I purchased a Omni-Directional Flat Digital Antenna from Best Buy. The digital antenna is a FDTV2 made by Trek. I only just purchased the antenna yesterday so I can't speak to how low it will last, but it comes with a one year warranty.
The antenna was about $55 and was in around the mid price range. There may have been a few both above and below this cost, but never having purchased a DTV antenna I just went with something in the middle price range. No I didn't read any product reviews, it's an antenna, but it is an active antenna. So I take it the only thing that can go wrong would be the internal amplifier, or maybe the attached cable. Anyway I would recommend this antenna because it seems to pick all the stations its supposed to; however I have not tried any other digital antenna.
I was wondering how long the cable from the antenna to the TV could be, but the attached 5 foot coaxial cable answered that question for me [standard BNC connector]. The antenna cable is permanently affixed to the antenna. Although a BNC Barrel [Female-Female] connector could be added to extend the maximum cable length, I wouldn't recommend doing it with out testing first. The antenna itself may be wall mounted, table mounted [comes with a base], or mounted flat on any surface
The attached map is the relative location of the DTV transmitters and the DTV receiver. Although only three antennas are shown to the north many of the antennas are over lapped, with only one antenna being located south of the receiver.
Click either picture to see a larger view.
Related blog postings; HDTV Spectrum,
The TV used with the antenna is a Westinghouse TX-47F430S, 1080p HDTV [with internal digital converter].
4 comments:
5/21/10 What I have noticed is that I do not receive the NBC station WESH on channel 2-1. Virtual channel 2-1 is also the only VHF [Hi-V] frequency band used. When I check the web it seems that it's common to have issues with DTV VHF channel reception.
So I guess the only thing I can do is move the location of the antenna and re-scan for channels, and repeat that several times to see if it helps. But I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.
Maybe I'll try an antenna move once a day or something.
It looks like the antenna should work. The station should be transmitting on channel 11 [198-204MHz] but should show up as virtual channel 2.1. The antenna indicates a VHF frequency range of 174-216MHz.
5/23/10 Seems I don't really have that many options on antenna placement. The 47 inch flat screen TV is sitting on a 4 foot high entertainment center, which only has a 2 foot square top. The main body of the tower holds all my gear and it has a side portion to hold CDs and DVDs. Anyway the TV takes up the entire top of the unit leaving no place to put the antenna. So I can either run the antenna over to my desk [this is my office], or place it on the wall. If I take it over to my desk I end up with the coax cable just hanging out across the wall. Of course the TV screen is to thin to have the antenna sit on top of the flat screen.
Maybe I will extend that coax cable run......
I still can't receive that VHF channel, and the antenna does not seem to mind being above my computer or being next to my cable modem ~ that I can tell.
8/2/10 I was setting up a CRT type TV in my back living room yesterday. Just as a test I plug in some Rabbit Ears and ask the TV to check for channels. Well it didn't find any and it took me twenty minutes to figure out we went digital and my old analog TV was never going to find any channels. It's just strange how I can blog about a topic more than once but completely forget about it when the info is really needed.
So I never purchased any HD tuners because I had (had) cable, and HDTV was a pipe dream when I purchased that 33" TV. I don't have a point other than it's a bit hard to replace these old sets if they never go bad. Now don't get me wrong, old TVs do get pitched but they have to cycle through all the rooms with a TV first. Office gets the best one, living room, back room and so on. The only set that has gone bad was the flat screen in the office which I already replaced. The only other TV that went bad in the last ten years was replaced by a 47", a large floor standing model (I assume with a CRT) in the living room ~ But that was back when flat screens were still like $10,000.
Oh; picture quality is great over the air waves, just like a BluRay, but my channel options are limited. However; some channels are hard to pick up depending on the time of day.
8/6/10 I added a graphic showing a Blade Antenna to the web site.
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