Ask Me Help Desk - Improving Digital TV reception?

We have a house in the country about 55-60 miles from city TV stations (Little Rock, AR). Before the analog switchover we had a medium directional on the roof with flat antenna wire and got "decent" analog reception. Unfortunately, when the roof was redone the roofers through the antenna off and broke it beyond repair... Anyway, if I run about 50ft of coaxial cable, as well as a preamplifier to a large antenna, would we likely get decent reception? Like I said, we are 60 miles away, with a lot of trees in between... we're not up there enough to want to pay $60-80 a month for directv.

Get a quality deep fringe antenna. Get quality coxial cable and a "low noise" line amp. The lower the noise level the better. There are a couple... Wineguard makes one.. use as few feet of cable as you can... and don't put any more splitters on it than you absolutely have to have. I.E. if you only have two tv's, use a two way splitter, not a 4 way. Again... only the best quality ones, because as splitter will divide up and reduce what signal the antenna does capture..

Also place the amp as close to the antenna as possible. Technically, as long as you have a well designed antenna, you should not actually need an amplifier. The purpose in your situation would be more to amplify the signal off the antenna. An amp does not fix a bad signal.

Check:
DigiTenna Digital TV Antennas - FREE HDTV RECEPTION

They have some pretty good antennas. I've seen some of the demoed and have installed some. They work quite well.

Yes I'm not planning to split the signal at this time, but if I wanted to add a TV in the future, how much signal loss should I expect? I am also concerned about the amount of trees. Do you recommend a particular antenna? I'm not needing HD reception. And how high should it be?

No matter the type of antenna, local channels are broadcast in HD, that was one of the major benefits of the digital switch over.

So whether you have an HDTV, any antenna you get will support it, but just about any antenna you purchase will say it is for HD. It won't matter as long as it's designed for digital (and technically that isn't necessary, it's just that the ones designed for digital tend to work better).

Don't worry too much about splitting the signal. Splitting it once won't degrade the signal too much. The point that smoothy was making was to split it only the number of times you need and not more.

If the trees are thick, the only real way to ensure you will get a great signal is to mount to a tower that reaches over the trees.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FadedMaster

No matter the type of antenna, local channels are broadcast in HD, that was one of the major benefits of the digital switch over.

So whether or not you have an HDTV, any antenna you get will support it, but just about any antenna you purchase will say it is for HD. It won't matter as long as it's designed for digital (and technically that isn't necessary, it's just that the ones designed for digital tend to work better).

Don't worry too much about splitting the signal. Splitting it once won't degrade the signal too much. The point that smoothy was making was to split it only the number of times you need and not more.

If the trees are thick, the only real way to ensure you will get a great signal is to mount to a tower that reaches over the trees.

Oh you are so wrong about splitting the signal. A 2 way splitter delivers 1/2 the signal level (a 3 db drop per port) and a 4 way splitter delivers 1/4 the signal strength to each port (connection) you would get without one. That's not insignificant when you live a long way from any of the stations. And it matters more with a digital transmission than an analog one. Try getting that much back via an antenna. A deep fringe antenna is already over 6 feet long. And a line amp won't boost what the antenna never got in the first place. And a cheap one is worse than none at all. I consider most of them as "cheap". Cheap ones add more noise than they increase usable signal.

Consider it a pie... and the more pieces you cut it into the smaller the pieces will be. And being that far from the transmitter, there isn't going to be much extra to play with. But you are spot on with what I was saying about not splitting it more than absolutely needed. And never ever put a splitter after a splitter.

This is why you need the best antenna you can get... for the highest signal capture, the best coax you can get to minimize attenuation between the Antenna and the TV. Getting it up has high as you can helps too, if you lived only 20 miles away this wouldn't really matter.

I grew up in a fringe area (60-65 miles from the transmitters)... and I have been trying to upgrade what worked with analog to get the same stations with digital ( I bought her her a HDTV).. My mom doesn't want cable.

Trick is sorting out the advertising crap from the meaningful information. You aren't getting anything small and cheap that's going to work. A good antenna is going to cost $80 and up for deep fringe... plus the extras.

To be honest I think it's unfair in the first place... I mean, we got decent analogue reception, and now thanks to the switchover we have to spend $150+ to get what we had before...

Quote:

Originally Posted by smoothy

Oh you are so wrong about splitting the signal. A 2 way splitter delivers 1/2 the signal level (a 3 db drop per port) and a 4 way splitter delivers 1/4 the signal strength to each port (connection) you would get without one. That's not insignificant when you live a long way from any of the stations. And it matters more with a digital transmission than an analog one. Try getting that much back via an antenna. A deep fringe antenna is already over 6 feet long. And a line amp won't boost what the antenna never got in the first place. And a cheap one is worse than none at all. I consider most of them as "cheap". Cheap ones add more noise than they increase usable signal.

Sorry, I meant that it won't degrade the picture quality. I should have picked my words more carefully.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FadedMaster

Sorry, I meant that it won't degrade the picture quality. I should have picked my words more carefully.

That all really depends on signal levels at the TV actually. Where analog would get snowy as it got weaker... you could still watch it. But with Digital there is a fine line between perfectly good picture to having dropouts and no reception at all. But as long as you still have sufficient signal level... you are correct, it won't affect the visual quality. But in a deep fringe area... every little bit helps... and a single split can mean the difference between getting a station and not getting it.

Blame the Engineer in me. Spent a long time dealing with critical measurements of spurious harmonics etc to meet FCC regulations where a tenth of a decibel at a -57DBm level on a second or third harmonic was a big issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by smoothy

That all really depends on signal levels at the tv actually. Where analog would get snowy as it got weaker...you could still watch it. But with Digital there is a fine line between perfectly good picture to having dropouts and no reception at all. But as long as you still have sufficient signal level...you are correct, it won't affect the visual quality. But in a deep fringe area...every little bit helps...and a single split can mean the difference between getting a station and not getting it.

Blame the Engineer in me. Spent a long time dealing with critical measurements of spurious harmonics etc to meet FCC regulations where a tenth of a decibel at a -57DBm level on a second or third harmonic was a big issue.

Haha, I understand. I had better. I'm goin' to school for EE. Haha.