TV over air

[John Dirks Jr]

I decided to cut back on the cable TV bill. I'm sending back 3 of the 4 set top boxes and keeping one DVR in the main family room where we spend the most time watching.

I know you can still get some channels through the raw cable but I thought I'd try a roof top antenna for the local digital broadcasts. I have an omni directional antenna mounted to the chimney ( I know...shouldnt do that). Anyway, this is the model > http://www.amazon.com/Winegard-MS-2002- ... _cp_e_pw_1

I'm getting 40 channels over the air with 19 of them in HD and 9 of those in full 1080p and the other in 720p. It's the best picture in the house. The coax cable from camcast can never support anything better than 720p. The antenna cable splits to the 3 TV's which use to have the set top boxes.

Anyway, I'm pretty impressed with what I can get for free with a half decent antenna. Any of you using an antenna for over air broadcast? Whats your experience?

[Brandon Whitmore]

I only pay for basic cable right now, which runs about 15 bucks a month. I have a 30' high antenna on the back side of my house I've never tried to connect to; I wonder if I could get some channels for free........

[John Dirks Jr]

Here's some links to find what's in your area. The first two have utilities where you can enter your address or zip see signals that broadcast. The third link is basic antenna info.

http://tvfool.com/

http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/basics.html

[davidmcg]

We live in the rural area, and dumped our sat connection a little over a year ago, we don't watch much tv. Most of the tv transmitters are over 50 miles away. I built my own tv antenna, a DB-4 and it works great. Some days we even pull in stations from over 200 miles away. Building it cost me $15 for the materials.

Now, why is your antenna anchored to the chimney?

[John Dirks Jr]

We live in the rural area, and dumped our sat connection a little over a year ago, we don't watch much tv. Most of the tv transmitters are over 50 miles away. I built my own tv antenna, a DB-4 and it works great. Some days we even pull in stations from over 200 miles away. Building it cost me $15 for the materials.

Now, why is your antenna anchored to the chimney?

I have no excuse. It is a very light antenna though. 10 times lighter than the one I took ff the very same chimney about 20 years ago.

[davidmcg]

Well John, don't sweat my question too much. I have been guilty of that in the past also at our old house, heck, back in the day, Radio Shack sold special antenna mounting kits for chimneys. Thats not the only thing I have been guilty of, at one point we had a sat dish on the old house roof also. If I remember right, it wasn't anchored into anything but the sheating below the shingles and wasn't properly grounded. A severe thunderstorm took it off our roof for us, along with some of the roof. Woops.

But just in case anyone is interested in building the DB-4, I attached it here. You can also double it and make a DB-8, which allegedly allows you to pull stations 100 miles+ on a regular basis. You can also put a pice of 1/4" mesh behind these as a reflector.

Download Attachment: tv antenna 01.pdf

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