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Old 12-15-2008, 11:05 PM   #1
ddeerrff
How can anyone watch standard def?
 

Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 23
Default Multipath and Smart antennas

I live in a fairly high signal area (TVFool shows all stations as green) and they are all located within about a +/- 5 degree spread.

I get a few too many annoying drops outs, particularly when the weather is bad.

An outside antenna is not practical, so I tried a non-amplified 'silver sensor' type antenna. It does not work any better than rabbit ears or even a random length of wire. To confirm sufficient signal strength, I added an inline 20 dB attenuator, and performance was roughly the same. It took 26 dB of attenuation before I noticed any degradation (a couple stations dropped out). I had very similar results with both an Insignia NS-DXA1 and an RCA DTA-800B1.

I assume then that the annoying drop outs must be the result of multipath. (Are there any other issues that can cause this problem?)

Does anyone have any experience using a 'Smart Antenna' and are they effective in solving multipath problems? Are there any models out there other than the RCA ANT1500?

Derf
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