Antenna for FM, UHF, VHF?

[stingray1]

How to Make a Homemade TV Antenna | TV Antenna Plans

I've played around with a couple of these ideas. The most effective I have found is the single coat hanger model. I have about a 30 mile radius to the transmitters I get and don't have any problems. I have good line of sight from the first floor for the most part.

Home : DIY TV Antennas
This is my favorite site for simple and effective plans. Although my wife keeps wondering where her hangers go to

Another, more technical site:
www.freeantennas.com

has some interesting ideas for directional antennae for wireless access points. I know there is another thread somewhere talking about using wireless cameras on the farm and overcoming transmission limitations.

FWIW- about a year ago we did the same thing, dumped satellite and use Netflix and over the air. Don't regret it at all.

Thanks for the links.

 

[dmccarty]

Wow, I started this thread at the first of August....

I finally canceled Directv in December and bought the Winegard 2000 antenna, Amazon.com: Winegard MS-2000 HDTV Antenna with Cable: Electronics, which I installed yesterday.

I spent a good hour in Lowes finding a metal pipe to mount the antenna in the attic. The antenna has a plastic plug that screws into the bottom of the antenna housing. I took the plug and found a metal cap that would fit the plug and a pipe that would fit the cap. Course, when I got home the pipe would not fit the antenna. :confused3::laughing::laughing::laughing: So I went back to Plan A which was to just tie the danged antenna to the ridge beam by a rope. :thumbsup:

Using the rope was fast and easy. I could have installed the danged antenna quicker than shopping for the metal pipe.

So far so good with the antenna. The picture quality is very good though we are having spot outages this morning due to rain. The antenna I bought was an amplifier which was problematic. The stations we will watch the most is PBS and the transmitter is 10-15 miles away so using an amplifier was iffy. However, other channels we might watch needed the amplifier. Danged if we did and danged if we don't. :shocked: I bought the amplified antenna figuring if it caused a problem with the closest stations we wanted to watch I would just unplug it. The amped antenna is working just fine.

I also hooked up the antenna to the stereo. The sound seems much better than the small dipole we had hooked up but time will tell.

Our old Directv boxes were SD not HD though our main TV is a large 65 inch HD set. We get HD quality on DVD, BD and some streaming video we watch, but many shows we like are SD, so the old DirectV boxes really did not bother us. However, it is real nice seeing some of the programs on TV in HD. I don't watch football, or other sports for that matter, but when I was setting up the system yesterday there was a game on a channel. Danged if it did not look like we were in the stadium. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

We have one flat screen TV that does cannot handle the digital signal so a converter box will be here soon to hook up. Glad I put in a wiring closet for Cat 6 and coax. All I had to do is move around the wiring in the closet to rewire things.

Later,
Dan

 

[k0ua]

Way to go Dan, sounds like you got it under control. Nothing like have this neat and organized with the wiring closet.

James K0UA

 

[ray66v]

An amplifier on an antenna used to be a problem, if you had strong stations close like you do. It would usually result in lots of wavy lines, especially if the amplifier gain was set too high.

From what I have seen, this problem, as well as the old ghosting problem, goes away with digital television.

I was able to turn my amplifier all the way up, after I switched over from analog to digital, with no problem.

I have let Directv rob me since 1995. Someday, I may pull the plug too.

 

[Redbug]

Ray...Maybe antenna TV and Hulu? I have noticed that many people are going that way. The costs for cable/dish TV is too much to spend in my opinion. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a revolution. There are a lot of people dropping pay TV.

 

[dmccarty]

Ray...Maybe antenna TV and Hulu? I have noticed that many people are going that way. The costs for cable/dish TV is too much to spend in my opinion. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a revolution. There are a lot of people dropping pay TV.

An amplifier on an antenna used to be a problem, if you had strong stations close like you do. It would usually result in lots of wavy lines, especially if the amplifier gain was set too high.

From what I have seen, this problem, as well as the old ghosting problem, goes away with digital television.

I was able to turn my amplifier all the way up, after I switched over from analog to digital, with no problem.

I have let Directv rob me since 1995. Someday, I may pull the plug too.

The cost of Directv and the lack of decent shows has annoyed us for years. During the week, the only TV we were watching was kid shows and/or reruns of certain shows. Even that viewing was much reduced because of the kids homework and sports. Mostly it was the kids watching reruns of their shows when they had their homework done. There was seldom anything on that we would watch. We gave up on broadcast TV getting close to 10 years ago, we don't watch sports, and so much of today's shows is reality nonsense that we don't watch, yet we were paying almost $90 a month. We have talked for years about turning off Directv and finally got serious last summer. Even then I did not call up Directv until December because we were so busy.

One of the first things the Directv employee said was thanking me for being a loyal customer. <Insert Smirk> I knew they would try to keep us as a Customer but we had discussed what we thought Directv was worth to us. We figured $20-30 a month was what Directv was worth to us. As the Directv representative was reading the script to keep us, I told her that the programming had gotten worse and worse over the years. The channels we used to like were now showing reality TV shows that was not worth squat and we had to pay more and more for channels, like ESPN and MTV, that we do not even watch. I told her if she could not provide the same channels we get now for $20-30 a month we were canceling. She could lower the price by $20 a month which was the current offer for anyone who called. You would think a "loyal customer" for so many years could get a better price. <Insert Smirk>

She was supposed to keep the service on for all of December but the service stopped working in the middle of the month. :confused3: I had already paid for a full month so we will see if they send me a check. Yeah Right. The service cut off did not matter much since we were out of town for a week.

We are streaming quite a bit of content from Amazon and Netflix. It is really nice to pick your programs to watch when you want to watch. One of the reasons we waited so long to cancel Directv was because our DSL service was unreliable. We would have to reset the modem frequently, sometimes multiple times a day. A few months ago the provider did an upgrade and reliability has greatly improved. We only get 3 mbps but it works just fine. We generally are watching old TV shows made decades ago so HD is not an issue though we seem to get HD ok. I don't think HD is perfect at 3 mbps but it works.

We have told the kids for a very long time that at some point we were canceling Directv so they knew that day would happen. We told them we would buy a bunch of DVDs for them to watch and they got a bunch of shows to watch from Santa. For $90 a month we can buy quite a few of the shows they like to watch on DVDs...

I think it was 12/2011 when we started streaming video. We wanted to see how well it worked and if we would have the shows we liked to watch. Streaming has worked just fine and sure is cheaper. The only real complaint we have is that finding shows via the BlueRay player is a PITA. Trying to find programming via a remote works but is slow. Eventually I will get a new PC and we will move my desktop to the living room to help stream video. Oh, the other service that we have found surprising interesting to watch is YouTube. The only other issue we have is licensing with All Creatures Great and Small. Amazon had the license. I watched the series over the years but sometimes I would miss episodes. When it showed up on Amazon I started watching each and every episode from the start. I was in the fourth or fifth year when Amazon lost the license early in 2012. The first year is now available but not the other years. I figure eventually Amazon or Netflix will get the series and I will finally be able to watch the entire series. :laughing::laughing::laughing: If I have waited 20-30 years, I can wait another year or two. :shocked:

Later,
Dan

 

[ray66v]

6 of my 8 tv's just get antenna, (free), tv. There are lots of channels in my area. And I have to say, there is almost always something to watch.

I don't care about watching the latest movies. In fact, I don't watch may movies at all. That limits internet based programing.

I would miss my dual tuner DirecTivo DVR. I like being able to flip back and forth, between the two tuners, watching two shows at once, and avoiding the commercials. :thumbsup: It is only possible to use it for Directv, and I have a paid, lifetime subscription.

If Directv keeps playing hard ball, as in removing features from their standard definition service, (so far Nascar track pass, and the NASA channel), trying to force me to give them another $10 a month for Hi def, that could cause me to say, bye bye to them.

My main tv is a really nice 50 inch standard definition tv. I am perfectly happy with it. And, until it gives up the ghost, I am not going to pay for Hi definition service I can't use.

I am sure that Directv does intend to discontinue offering standard definition service in the future.

 

[dmccarty]

6 of my 8 tv's just get antenna, (free), tv. There are lots of channels in my area. And I have to say, there is almost always something to watch.

I don't care about watching the latest movies. In fact, I don't watch may movies at all. That limits internet based programing.

I would miss my dual tuner DirecTivo DVR. I like being able to flip back and forth, between the two tuners, watching two shows at once, and avoiding the commercials. :thumbsup: It is only possible to use it for Directv, and I have a paid, lifetime subscription.

If Directv keeps playing hard ball, as in removing features from their standard definition service, (so far Nascar track pass, and the NASA channel), trying to force me to give them another $10 a month for Hi def, that could cause me to say, bye bye to them.

My main tv is a really nice 50 inch standard definition tv. I am perfectly happy with it. And, until it gives up the ghost, I am not going to pay for Hi definition service I can't use.

I am sure that Directv does intend to discontinue offering standard definition service in the future.

We don't watch movies very much at all. When the wifey and I were dating we NEVER EVER went to a movie. Not one. We have only been see one movie together and that was to see one of the Harry Potter movies with the kids. I won't be gong back to a movie theater any time soon either. That was expensive, the sound was damaging loud and we did not have a pause button. :laughing:

We are streaming old TV shows like Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith, Cheers, which our youngest calls Beers, etc. We also watch documentaries and UK mysteries which used to be on Directv but are now mostly replaced by reality scat. We have not watched ABC, NBC, CBS, etc, in years though we have started to watch Big Bang Theory that is in reruns. I have not looked too much at Hulu but they are supposed to have current TV shows available. Since we don't watch those the shows now there is no need for us to stream them.

HD is very nice. We were very impressed when we moved up to a 35 inch CRT semi HD TV but when we bought the 65 inch full HD we were really blown away with the difference, especially with BlueRay. OTH, since we are watching so many older SD shows, the TV is not used to its best other than its size.

Later,
Dan

 

[ray66v]

We don't watch movies very much at all. When the wifey and I were dating we NEVER EVER went to a movie. Not one. We have only been see one movie together and that was to see one of the Harry Potter movies with the kids. I won't be gong back to a movie theater any time soon either. That was expensive, the sound was damaging loud and we did not have a pause button. :laughing:

We are streaming old TV shows like Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith, Cheers, which our youngest calls Beers, etc. We also watch documentaries and UK mysteries which used to be on Directv but are now mostly replaced by reality scat. We have not watched ABC, NBC, CBS, etc, in years though we have started to watch Big Bang Theory that is in reruns. I have not looked too much at Hulu but they are supposed to have current TV shows available. Since we don't watch those the shows now there is no need for us to stream them.

HD is very nice. We were very impressed when we moved up to a 35 inch CRT semi HD TV but when we bought the 65 inch full HD we were really blown away with the difference, especially with BlueRay. OTH, since we are watching so many older SD shows, the TV is not used to its best other than its size. Later, Dan

Thanks, glad to hear that there is enough, "other than movies" to watch.

My 50 inch was the last of the square standard definition tv's, and it really has a nice picture on it.

I do have 2 HD tv's in the house, so I know what I am missing.

To pay for a wide screen tv roughly as big as the 50 inch square one I have now, is not something I am looking forward too.

 

[Redbug]

Hmmmmm...Here's a few TV channels...on line...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...N0VvOWVaRElSSmc&single=true&gid=0&output=html