On Friday, November 22, 2019 at 8:10:47 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 17:38:22 -0500, wrote:

On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 17:01:17 -0500, wrote:

On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 13:04:35 -0500, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 22 Nov 2019 09:44:23 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

I`m looking for a radio that picks up audio T V signals. Where can I find one? Thanks for any info...Herb

4 times. You're starting to get annoying.

But I'd like one too and I checked and surprisingly there are several
for sale.

One that google finds on Best Buy doesn't mention Tv.
Another has been sold since 2002, before TV was digital iirc.
Another looks just like the AM-FM-TV radio I have and used to like but
which doesn't know about digital.
One says TV in the heading but no mention in the specs.


These are all on Best Buy or Amazon. Maybe they should stop things that
don't have TV from saying TV!

Digital made that a lot more complicated. NTSC audio was just
broadcast in the clear on the FM band so it was trivial to put a TV
band tuner in an FM radio. Now you would need a digital tuner to get
the whole stream, this strip out the audio. You would also find out
pretty fast that the little whip antenna that worked great on analog
is not up to the digital world. As you know if you use an antenna, as
soon as that picture starts pixilating the audio drops out. It is all
part of the same stream.



The antenna isn't a problem - as long as the OP didn't want easy
portability. ? I used one of these fractal units for an elderly
friend, in the nursing home - to save him paying for cable TV -
when he only needed a few local stations anyway. It worked just fine
perched inside on his window sill. Minor position adjustments were
required to fine tune the TV signal.

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop...ractal-antenna

Finding a "radio" is another matter - I'd be tempted to get a used
cast-off 19 inch LED TV and use it . .
John T.

I suppose that depends on how far you are from the tower. I am using a
"75 mile deep fringe" Yagi antenna and it is barely enough to get
towers 30 miles away. Those little flat panels they sell on TV are
useless.

I fooled around with it a bit too. I'm about the same distance, 35 miles,
flat terrain. I borrowed one of those panel antennas. I didn't expect
it would receive anything. But it did pick up NBC and CBS plus a few of
the lesser channels sometime. At good times, it was rock steady. At
bad times one or the other or both would be either not there at all or
breaking up so bad it was unwatchable. I figured if that worked at
ground level, if I put a real antenna in the attic, it would probably
work much better. Which proved true, to some extent. Since I wasn't
committed to really using it, I opted for a cheap $15 Chinese, Yagi
style one from Ebay. It was supposed to be outdoors, included a rotor
and amplifier for $15. ROFL. I knew it was going to be flimsy, but
then an antenna is just some pieces of metal and I was going to try it
in the attic. So, it worked much better, but still not so great.
ABC was still mostly not there, even CBS and NBC while better, were not
improved as much as you'd think you'd get by raising it 15 ft higher
and having that better antenna. (It was about 3ft long, 2 ft wide)
It did pick up a lot more of the other channels, with some stuff of
interest. But even with NBC and CBS there were great periods and crap
periods. And the weird thing that I haven't seen anyone explain is
how it goes from one to the other, within minutes.

I can understand if it's raining or windy that it would decline. But
it also went from great to really bad or gone with no change in the
weather, at least not that I could tell. And it wasn't like it was
a passing cloud or something either. It could be a calm evening,
suddenly it starts going from great to problems and within 15 mins
it was either unwatchable or gone altogether. And then it would
be kaput for a a long time, like the rest of the night. I have no
clue what causes this, I've seen lots of people experiencing the
same thing, no one has any credible explanation. One guy thought it
was related to humidity, that might be a partial factor, but the
humidity doesn't change drastically in 15 mins and from my limited
experience, there was no correlation with anything. Sometimes it
could be raining heavily and it was working fine.

The next step would have been to spend $75 for real antenna but I
concluded that since I had cable, there wasn't enough other stuff there
to make it worthwhile. And I'm not sure if that would work really
well either. With NTSC and a decent outdoor antenna it was easy
to get reliable reception here.

That Ebay antenna was really something. It was for outdoors, but it
wouldn't last a month here. Very flimsy, a bird could bust it. It
had an amplifier on the antenna, not potted, just a circuit board
with a plastic cover over it. Cheap little motor. No indication
on the inside unit as to which way it's pointed. Wire from the
amp to antenna was broken off, had to solder that back on.

Then there are the TV ad guys selling antennas that are not even the
panel that goes in the window, just a little one that screws on the
coax jack and has two little 6" extendible ears. The guy hawking it
is down there by you, he shows it working on a boat a mile offshore.
It even works here, offshore. BFD. They probably picked a spot
5 miles from the transmitter and it's over water, completely
unobstructed. I'm still left wondering how well a large antenna would
work here. I don't know anyone that has one, IDK anyone here that
is doing OTA at all. Maybe ATSC was the best thing that ever happened
to the cable companies.