OTA Antenna

phillycreamboy

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Apr 9, 2006
40
0
I just tried calling all the local retailers and Dish network. All the local retailers told me that they do not install antennas and Dish told me to buy rabbit ears at Radio Shack.
What supplies will I need if I want to do it myself and also how difficult is it to do? BTW I live in the SF Bay area.
 
The rabbit ear antenna should be sufficient for a large metro area such as SF. You simply set the antenna somewhere near the receiver that is convenient and plug the end into the Dish receivers external antenna jack (Not the UHF remote antenna jack). You need a Type F connector (standard cable connector) at the end of the rabbit ear antenna. If it does not come with one, you can get an adapter.

You can try this also. Simply get a piece of wire about 1 to 5 ft long, strip off about one half inch of insulation and insert it (center pin) into the Dish receiver and then do the digital TV scan from the menu. You will get a general idea of what kind of reception you will get.
 
I thought of a few other suggestions. If you insert a pin into the center hole of the antenna jack, you can simply clip an alligator type clip jump wire if you do not have any wire hanging around. You can get these at RS for less than $5

Because of the terraine in SF, your signal strength might be OK or not. If you find you need an external antenna, you can get one of the clip on antennas that mount around the dish antenna. You will need two diplexors and RS should sell all of this stuff for under $50. Don't know how easy/hard it is to get to your dish.
 
If you look at my "avitar" you will see my OTA antenna. I live east pf philly about 20 miles from the Roxborough transmitter site. I read at 1 time for the best performance for OTA HD and Digital use a UHF only antenna (if your OTA stations are UHF). Due to the fact that I have a 4 story hospital 5 blocks from my house in direct line to the transmitter site I went with the largest UHF antenna Wingard makes, HD9095A. I bought from this site, https://www.solidsignal.tv/. I'm sure you can find Winegard antennas from any online source. Here is the Winegard site for more info on their OTA antennas, http://www.winegard.com/offair/offairmain.htm.


Go to this next site and pick "Choose an Antenna" to help you choose,
http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx.

I originally had a combination VHF/UHF/FM antenna up that was excellant for non-HD UHF transmissions. I could pick up 3, 6, 12, 17 and 29 but I couldn't pickup channel 10 at the time. Again I did some research on the WEB and came across an article staing for the best HD perfomance use an UHF only antenna. And that was all I needed. Good Luck

Rich Dunklee
NR2D
 
I went to antennaweb.org and it says that I need a yellow antenna (18.1 miles) for the digital channels. The same station is then listed below that also (18.1 miles) and shows a green antenna. Are non-digital harder to receive?
 
Spend a few days hanging-out in the HD Over The Air forum for the latest chat on this topic. You'll read a lot about the trials and tribulations of others and you could save some time and money learning from that information.

Good luck, and whatever you do, report back on what worked and what didn't...!
 
phillycreamboy said:
I went to antennaweb.org and it says that I need a yellow antenna (18.1 miles) for the digital channels. The same station is then listed below that also (18.1 miles) and shows a green antenna. Are non-digital harder to receive?
Just saw your latest post. Analog (NTSC) channels are perhaps easier to "receive", particularly the VHF channels, but you might see the reception quality varying quite a bit from excellent to "ghosty" (multiple images) to "snowy", to "lots of interferrence" to non-existent. With digital (ATSC) it's essentially all or nothing. If you have a strong enough signal then the digital tuner can lock on it and you'll receive the best possible picture. When the signal is too weak your receiver won't lock and the picture/audio will not exist. There are some instances when a strong digital signal drops-out or the multipath causes problems in which case you'll see some intermittent "pixelation". Most digital signals are on UHF and since that's in general a little more difficult to receive reliably there can be some more difficulty with digital reception. But as I mentioned in my previous post, many folks have found the solutions for their particular situations. From your antennaweb search it sounds like you shouldn't have much trouble. As others have said, post your actual report from antennaweb and we can give you some more specific suggestions...
 
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