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Robert Green Robert Green is offline
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Default Old antenna for new tv

"mm" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 20:05:02 -0700 (PDT), Jdog
wrote:

I have an old antenna in the attic. When i moved into my house i
hooked it up to the tv. It works ok. Some channels dont come in
perfect some of the time. I've tried adjusting it w/ no luck. I see
these new style antennas for sale on line.


Are they better then the old style?


We don't know what the old style is that you refer to. You don't
describe it.

Take a look at www.solidsignal.com . They don't sell anything like
the one in your picture.

One thing the one in the ad has is a rotor. I have had one with a
rotor and I found it a pain in the neck. I just picked the best
overall direction and I stayed with that. IF the rotors gave good
feedback, so I could tell which way they were pointed for a station
that gave the best signal, that would be one thing, but they give
estmates at best, afaict. Your ad doesn't go into that so it's no
better than the others, I would think.

They don't call their antenna a digital antenna. I'll give them
credit for that (or they're repeating what is on the box and they got
these antennas out of a warehouse where they have been for 5 or more
years.) There is nothing different about a digital and an analog
antenna. However becuase of the deficiencies of digital, one may
need a better antenna.

Has anyone tried both?


I used to use a 6 foot piece of single strand wire, and I got all the
local digital stations, but I wanted to get the DC station, 40 miles
away, so I bought the biggest 7 to 86 antenna I thought would fit in
my attic.

It's pointed at DC and it too gets Baltimore but with the same
interruptions at times.


stuff snipped

I'm in the same area and in the same boat and live in the shadow of a hill
that obscures the line of sight with the big TV antenna complex near the
Sears near Tenleytown. The problem I had with the rotor is that my DVR has
no way to rotate the aerial to the proper direction for the channel I want
to record. Since I have two DVRs, I ended up putting two antennas in the
attic: one optimized for DC and the other for Baltimore. I segregate my
recording based on that. Stations coming from Baltimore go to DVR one,
stations from Washington, DVR two. Later this year, I am going to mount a
tall mast on the chimney and put up the rotor again, with the largest aerial
I can find to pull in the stations like 22 that broadcast from Annapolis, 90
degrees away from Baltimore or Washington and some other transmitters that
aren't located with the other major towers. )-:

I still get dropouts, though, from overhead planes, rain clouds and elves.
(IOU, I am not sure what causes them, but I do know they proliferate at the
ends of programs where they're saying "Of course, the killer had to be -
silence, splotches, more silence and finally the picture returns). As fuzzy
as analog was, I don't remember losing key parts of the transmission they
way I do with digital. I've also discovered that there's an incredible
variation in tuners. The Polaroid DVR doesn't get half the channels that a
new, no name 7" portable can pull in off the same aerial. Probably a 7 year
difference in date of manufacture, though. I have noticed that even my
friends with FIOS have problems in rainstorms because the weather affects
the satellite transmissions from orbit to the FIOS dishes.

Still, I'm happy with basic cable, OTA HD and Netflix. And having a DVR
with a commercial skip button. I don't think I could watch TV anymore
without one.

--
Bobby G.