There has been quite a bit of talk around the country about cutting the ties with satellite and cable TV providers. No wonder. With “average” cable bills around $100/month many people are beginning to ask just how much they are willing to spend to be a couch potato.
Many people who live in an area lucky enough to have high speed Internet without draconian data limits you might try connecting a small computer to your television and watching your local channels via their Website stream. You might also pay for some other streaming service. The downside of using a streaming service is there will still be a monthly fee. It might well be small now, but, as revenue from cable and satellite markets dry up the stations they have will push for a higher fee from them. If you haven’t personally been sucked in with a limited time “teaser” rate from a cable or satellite company you must have never had cable or satellite. The same will happen with streaming services.
Fringe or rural customers rarely have access to such an Internet provider anyway. For them, cutting a satellite bill means going back to an antenna. Most don’t know where to start. If you walk into a store they will sell you whatever they have the highest margin on. This may or may not work for you. Some suburbs have ordinances about visible antenna and that will also limit your choices.
Your first step in determining over the air (OTA) television options for your particular location is to visit tvfool.com and utilize their location specific map. Key in your address information after clicking “Start Maps”. They also have a signal analysis tool.
One great feature on this site is how it color codes your list of stations near the bottom. What you may not notice is the “antenna height” box just below the map. Adjusting this value changes the color coding of the stations listed below. Yes, there are many things which will impact your reception, weather, height of obstructions such as buildings, trees and windmills between your antenna and the tower(s), but this color coded list gives you a good indication about the advertised range of antenna you will need. If you need a 60 mile antenna you don’t want to buy a 30 mile or less antenna.
The next thing you need to do is determine which frequency band the stations you are interested in transmit on. There used to be a good site which mapped all of it but I cannot find it now. Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of the various bands. Keep in mind the display channel is not necessarily the digital channel. Here in the Chicago market CBS Channel 2 is actually digital channel 12.1. That means it is in the VHF high band which has a shorter transmission range than UHF. Every market seems to have at least one channel which opted to be here for one reason or another. Why is this important? Because antennas advertising 60+ mile reception ranges are usually advertising their UHF band range, not their VHF. Not all HD TV antenna will pick up VHF. Some are specifically designed to filter it out. Here is an example. Notice it says 70+ miles for UHF but only 25 miles for VHF.
You should also use the signal analysis tool at tvfool.com as this will inform you about any co-channel or adjacent channel issues which may exist. Co-channelling means another tower from another direction is transmitting on the same frequency and you may live in an overlap region where you will have duelling signals. Adjacent channel with a stronger signal could cause some bleed over if your equipment doesn’t have fantastic channel separation.
Most extreme or fringe type antennas are directional. This means they focus on some pie slice of sky in the direction they are pointed and shield out surrounding signals. An omnidirectional antenna will receive from all directions and it is up to your equipment to filter it out.
At this point you now know which channels you can reasonably expect to receive and the band capabilities necessary. Now you can look into any potential local ordinances. Yes, you could always mount an indoor or attic antenna, but, a roof or wall will cut your signal strength. Outdoor antenna are required for anyone living a good distance from towers.
Now we get into the “claims” department. Most people will tell you it is impossible for an antenna to pull in signals from a distance greater than 70 miles due to the curvature of the earth. On its face that is a true statement, this is why the antenna height option exists for that tvfool map. Here is the antenna I currently have but would not recommend. Yes, it does rotate. Yes when you turn on the signal splitter it and adjust the gain dial you can make stations disappear and reappear so it is boosting the signal “somehow.” Yes, I can receive somewhere between 30-50 channels depending on where it is pointed.
Having said all of that, it is cheaply made. The coax cable disconnects after rotating a bit. The last time it came unhooked I put it back on using medium thread locker and a wrench even though the instructions say not to use a wrench (because it is cheaply made.) There is also a significant difference between getting a signal strong enough for my digital to analog converter to recognize the channel and getting a signal strong enough to actually watch. Unless the weather is perfectly clear, it is totally useless at pulling in CBS 2 out of Chicago. When I turn it to the south I can usually pull in WCIA-DT channel 48 from the Champaign area better. If my digital to analog converter did not have a menu option for manual search with a signal strength meter, the rotation would be near useless. Yes the antenna would still turn but you would have to guess at how strong the signal was.
There are and most likely will be a rash of solutions out there when it comes to signal amplifiers both with and without splitting. Most of these need to be in-line. There is some merit to the pole mounted versions because they will get the signal before it has had to travel through much cable. You cannot add an on-the-pole signal booster to an antenna which requires power over the coax. Some antennas need this to power a rotator, others have a built in amplifier which requires power.
Summing it up, you can cut the cord if you are willing to live with the combination of what you can get over the air + dvds + the occasional stream. Those of you who live within 30 miles of a major city can most likely get away with some cute little indoor antenna.
