Newbe - please help with antenna selection

Jimmy S

This is an excellent Forum and I am blown away by the knowledge and expertise of the members.

With the February tv signal conversion rapidly approaching, I would like your help in choosing an exterior antenna. I live in northern Virginia, zip code 20132. I own two Zenith DTT 900 converter boxes. I would like to install an exterior antenna that will work for me after the conversion to avoid having to subscribe to cable. I would like to receive as many over-the-air channels as possible but I am on a limited budget so would need to keep the costs as low as possible. I plan on budgeting around $150 for antenna expenses.

I live in a loosely controlled home owner association neighborhood, so I can't install a huge exterior antenna. I think a smaller unit would be allowed/not noticed. I plan on mounting it on the fascia peak. However, I do get a fair amount of wind in my location since I am located near the mountains (to my west) in an unsheltered farming area.

I have never had cable tv service. I currently receive tv signals from an old antenna stuck in the attic rafters pointed generally towards Washington DC. The attic confinement does not allow for adjustment so I receive limited analog signals from channels 4, 5, 7 and 9. Channels 7 & 9 sometimes are barely visible. This attic antenna runs to a basement HUB and up to the main tv in the living room. My 2nd floor tv receives broadcast reception with rabbit ears and the picture is fairly sharp on all those channels with antenna adjustment. However, the converter boxes work very sporadically when hooked up on each of these tvs. I would like to receive as many channels as possible and am a little confused as to which antenna would work best. Attached is my TVfool report. Should I go with omni-directional...etc?.

My two story home is pre-wired with a Bell Atlantic Ready System - Gateway Hub. This is a located in my basement and gives me the ability to send the antenna tv signal to any room in the house via coax cables and F connectors. The Hub has a 15 volt DC power amplifier with a manual adjustment to control the CATV/ANT signal being received from the amplifier. I am really not sure how this works or if I can use this to amplify the signal to the TVs. Currently, I am not using the HUB because when I hook the feed from the attic antenna through the HUB, my TVs show "no signal." I am bypassing the HUB and hooking directly to the 1st floor TV.

I would like to hook up two TVs and eventually three to the new exterior antenna through the hub. The RG 6 coax run from the antenna to the basement HUB would be approximately just under 50 feet. Then plan to distribute the signal to the TVs on the 1st and 2nd floor.

I hope this info can help you advise me as to which antenna I should purchase. I would also appreciate any all other words of wisdom that would help me survive the new digital transformation! Thank you so much for your help!

Jimmy S

Attached Images

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Don_M

The signal strengths shown in your TVFool report suggest you're in a fringe reception area, so that rules out any kind of small antenna. You're going to need something of decent size, mounted above the roof, if you want reliable reception.

An "omni" antenna would be inadvisable as well. By design and as the name implies, omnis pick up signals from all around. Those mountains you mentioned are directly behind you with respect to the DC stations. They're thus perfectly situated to reflect TV signals back to your location. That's multipath interference, which an omni would send to the tuners along with the direct signals received slightly earlier. Signal reflections frequently "confuse" DTV tuners such that they provide no reception at all. You need a directional antenna pointed right at the DC transmitters to combat this phenomenon.

I wouldn't worry too much about the HOA. As long as you own the structure of your home, including the exterior siding and the roof, it cannot legally prevent you from erecting an antenna "designed for reception of local television broadcast signals" outdoors, which is exactly what we're discussing here. See the FCC Fact Sheet on Placement of Antennas, which describes the Over the Air Reception Devices (OTARD) rule, for additional details. Additionally, your reception report suggests the HOA won't have much power to limit antenna size (bigger size = more gain) without running afoul of the OTARD rule. You're in the fringe, so you need lots of gain.

If the hub is not passing signals now, it's likely to result in headaches with any antenna system you install. Consider bypassing it entirely by getting an antenna-mounted pre-amp, connecting the pre-amp's power inserter directly to a 2:1 or 3:1 splitter near the hub, then connecting the coax cables running to the desired rooms to the splitter's outputs.

Here's what I'd suggest for equipment:

* Antenna: Either Winegard HD-7696 or Channel Master 4228HD ExtremeTenna. The 4228 is a bit less expensive, but the 7696 has better gain on channels 7 and 9, where your ABC and CBS affiliates are headed after the DTV transition (they're actually on DTV channels 34 and 39 right now).

* Pre-amp: Channel Master 7777.

* Mast, mount, RG-6U coax, splitter, grounding equipment.

This will run a bit over stated budget with shipping, but not by too much.