Atlanta DTV reception on rabbit ears
David Thompson
TV in the bedroom. The antenna cost about $15 in the 2002 catalog (Radio
Shack quit publishing a catalog soon thereafter).
I use a digital converter made under the RCA name and after the scan
virtually all of the pictures came out far better than the old analog
reception. However, almost all say "cannot get good reception rescan". The
sound tiles in and out. The bedroom is on the second floor. I looked at
amplified indoor antennas at Target and they sell for $20 to $50. The
non-amplified is $18 (only one they have).
Do most go to an amplified antenna or use an outside antenna? I just took
down my old big outside antenna 3 years ago as we have Comcast cable in 3
rooms. Comcast cost $$$ for each set up and add more wires to the house. I
also assume the signal gets weaker the more I add.
Dave K4JRB
Gordon
news:POydneIVVuj0PqvX...@earthlink.com:
Rabbit ears aren't the best thing to receive DTV with. Most DTV
is broadcast in the UHF band. Go to www.antennaweb.org to find a
list of the DTV stations in your area. You will also see what
channel they are transmitting on. (just because a TV station
identifies itself as 'channel 12' doesn't mean that it is transmitting
on the actual channel 12 frequency. There have been a lot of
shuffleing around of the frequency assignments as part of this
DTV conversion.). Antennaweb.org will also tell you the distance
and direction to each TV transmitter with a color code indicating
the type of antenna you will need.
Armed with this information, you can set up a proper antenna.
In my case, I went from rabbit ears (not very good) to a cheap
set top loop (not much better). Then I yanked the loop and cobbled
in a bowtie (getting better). Then, (I wish a took a picture) I
cobbled up a hand bent bowtie out of 12ga wire and attached it to
the top of the commercial bowtie. I finaly built a dual bowtie
setup that can be seen here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/g_reeder/Content/DTV_antenna.html
Works very well for me. YMMV.
There are other designs for DTV antennas on the internet. But
instead of just randomly trying antennas, got that info from
antennaweb.org so you know which dirrection to point the thing.
Dave Platt
David Thompson <thom...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>I have a set of rabbit ears that was given to me several years ago for the
>TV in the bedroom. The antenna cost about $15 in the 2002 catalog (Radio
>Shack quit publishing a catalog soon thereafter).
>
>I use a digital converter made under the RCA name and after the scan
>virtually all of the pictures came out far better than the old analog
>reception. However, almost all say "cannot get good reception rescan". The
>sound tiles in and out.
That does suggest that the signal is inconsistent - possibly it's
weak, over-all, or possibly it's subject to momentary dropouts due to
multipath reflections from moving objects (airplanes, trees, etc.).
If you're in an urban area, multipath problems are likely to be at the
heart of your problem.
Moving the rabbit-ears around to different positions will give you
some amount of gain and inteference rejection... you might find a
position which gives you a more stable result on one or more channels.
> The bedroom is on the second floor. I looked at
>amplified indoor antennas at Target and they sell for $20 to $50. The
>non-amplified is $18 (only one they have).
>
>Do most go to an amplified antenna or use an outside antenna?
As a general rule, I don't favor amplified indoor antennas. The
amplification usually doesn't buy you very much, since the front-end
section of the TV set has quite a lot of gain/sensitivity. The
antenna's own amplification will simply "replace" some of the
amplification in the TV (to no particularly good end), it will add
some amount of additional noise, and it may be subject to
strong-signal overload. Antenna-based amplifiers won't do anything to
help multipath problems, or noise problems from nearby interference
sources.
Indoor antennas may work well, or very badly. A lot depends on the
building construction. In some wood-frame buildings, they can work
fine. If the outer walls are stucco (with embedded chicken-wire), or
if the walls have foil-backed insulation, they may work very badly...
the building acts as a partial Faraday cage, and blocks most of the
signal.
> I just took
>down my old big outside antenna 3 years ago as we have Comcast cable in 3
>rooms. Comcast cost $$$ for each set up and add more wires to the house. I
>also assume the signal gets weaker the more I add.
For good TV reception, a reasonable-sized outdoor antenna on a mast is
hard to beat. Getting the antenna up into direct line-of-sight of the
transmitter/tower can help eliminate all sorts of reception problems.
If you can't arrange a roof antenna, then a smaller beam antenna
located in the attic might be a workable second choice.
Yes, when you feed a signal down the coax into the house, and split it
among several rooms, the signal in each room is weaker than if you fed
the antenna output directly to a signal room. This is actually one of
the situations in which an antenna amplifier can help: it makes up
for the losses in the signal-division process and in the coax.
Ideally, the amplifier is located close to the antenna, before any
long run of coax and before any signal-splitter.
Be careful, though. Many inexpensive antenna amplifiers (mast-mounted
or part of a splitter / distribution box) use only a simple
one-transistor amplification circuit, and can be prone to problems
from strong-signal overload. If you're located near a TV transmitter
(or a ham operator, CB'er, police/fire station, AM broadcast station)
a strong signal from the nearby transmitter can saturate the
amplifier, pushing it into distortion. The resulting signal on many
channels can be worse than if there was no amplifier at all.
--
Dave Platt <dpl...@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
MTV
put the 'ears' down flat (dipole) and turned broadside to TV transmitter
area. Best reception other than outside antenna.
Marv
JASON COOPER
THE SCREWS OUT OF THE RABBIT EARS PUT AN 300OHM TO 75 OHM ADAPTER
BETWEEN THE SCREWS TIGHT THEM BACK DOWN NOW YOU CAN GET SOME CABLE AND
PUT THE RABBIT EARS OUTSIDE ON A POLE I USED ZIP TIES ON MY 20 FT POLE
OR HIGHER THE BETTER TURN THE POLE FOR THE BEST RECEPTION ALSO WORKS
GREAT FOR FM RADIO HOOK IT UP TO MY BOSE RADIO FOR FM DX ALSO FROM THE
4 LAND
Gordon
04.dc1.easynews.com:
> I put rabbit ears on top of a cabinet, extended 'ears' all the way out,
> put the 'ears' down flat (dipole) and turned broadside to TV transmitter
> area. Best reception other than outside antenna.
>
> Marv
You don't even need to put them all the way out. If channels 2-7 are
vacated in your area, then you only need to have them out about 18 inches.