DishHD and OTA setup help needed

[willherring]

I am also an OTA newb and I need a little help with my setup.

I live in an area where cable is not offered (it's actually about 400 yards down the road but they will not extend it) and Dish will not let me get local channels because the so called "local" stations think they will lose add revenue if they let me. I have lived without local channels for 4 years now because of this and I’m tired of it. So if I want local channels I have to get them OTA.

I live about 20 miles from most of the towers and cannot get any reception with a store bought indoor antenna. I considered buying a big OTA Antenna a couple years ago but the cost of the Antenna and mast and extra cable was going to cost me $200+. So to try and reduce the cost I made a DIY HD antenna that looks basically like 1/2 of a DB8 (4 bowties with cooling racks as reflectors and 2X4 for the spine). It's currently sitting on the floor behind the TV in my great room and when I perform a scan I can see 13 HD OTA channels. Only about 4 are watchable no signal drop (70+ signal strength) at any one time depending on where I face the antenna.

I have 2 Dish receivers that are used to connect 4 rooms; 1 VIP622 and 1 322G. Each is configured to run 2 rooms. I would like to get OTA in all 4 rooms using the existing Dish coax runs but I have read that diplexing HD with OTA doesn't work too well. If I have to run new cable for OTA I will, but if I don't have to I'd rather not. I think I will have to run a signal switch to at least the 2 rooms that don't have a physical receiver to switch between OTA and SAT.

Here are the specifics:

Zip
31808

Dish Network Hardware
Receivers: VIP622, 322G
Dish: Dish 1000.x (I'm not sure what the x is) mounted on 6 foot pole/mast in ground in back yard.

TV’s
All TV’s have built-in tuners.

House
Siding: Brick
Roof: 3 tab shingle, sloped on all sides.
1 Chimney: left side of house, vinyl siding

Current Dish Setup (Cable locations, connections, etc.)
Dish: 3LNB dish mounted on 6 foot pole/mast in ground in back yard toward the right side.
Cabling: 2 cables run from dish in back yard to 2 diplexers on right side of house about 40ft away. The diplexers split the 2 cables from the dish in to the 4 cables that go to each room.

I have a privacy fence around my back yard and I was thinking about installing a mast on one of the posts but now I think the chimney may be the best place for it. The only problem is the chimney is on the opposite side of the house from where the cable runs are. My house is approximately 60' long.

A relative gave me one of those rotators you can hook up that lets you rotate your antenna from inside your house. I’m not sure if I need it but I do have it.

Here are my questions:
1. Am I wasting my time with a DIY antenna?
2. Where is the best palce to mount my Antenna, whether it be store bought or DIY?
3. Can DishHD be diplexed with OTA (use the same cables)
4. If I can get OTA across the Dish cables what hardware will I need (diplexer, preamp, multiswitch, etc.)?
5. If I need to run new cables for OTA what hardware will I need (diplexer, preamp, multiswitch, etc.)?
6. A Dish installer stated that best OTA reception could be had by pointing an Antenna at an Interstate HWY that is about 4 miles away instead of toward the station towers. He claimed OTA signals bounce off the interstate and I could get better reception. It sounded bogus to me at the time but I figured I would ask the people who knew.
Any input/advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CowboyDren]

1. No, but for $36 you can get a factory-built one that'll work better. Antennacraft U4000. Are you currently getting WTVM (ABC)? It's the only reason to get an antenna with VHF.

2. Outside, on the side of your house facing the transmit towers, usually as high as you can get. Looks like Columbus is at about 145-degrees from your house. A roof-edge or gable or chimney mount would do in your situation nicely.

3. Theoretically, yes, but some people have trouble with it.

4. One diplexer per "terminal;" one for each LNB output at the dish, one near each receiver. Should be 4 diplexers for you, and a fist full of terminated 3' RG6 cables. At "only" 20 miles, you shouldn't need a preamp, and with only two receivers (3 sat tuners?) no multiswitch.

5. Same answer, except no diplexers, and a lot more RG6 cable. Buying an RG6 stripper and compression fitting tool at Lowe's is highly recommended.

6. Possible, but not likely. This is where the exact science of radio turns into a black art, and it's all trial-and-error once the wiring is in place.

 

[boba]

You have one major problem. From the equipment you have listed only the 622 Tuner 1 has an OTA tuner. The 322 does not have an OTA tuner and seeing you are using SD feeds from Tuner 2 on the 622 and the 322 is SD only you other 3 TVs probably don't have OTA DIGITAL tuners built in. If you don't have ATSC DIGITAL tuners in the TV diplexing isn't going to do anything.

 

[CowboyDren]

He said "All TVs have built-in tuners," so I'd guess that he still needs four diplexers.

 

[CowboyDren]

I made a 3D rendering of what the back side of your 622 should look like; you already have the red and purple cable, so you need to buy everything that's blue, green, or yellow. Wiring the 322 and diplexing the antenna into the LNB feeds is trivial.

HOWTO: Diplexers and Backfeeding in 3D

I just read about the chimney question...if you have 60' between the chimney and the dish, then a good preamp from Channel Master or Winegard may be necessary. It may be easier for you to forgo the diplexing altogether and just run new wires.

 

[rcbridge]

Are you in a valley or on a hill?
If you can do the outdoor antenna that will be the better solution.

The indoor antenna that you tried was it a powered one, I live about 20 miles from my towers (as the crow flies) and have no major obstructions inbetween me and the towers, I use an indoor antenna with an amp Silver sensor and Motorola signal booster and I receive all of the stations OTA.

 

[Jim5506]

A TVFool report of your EXACT location would be helpful, zipcode info is generally useless due to high variability within the zip code.

Go to www.TVFoolcom and select the "START MAPS" area in the right column. Fill in your EXACT home address and click "map this". In the upper right area of the map click on satellite. Find your house on the aerial photo and move the place marker to the location of the antenna on your house (you can't get much more precise than that). I can even see my antenna in the aerial photo.

Here you can play with various antenna heights and get a computer modeled estimate of what you reception MIGHT be. You can also use the maps view to move the antnena around and see how that changes signal strength.

You can post the results here.

 

[willherring]

Thanks for the responses.

WTVM comes in strong on my DIY antenna just sitting on the floor behind my TV so I think I'm good there.

Based on the analysis at TVFool.com, I think my minimum height would need to be around 15'. I was going to post the results but I need at least 3 posts before it will let me.

I'm going to try to mount my DIY antenna on the side of the house where the cable runs go into the house. If I mount a 4'-5' J mount near the top of the outside wall along with the height of the antenna itself, I should be close to 15'. I will just need to find somewhere to ground it. This will also eliminate the extra 60' feet of cable I would need if I mounted it on my chimney. Maybe that will eliminate the need for a preamp.

While on the subjects of preamps, how does a preamp get power from it's power supply? Does it run thru the coax cable?

I think all I need now is the J mount and the 4 diplexers and 3' RG6 cables Cowboy mentioned. Any ideas on the best place to order these from?

It will probably be this weekend before I can install it. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

Thanks for your help!

 

[boba]

He said "All TVs have built-in tuners," so I'd guess that he still needs four diplexers.

All TVs had NTSC tuners built in and the SD output of the DISH receivers used the NTSC tuners. He hasn't confirmed or posted that his TV sets have ATSC TUNERS. Most people used older TVs without the ATSC TUNERS connected to DISH SD receivers.

 

[willherring]

All my TV's have ATSC tuners.

Just out of curiousity, if they did not have ATSC tuners, what else would I need? I assume just an external tuner box? I ask because I already have a relative wanting to know if my setup works and I know they have some TV's that do not have built in tuners.

 

[CowboyDren]

The preamp is more to push the signal down the wire than to boost the incoming signal. So if you can keep your longest run under 75', you shouldn't need it. Yes, antenna preamps use the coax wire for carrying it's supply voltage, a lot like the satellite wiring does.

Radio Shack has everything that you need, but at obscene markups. Lowe's doesn't have everything, but they do have diplexers, splitters, and the tools you'd need for terminating your own cables (get the compression type, not crimp-on type).

I use Summitsource.com for a lot of my gear. A word of warning about the U4000 antenna; if you decide to go with it, you'll have to design your own clamps if you use an antenna mast that's more than 1-1/2" in diameter. I do strongly recommend a factory-built antenna, they're typically much more durable than something you can assemble in the garage.

 

[boba]

Yes your relatives can add a digital converter box to the non digital TVs. You can pick them up for less than $40 ea.

 

[JB Antennaman]

Here is my advice.

You are wasting your time with a homemade antenna and anything inside of the house.

Because your body is made up mostly of water, whenever you roam around the room in your house where the antenna is located, you will loose your television signal to multipath issues.

What you need to do, and again, like others has told you - a generic report - with nothing more than a Zip code does nothing to help your situation.

To properly receive UHF signals, your antenna needs to be 10 feet above the main roof and pointed in the proper direction.

The difference in gain between 24 and 34 feet is approximately 5 db.

3 db is a factor which doubles or reduces your signal by 50%, so that is a significant amount of power to loose.

In 100' of good RG 6 wire, you can expect to loose almost 6 db at 700 Mhz - channel 51

That means that if you had a station transmitting on VHF channel 2 and another on channel 51, the signal from the channel 2 would be twice as strong after it came though the wire to the televison then the station that transmitted on channel 51 - even though they both had the same amount of receive power at the antenna.

The purpose of a pre amplifier is to compensate for line loss for the upper frequency's and not to compensate for a crappy antenna or a crappy signal.

If you butt a crappy signal in one end of the wire and amplify it, all that will come out of the other end of the wire will be a stronger crappy signal.

What you want to do is have a good signal and try to keep as much of the signal as possible to deliver to the television tuner.

Since VHF signals are more susceptable to noise - from electrical appliances and storms, you will have more problems now with VHF then what you will with any UHF signal.

 

[JB Antennaman]

Most 2 way splitters has about 3.7 or more db of loss.

A 4 way splitter or larger will have about 7 db or more per a port of loss.

That is because a 3 way or larger splitter is not unilateral. What that means is that you can have one port that might have 3.7 db of loss and the other two would probably have 7 db or more loss.

One television might have a good signal, while all the other televisions in the house would have a crappy signal, and it doesn't matter if the other televisions are connected or not or if the other televisions are turned on or not.

So if you wished to split your signal more then 2 times, you would need to buy 3 - two way splitters and connect them together so that all the signals would have the same amount of loss.

 

[Bouncy64]

Also Don't forget about some "other" resources when looking for antenna supplies, in many instances taking a look around the neighbourhood, and looking for antenna's that might look a bit in disrepair. ALOT of people get a dish, or even cable, and just abandon their antenna and towers, these in most instances can be gotten for the effort of taking them down, as people just don't want to bother with them. in most cases they are in really great shape, with only a coat of paint for the tower, or some new coax needed.
Most of the "combo" heads, or as I refer to them" flying arrows", work simply awesome for digital reception. Also in most cases they come with the rotor/control, even a good amplifier (usually a channelmaster). With a little good old fasion elbow grease, and politly asking the owner, "if they still use it" you can have a premium antenna and everything to go with it, at the most needing a new outdoor 300 ohm to 75 ohm transformer(5 bucks) , and new coax to get it up and running,.
Even the local news paper, or community internet boards are good sources too. And by "recycling" it saves you some serious bucks and also saves the landfill at the same time.

 

[willherring]

Here is my TVFool report for those of you that were interested. Any input based on this report is also appreciated.
TV Fool

Bouncy64 i read your post and it made me realize I may have the antenna I need already.
Why haven't i thought of this before????

My mother recently purchased a brand new Antenna that pretty much looks like her old one. She bought it when the HD TV conversion happened. She thought her old one was old and not HD compatible. (she's the one that gave me the antenna rotator)

Going by what I remember about it, the only real difference was the new one came with coax connectors and the old one only had screws that you connected the old "flat" antenna wire to. Going by memory and after looking at some pictures, her old antenna looks a lot like the Channel Master cm3016. I know it can't be that actual antenna because it has to be at leat 15-20 years old. How much difference can there be in the old ones and the new ones? Anyway I just called her and she said it's been sitting on her back porch since she had it changed out. She said there is nothing wrong with it other than a little rust and I can get it whenever i want it.

Am I right in thinking all I need to do is attach a balun transformer to it and it should work?

JB Antennaman - funny you should mention that about the body being made up of water and interfering with the antenna in the house. My wife and I were laughing about that last night. Every time she walked by the tv in a certain spot, the channel would cut out.

You guys have convinced me. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. If the old antenna my mom has works thats great. I put up a wanted add at work for old antennas and towers. I'll see what responses I get. If I don't hear anything in a week or so, I'll go ahead and buy what I need. Can't blame me for trying to save a few bucks especially now. Maybe after I'm done I can convince the wife we don't need our Dish subscription anymore.

Thanks again for all the responses. You guys are great.

 

[willherring]

Here is the "old" antenna she had. It has no markings but it looks like a Channel Master cm3018. Anyone had any experience with these?

 

[digiblur]

There's also another solution... "move" your service address to Atlanta and call it done. 5 minutes on the online chat is all it takes.

 

[CowboyDren]

That antenna looks a little beaten-up. The UHF section is 90deg off-axis, and it looks like some of the VHF elements are broken, too. If you can fix the UHF section, that antenna should be useful.

 

[boba]

You may be right if the front(UHF) section is separate from back somebody may have inserted it into the square tubing incorrectly. Usually the bolt through holes and crossover network would prevent that. Of course it could just be a bad photo that makes it look that way.