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Over the air HDTV . . .

XMan

XMan

Lifer
I'm putting together an HTPC and I'm thinking of adding an HD card. I live about 30-40 miles away from the antenna farms for the networks and have a pretty much unobstructed line of sight - Indiana is FLAT.

Will I get good results from an indoor antenna or should I look into an outdoor aerial?
 
I get good results from a 50 dollar indoor antenna I bought from Radio Shack, and I believe the transmitters are around 40-50 miles away from my residence. The only issue I have is when vehicles drive by since my apartment is right next to a major street in a small town. It always breaks up my signal. But you probably wouldn't have that issue.

The antenna I bought.
 
40 miles is close to the limits of most of the best indoor antennas. That doesn't mean it won't work, but it's getting close.

I'd say this is probably your best bet:

Antennas Direct DB2

If that doesn't work, you can add a good preamp, like a ChannelMaster Titan.

http://www.channelmaster.com/Pages/TVS/TitanAmp.htm

Another good choice is the Winegard SquareShooter SS-2000, which comes amplified (with a quality low noise amplifier):

http://www.winegard.com/offair/squareshooter.htm

Both choices are on the larger side for indoor use, however are still reasonable.

You can always try with a really small indoor one, and go bigger if that doesn't work, but you may be wasting time and money. There's really no hard and fast rule on what will work, just general principles. What may work at one location with one set of receivers may not work with another. You just want to maximize your chances given your equipment, time, and price targets.
 
I have the Zenith Silver Sensor and it is excellent! Highly reccomended, best antenna under 40 bucks!
 
I bought the "Silver Sensor" from Amazon, but I still can't get HD channels. The weird thing is I am 2 miles away from the major broadcast tower in San Francisco, but I do not have a direct line of site of it. I can pick up another tower, but it only has NBC, which is lame as I am missing Lost. You can go to http://www.antennaweb.org and find out where to put your Antenna at.
 
Originally posted by: timswim78
Originally posted by: sleepmachine
i have the Terk one that people don't like on avsforum but i get excellent reception
Click to expand...

Really? Do you remember the model off-hand?
Click to expand...
Terk Indoor HDTVi. though i do live in the suburbs, no big buildings or hills, 14 miles from the broadcasting towers, so a coathanger should be good enough for me 🙂
 
I live around ~25 miles from the majority of towers and have decent LOS. However, indoor antennas didn't work at all for me. I ended up with a Channel Master 4221 mounted to my chimney.
 
Originally posted by: sleepmachine
Originally posted by: timswim78
Originally posted by: sleepmachine
i have the Terk one that people don't like on avsforum but i get excellent reception
Click to expand...

Really? Do you remember the model off-hand?
Click to expand...
Terk Indoor HDTVi. though i do live in the suburbs, no big buildings or hills, 14 miles from the broadcasting towers, so a coathanger should be good enough for me 🙂
Click to expand...


Cool, thanks. Looks just like the Silver Sensor, to me.
 
Originally posted by: sleepmachine
Originally posted by: timswim78
Originally posted by: sleepmachine
i have the Terk one that people don't like on avsforum but i get excellent reception
Click to expand...

Really? Do you remember the model off-hand?
Click to expand...
Terk Indoor HDTVi. though i do live in the suburbs, no big buildings or hills, 14 miles from the broadcasting towers, so a coathanger should be good enough for me 🙂
Click to expand...

Ahh.. memories.
 
Hmm, most all of the channels in my area are purple UHF stations according to antennaweb. Does that mean my best bet would be an outdoor setup?
 
Originally posted by: codeyf
I live around ~25 miles from the majority of towers and have decent LOS. However, indoor antennas didn't work at all for me. I ended up with a Channel Master 4221 mounted to my chimney.
Click to expand...

Did you have to be pretty precise in aiming that? ~50 bucks seems pretty reasonable for one of those . . .
 
I have hundreds of feet of 12 gauge wire I got from the Boeing surplus store. I wonder if I could make some super antenna out of it. 😉

Mark
 
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