burn in hell).

 

Everything has been netflix and cootifying pirated stuff.

 

I can't miss any more football and am looking into a digital antenna. there are a lot of options though. What shouild I be looking for?

[Kid Cid]

The program located at Antenna Web will show you exactly what you need to buy.

[Duchess Jack]

Thanks KC. You're the man when if comes to audio/video stuff

[AtomicCEO]

So Antennaweb is a great resource for seeing how far away the towers are, how strong, and in what direction. It tells you what "color" antenna to buy for strength purposes, but nothing about brands.

 

I've been through 2 recently:

 

I bought one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/RCA-ANT1450-Multi-Di...d/dp/B001GEDVLO

RCA Indoor antenna... and it's not much better than a pair of rabbit ears. My reception was just not quite good enough.

 

So, I got one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018BZJN...x_ya_os_product

Channel Master outdoor unidirectional antenna.

I hooked it up and did a channel scan, and got a lot of channels, but I was disappointed that some of them weren't coming in so good... so I looked up where the stations were that I was getting a poor signal on to see if I needed to re-aim. They were Colorado Springs stations... 80 miles away! Uhhh... wow. I guess I don't need them, but I can almost get them.

 

So anyway, I recommend the second one strongly. It's unidirectional, and I'm pointing it at the major network towers on the mountains for 100% signal strength, and I still get some Longmont stations which are in the opposite direction 20 miles away. Also, I was able to mount it right onto the pole that the DirecTV dish was on with no issues and use it's cable to run down to the house.

 

And I'm really impressed by the stations I get. Most networks don't just broadcast the main signal, but several sub-signals as well, so like... the NBC broadcast out here is 3 stations: NBC, NBC Local Weather, and NBC Universal Sports. The PBS is 3 channels too, plus we get some ION station that shows good movies all the time... Create Network which is all DIY shows co-produced by HGTV... I'm really surprised by all the programming we get.

 

Also, if you're a spoiled TV nerd like me, you'll want to hook it up to a DVR. I hate to say it, but Windows Media Center works really really well with a cheap tuner card and a low-powered PC.

[Egret]

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