Reception in a college dorm

I'm new here, so if I break any rules or ask a dumb question I'd majorly appreciate it if you just punch me in the face.

I'm trying to be able to pick up television on my computer and just got in my adapter today. I didn't expect it to work well out of the box with the crappy antenna the include but I'm seeing no signal at all in my dorm. When I walk outside and try it with my laptop, though, I'm actually able to receive a fair amount of channels quite well and this was with me sitting in the middle of a bunch of buildings that would block the signal. This has me a little concerned that a better antennae won't be able to compensate (I go from receiving 0 channels to receiving 10 or so and it looked like they were all between 40-80% strength and playing fairly well from what I could tell (the whole looking at a laptop screen in the sun thing).

When it comes to antennae placement, I'm pretty damn limited. The building is pretty much brick and cinder block, I'm on the first first floor and I have about all off 20 square feet to myself There is a window (I'm not sure which direction it faces off hand) but it's covered with a wire screen I would get in a boatload of trouble from my RAs for removing. Would getting an antennae like the Turk HDTVa actually change me from being able to get nothing to pick up a few channels (I'm mainly concerned about Fox) inside? It won't exactly be majorly convenient to have to go sit outside on my laptop everytime House comes on. I'm also on a pretty limited budget, which doesn't help.

Our college does mail a bit oddly (it has its own zipcode and such) but here is an address for a business that is just a little bit down the street:
105 N. Emmet St
Charlottesville, VA 22903

The zip code the college uses is 22904 but that's spread over a fairly large mish-mash of an area.

Thanks!

Welcome to the forum!

Here is a tvfool report for your location, using the address provided; http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dbefbfff8cabc55 There is a FAQ on tvfool that discusses how to interpret the report.

Briefly, all the major network towers are 4 miles away to the south/southeast and are located on Carters Mountain. Your signal strengths are quite high in the area, even at 5 ft above ground level. All the majors are using UHF signals so you can use a UHF only antenna.

Which side of the building are you on? It would help alot if you are on the south or east side of the building. The mesh (over the window) is likely blocking tv signal from entering your room through the window.

The Terk HDTVa is good directional, amplified antenna and may work well in your situation. I've also read good things about Silver Sensor antenna. Before purchasing, make sure you can return the antenna if it does not perform for you. You'll need to do lots of trial placements to find the hotspot(s) in your room.

HTH,

Rick

To theclone,

To start out, you are breaking no rules here, everyone on this forum wants to help you, and if anything punches you in the face, its going to be the reality of your dorm room location.

But to dispel some ignorance and to get everyone of the same page, I post your TVfool report based on the N. Emmitt St address.

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dbefbe05d693da8

So its time for you to do your homework, which way your dorm room window faces will be critical, television signals simply will not go through the brick and concrete your dorm building is made of.

The metal mesh screen will also be a deal killer but there are varieties of flat coax the might allow to get an antenna outside and still close the window. But you can also simply test reality, take your laptop and existing antenna, maybe borrow a short step ladder, and stand outside your dorm room window and see
if you can pick up any channels.

Just my initial take, lets us see what others say.

Hello clone!

Considering the difference in the two TVFool reports Rick & NMT posted might I suggest you go to tvfool and use the TV Maps feature to pin point your exact location. (Are those tennis courts right nearby the dorm?)

Wateva, move the curser to precisely where your room is, run tvfool with that lon & lat, and post the link. Copy & past leaving out the www.tvfool.com part, we'll get to it...

Those tennis courts aren't too far away. This one should be almost exactly at my location. ?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dbefbd0fdd5f4f1

From what I can tell, my window faces northwest. I'm not really a pro at reading these tvfool graphs but it looks like that they're all coming from the south east, which is bad, yes?

But on the other hand, I've done some more experimenting and I've noticed I can actually get some signal in my room with my room which is making me feel a lot better about this. It'd be possible for me to place an antenna outside at pretty much ground level but I'm not sure how that'd fare with the groundskeepers, I don't really have any way that I could get away with affixing something to the side of the building.

One thing I am noticing is that what I can get is pretty jumpy with lots of artifacts, if you guys had to guess, would that just be a product of low signal?

Hey Hooper!

I ran tvfool a second time and received identical results to my first run. I used street address plus zipcode. NMT only used zip code which explains the disparity between reports.

Gotchya Rick,

OK, here's the real deal:
http://tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3dbefbd0fdd5f4f1

Like he said... "is bad, yes?"

Hey Hooper!

I ran tvfool a second time and received identical results to my first run. I used street address plus zipcode. NMT only used zip code which explains the disparity between reports.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, I used zip code plus exact address, maybe I misspelled something, but those are the results I got.

I see it now, I used Emmitt ST.

Yep, theclone, is bad... The breakups that you are experiencing is most likely due to multipath (signal arrives at your antenna from several directions). Solving multipath issues are difficult. Moving to the southeast side of the building and up to say the 4th floor would help tremendously but probably not do-able. Tv-tuners vary in their ability to handle multipath. The zenith dtt901 converter box does a great job at handling multipath but it is only SD rather than HD. The Apex 502 box does a good job with multipath and has s-video output which many computer tuner cards accept. What type of inputs do you have for computer tv tuner card? Find the sweet spot in your room. Multipath is less of issue in some locations than others.... Test, test again till you can find a potential program free area. Directional antennas also help with multipath. The terk hdtva is a good choice in directional indoor antennas.

HTH (a little anyways...)

Rick