HD Using Indoor Antenna

theodore_miller

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Jan 15, 2006
20
0
Sorry to be a pain but I am new to the HD technology. I cannot upgrade now to HDTV using Dish according to them I have already done a trade up. I was wondering if I bought an inside HD antenna to get locals, how do I hook that to my new tv? Do I still use the Dish receiver? Also will I get the sound still thru my receiver for the surroung on local channels using that anrenna? I will be setting up a Surround system to my TV.

Thanks so much.
 
Hi Theodore and welcome to SatGuys. I take it from you other post that you do not have an HD receiver. Therfore you can use an indoor antenna provided that you have a built in ATSC tuner.

You can run audio out from your TV into the receiver for your surround sound.

Scott

Good luck. The 622 comes out in February or March. Try again in the beginning of February.
 
Does your HDTV have a OTA receiver for digital channels? Does your TV have digital audio out?

What Dish receiver do you have?
 
Indoor HD antenna

Hopefully you are HD savvy and your questions have been answered by the above post. You can Goolge search the make and model number of your television to find out if your television has an internal HD turner. If your television is "HD-ready", it means: ready to add a tuner. If your television is intergrated, you have a built-in tuner.
As far as an indoor HD antenna, it would depend on how far you live from the broadcast tower(s). If you live in an urban setting, chances are you will receive your HD locals via an indoor antenna. If you are like me and you live a significant distance from the transmitting towers, you will need a mount an antenna in your attic or outside of your home. The safe bet is to install outdoor antenna.
Too bad your saleman didn't explain what it would take to get you up and running.
Another option is to call your local cable operator and inquire about local HD content or D*.
 
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Do you have a model number? Some of the older models (HLM......, HLN....) do not have built in tuners, but the recent ones (HLR......) do.
 
Most of the TV's only have an analog tuner, not digital, so NO HD. If that is the case, I would suggest looking for a Samsung SIR-T151 off ebay, about $100 if you watch close. They are nice stable tuners. The SIR-T451 is the later model, but the T151, older model has a better tuner in it. The only problem, it is component only, so make sure your TV has an open component hookup. I had to by the T451 because it had a DTV hookup and I am out of component slots on my receiver.

You also might find a used 811 for just a little more, it would have OTA and with just adding the HD pack and adding the receiver to your account you would have more HD programming available.
 
theodore_miller said:

That model does have a built-in ATSC tuner. You should be good to go with an antenna. Now will an indoor one be good enough? Hard to say - you will have to test one and find out.
 
Get a small indoor antenna from a consumer electronics store which will allow returns and try it. If it doesn't give you good results, return it and try a different antenna.

Check out antennaweb.org for antenna selection and pointing guidance.
 
theodore_miller said:
I was wondering if I bought an inside HD antenna to get locals, how do I hook that to my new tv?

Is there a reason that you are limiting yourself to an indoor antenna? You've got a first class display, don't limit your choice of antennas to a substandard option before you know the shortcommings.

Indoor antennas may not work at all. When they do, adjustment it for every channel is often needed and dropouts are common when you walk around the room.

An indoor antenna on a HDTV is like a Mercedes with water in the gas tank. It'll run, but not very well.
 
thanks so much man. Now I have to figure out my setup dilemas. I want to use all comonent connections but I have one question if anyone would help. My current receiver does not have comonent hookups. I think I might buy a new surround receiver. I know the TV has them but does my dish PVR unit need them as well. I just looked on the back of my dish receiver and only digial and svideo. What does anyone think?
 
theodore_miller said:
thanks so much man. Now I have to figure out my setup dilemas. I want to use all comonent connections but I have one question if anyone would help. My current receiver does not have comonent hookups. I think I might buy a new surround receiver. I know the TV has them but does my dish PVR unit need them as well. I just looked on the back of my dish receiver and only digial and svideo. What does anyone think?

I might be in a similar situation as you. I have a Toshbia 62HMX94, a Dish 510 PVR, indoor antenna (I get all 6 local digital OTA stations with it) and, of course, a DVD player. I have the antenna plugged into one of the cable inputs on the back of my TV, S-video for the 510, and component video for the DVD player. I use the optical out on my TV to feed the digital audio stream for the OTA hi-def channels to my Pioneer home theater receiver, the optical audio out from 510 to receiver, and digital co-ax audio from DVD player to receiver. Basically, I'm getting the best I can from each source device (DVD player and Dish 510). In theory, you could route all that through a home theater receiver that would covert everything up to component (or even HDMI), then route a single component video to your TV, but it wouldn't improve anything.
For your 508, the digital audio out and S-video is as good as it will get without upgrading your receiver. Upgrading your surround receiver won't help with video quality. As you've probably noticed, SD on a big screen TV ranges from acceptable, to piss-poor. I find that my local networks over Dish are particularly bad. But, for me, not a problem, I only watch network TV in hi-def, thanks to my TV's built in ATSC tuner and my $35 Wal-mart antenna :D
Until you are able to upgrade your Dish network receiver, I'd go that route, too. Get an antenna today, don't delay! Over-the-air hi-def will give you the best possible picture quality, assuming you can receive the signal. As mentioned earlier, www.antennaweb.org will give you the info you need to get started. Next, a trip to Radio Shack or Walmart will get you the antenna.
 
theodore_miller said:
thanks so much man. Now I have to figure out my setup dilemas. I want to use all comonent connections but I have one question if anyone would help. My current receiver does not have comonent hookups. I think I might buy a new surround receiver. I know the TV has them but does my dish PVR unit need them as well. I just looked on the back of my dish receiver and only digial and svideo. What does anyone think?


If you have an integrated tuner which you do, you don't need any hookups for video. It's built in and hard wired so therefore no hookups. For sound though what you want to look for on the back of your tv is either digital coax or toslink, those are your dolby digital surround outputs, that would go to your A/V receiver not your sat receiver. You don't need to hook up to your sat receiver, actually you won't be able to with the integrated receiver. To be able to record your HD to the E* PVR you would need to upgrade to an HDDVR.

Hope that made sense.
 
theodore_miller said:
I have a Samsung 50 HDTV DLP. I have a Dish 508



DIsh 508 should have digital optical output. 508 doesn't have HD so you can't get that through your receiver so you should connect the indoor antenna directly to the ATSC tuner input on your tv and if your tv has digital optical output then you should connect that out to your receiver and set the audio settings on your tv to "external speakers" for the antenna programming for DTS and DD 5.1. Do the same with your 508 optical ouput (or coaxial output, not real familar with DISH 508) to another optical input on your surround sound receiver. Definitely make sure that if you haven't already gotten your SS receiver that you get one with more than one optical or coaxial input. Make sure you match all the outputs on your components with the inputs on the receiver. If you are going to use your TV's optical, the reciever's and the one on your dvd player get a SS receiver with matching audio inputs. If your dvd player only has coaxial then I recommend that Yamaha 5830 5.1 receiver or the 5860 which is a 6.1 XM Satellite compatible receiver. That'll give you future upgrade capacity for adding more speakers or XM. As far as Component cabling, your 508 doesn't have component outputs so that's not even an issue there. Upgrade to an HDDVR if you want that and I suggest that if your tv as HDMI, wait and get the new receivers with HDMI outs and then you'll only need to get an HDMI cable for both audio and video. For the surround sound receiver, I highly suggest getting a yamaha THX certified HDMI receiver. IT has three inputs and one HDMI output so you can use only whatever HDMI cables you need for your components into the receiver and then one from the receiver to the tv, no other cables are needed for the highest quality HD/digital video and digital audio. Pretty sure your DLP will have the HDMI input so that's what I suggest. You won't regret it if that's what you go with.

Hope that wasn't overkill.

P.S. Just checked the 508 specs and it has optical out so go to best buy or somewhere and get optical for your tv and your receiver. Make sure your dvd player has optical before you get a third one for that. If it only has digital coaxial (orange output) then make sure you get a coaxial cable too, otherwise get that third optical and make sure your ss receiver has three optical inputs. Hope this helps. Later.
 
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