Antenna Installer Falls Church, VA?

[pattom@ix.netcom.com]

I will be installing an HD Tivo unit (Hughes HR10-250) into my son-in-laws existing DirecTV setup. He already has an HD DirecTV dish and I want to set him up to receive local HD broadcast. I have gone to www.antennaweb.org and found that the stations he wants are all within 8-10 miles of his house at a direction between 68 - 75 deg from his house. I want to contact a local antenna installer to setup an appointment to do the antenna install. I live in Tucson and he lives in Falls Church, VA. Does anyone have a recommendation as to who I should use for this antenna install? Also, I need two HD OTA inputs into the receiver. Can a simple splitter be used to provide these signals?

Thanks

Patrick Thomas
Tucson, AZ

 

[DLS]

Pat,

Although I have never used them personally, Fairfax Antenna seems to get high ratings. They are down in the Springfield/Newington area, not too far from Falls Church. They have a web page.

However, two other things you might want to consider. Either could save you an installation bill.

1. At that distance, an indoor antenna might work just fine. I have a 20 year old universal TV antenna just sitting loose on my deck and I get the primary HD OTA stations just fine (15.8 miles/107-110 degrees).

2. The Washington, D.C. metro area is one of the first 12 areas that DirecTV is supposed to be broadcasting HD locals to starting in July (?). You could just wait a few months and not even have to worry about a separate antenna.

Regards, Dan

 

[pattom@ix.netcom.com]

Thanks for the input Dan. I will speak with Fairfax. As a result of your comment about HD being available on DirecTV for the D.C. area I did a little research on the DirecTV web site. I found the following statement for NBC as an example: "1.NBC HDTV programming may be available in select markets to some Directive customers who have HDYDquipment and a TOTAL CHOICE® programming package or the Directive YD Package. The NBC HDTV programming currently available for eligible customers is from either WNBC (New York) or KNBC (Los Angeles), depending upon your geographic location. The select markets where eligible customers may receive the feeds includes Washington D.C. If you cannot see a picture on channel 82 or 83 you may need to obtain a waiver from one or more non-local NBC affiliates. This can take up to 45 days to process."

Do know know if a waiver is required from any affiliate or will the station simply be available once I hook up the YD receiver? I will call DirecTv to ask them but I thought you may have some insight into this?

I may try a indoor antenna just to see how it works. Can I use a normal splitter to get two outputs or do I need something special because the signal I want to split is digital?

Thanks again Dan.

 

[DLS]

Pat,

My comment about HD locals being available was in regards to a planned future upgrade that is generally being reported as being available starting in the July 2005 time frame. I would not expect there to be anything on the DirecTV web page about that at this time.

I believe that if you are a subscriber to the DirecTV local stations and the locals are network owned and operated that there are some provisions so you can get those locals in HD, but I really haven't tracked that too much because I get all of the network HD locals OTA.

Feel free to contact me off the board if you want. I don't necessarily check it every day. d.l.schumacher@worldnet.att.net.

Regards, Dan

 

[WLong]

Dude... I did tech support for MindSpring (who bought NetCom YEEEEEARS ago).

I had no idea that a Netcom Address was still valid!!! Wow!

 

[raymo721]

I know I'm late on getting this thread but the D* HD Tivo unit has a internal splitter so you don't need 2 lines going to it from the OTA antenna. I live in Laurel MD and have a SquareShooter 2 which works great.

 

[Cyclone]

I used Fairfax Antenna and I can recommend them. Good Work.

While DirectTV will eventually offer Local HDTV channels for the DC market. We don't know if they will actually carry all of the available channels, if they will compress them, if they will remove the sub-channels, and finally if they will be MPEG-4 only channels which the Tivo won't decode. Considering that a OTA can take care of all these points, I'd definately go with one.