On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:10:07 -0800 (PST), Mike wrote:
The short question in all this is - can I run coax from 2 different
antennas into a splitter, then from the splitter to my TV, and get
signals from both antennas?

Yes, you can do this. You might get lucky.

You WILL introduce mutipath problems. The question is, whether the
problems will be bad enough to be noticeable. If you're in or near an
urban area (lots of man-made structures), its likely you'd notice more
problems than if you were out in farm country.

Even though the second antenna is not pointed at the sations you get
from the first antenna, it will receive some signal on those channels.
The signal it gets might include a reflection off of a building
somewhere. These copies of the signal arriving over multiple paths (thus
the term multipath) don't add up simply. Its difficult to explain in a
short message, but the bottom line is that you might improve reception
for some stations, and make it worse for others. If you are looking at
analog TV, you'd see ghosting as a symptom of multipath. In a digital
transmission, mutipath can cause data loss. The digital tuner probably
has circuitry that compensates for some degree of multipath, but if its
bad enough, the circuitry won't be able to compensate fully and you
won't see a picture on the affected channels.

It is impossible to accurately predict what will happen. If its easy and
cheap enough for you to try it, go ahead. Worst case, you'll decide to
run a second line down to the TV and use a switch instead.

--
Art Greenberg
artg at eclipse dot net