Antenna Question

[Gina D.]

An article within this article explains why I can get HD stations with my 8 year old Wiengard Batwing set up.

No Such Thing as an HDTV Antenna

Over-the-air (OTA) HDTV is a big hit these days. High definition television is one on those rare services that comes in the highest quality when it is free of charge. You can watch amazing 1080i resolution broadcasts over the air for free, and get better quality for the same channels than through a paid satellite DTV subscription. All you need is a high definition TV set with a built-in HDTV tuner and an off-air HDTV antenna.

Do you know what HDTV antenna is? If you do, forget it immediately. There is no such thing.

Do you know what a regular antenna is? Antenna is a piece of metal designed to resonate at a specific frequency and to be responsive over a range of frequencies. TV antennas are designed to work either in the range of Ultra High Frequencies (UHF), Very High Frequencies (VHF) or both. Any station transmitting within an antenna bandwidth, i.e. the VHF/UHF frequency range, can be picked up by the antenna and transferred to the TV set.

All television broadcasts, digital and analog, high definition and standard definition, take place in the VHF and the UHF bands. What make a signal to be HD is its content, the way a signal is modulated, and not the carrier frequency it is transmitted on. On the contrary, for antenna only the frequency matters.

There is nothing specific about a TV antenna that is used to receive HD signals. Your antenna doesn't really care whether the signal is high definition or not. It has absolutely no idea what the signal resolution is, or whether the signal is analog or digital. The antenna doesn't care that you are receiving HDTV as it doesn't care whether you are watching Fox News or NBC channel.

Okay, may be I oversimplify the matters. There is a little bit more to it. Besides the bandwidth there are few additional electrical and spatial properties a good antenna must have. Most notably, directivity, high front-to-back (F/ ratio and low-noise amplification in case the antenna comes with an amplifier. Does anything of these matter from the analog vs. HDTV reception perspective?

[b]There is a wrong, yet widespread belief that you need more powerful antenna in terms of directivity and amplification in order to receive digital television. I don't know where the hell this belief comes from, cause the situation is exactly the opposite. HDTV is much more noise immune than the analog television and can produce high quality video at significantly lower signal-to-noise ratios. So in principle, if analog and digital stations transmitted at the same power, you would need less antenna gain and could tolerate higher noise levels to receive error free digital TV. In reality, networks exploit the inherent noise immunity of the digital TV to transmit HDTV signal at reduced power. All in all, antennas with similar directivity/gain properties should receive analog and digital broadcasts equally well.

The other important specification, F/B ratio, has to do with the antenna ability to receive a signal coming towards its front from the direction the antenna points to, and to reject a signal coming from behind. In the presence of tall buildings or other reflective structures, the signal travels from the towers to the antenna by multiple paths, each path arrives at a different time instant. The multipath phenomena is responsible for a "ghost" creation in analog television. A desirable property of the antenna is to receive a single strongest replica of the signal coming through the strongest path and to reject the weak replicas. The higher F/B ratio is, the better is multipath rejection (ghost suppression). Without going into technical details, we must say that HDTV signal is a bit more sensitive to multipath phenomena cause it has slightly larger bandwidth. Such a difference in multipath sensitivity is negligibly small. Most directional, old fashioned and cheap TV antenna has F/B ratio good enough to handle HDTV signal. If an antenna can handle an analog signal, it can handle a digital signal as well.

You may ask why there are so many "HDTV antennas" on the market. HDTV is a fancy buzzword. HDTV is cool. It sells. HDTV antenna is nothing but a hype. Don't be fooled by the ubiquitous ads promoting HDTV antennas and HDTV optimized antennas. These antennas are HDTV antennas indeed, but to no lesser extent they are "SDTV antennas", "EDTV antennas" and "NTSC antennas". Let's say all of them are just TV antennas.

I was uneducated as well, I just knew I wasn't seeing things.. or *was* as the case may be.

[pjanits]

Does anyone have any experience with this hidden antenna product?

See page 2 of the PDF.

http://www.anli.ru/ru/attach_file/mobilant...4cf440d866d53ce

You might be able to hide one of these pretty much anywhere within our fiberglass travel trailers!

Unless you have the aluminum bubble insulation. Also any horizontal antenna is very directional, you may have to turn the camper.
Unless it has two horizontal elements as shown with the ancient but still very good Winegaurd antenna.

That's why I am looking at the Walmart 39 buck antenna. Its a vertical polarized amplified box about 14 inches high
Vertical = 360 degree coverage.

BUT TV antennas and trees are always a battle, amplified or not. It's always iffy in the woods.
I had a permanent 28' in the woods in Wisconsin with a 30 foot tower and rotor and a 150 mile rated antenna with amplifier.
I just barely got stations 40 miles away.
So my theory is if I get stations great otherwise I have been recording old movies off of AMC and writing them to DVD. We LOVE old movies.

[Pete Dumbleton]

The thing here is that I believe the broadcast frequencies are essentially the same for both services and an antenna doesn't care if the modulation scheme is digital or analog, just what the frequency is...

OTOH, the marketeers surely don't want to miss an opportunity to sell more stuf and don't mind being truth-challenged about it!

BTW, the scheduled transition date to all-digital is 1/1/07, which we obviously didn't meet.

Here's a quote from this site, which apparently hasn't been updated in a while:

QUOTE
Are DTV signals broadcast on special frequencies?

No. DTV broadcasts use exactly the same channels as regular analog television. While many DTV stations are now occupying UHF broadcast channels, broadcasters are allowed to move back to their original VHF or UHF TV channel once the transition to DTV is complete.

The only caveat is that TV channels 51 through 69 will be auctioned off for other uses at the end of the transition to digital TV. Stations who originally had analog channels in this band will have to move, no matter what.

One potential problem with re-using low VHF (2-6) TV channels for DTV is the possibility of interference from other signals during certain times of the year. "Skip" may bring in distant broadcasts on the same channel and create interference. Impulse noise is also a problem on low VHF channels. What’s more, the physical size of low VHF and high VHF antennas is much larger than that of a UHF antenna.

Tests so far seem to indicate that high VHF channels (7-13) are quite well suited for DTV broadcasts, and many broadcasters plan to move back to their high VHF channels at the end of the transition. VHF transmitters also cost much less money to operate than UHF transmitters.
END QUOTE

[Byron Kinnaman]

The thing here is that I believe the broadcast frequencies are essentially the same for both services and an antenna doesn't care if the modulation scheme is digital or analog, just what the frequency is...

OTOH, the marketeers surely don't want to miss an opportunity to sell more stuf and don't mind being truth-challenged about it!

BTW, the scheduled transition date to all-digital is 1/1/07, which we obviously didn't meet.

Here's a quote from this site, which apparently hasn't been updated in a while:

QUOTE
Are DTV signals broadcast on special frequencies?

No. DTV broadcasts use exactly the same channels as regular analog television. While many DTV stations are now occupying UHF broadcast channels, broadcasters are allowed to move back to their original VHF or UHF TV channel once the transition to DTV is complete.

The only caveat is that TV channels 51 through 69 will be auctioned off for other uses at the end of the transition to digital TV. Stations who originally had analog channels in this band will have to move, no matter what.

One potential problem with re-using low VHF (2-6) TV channels for DTV is the possibility of interference from other signals during certain times of the year. "Skip" may bring in distant broadcasts on the same channel and create interference. Impulse noise is also a problem on low VHF channels. What’s more, the physical size of low VHF and high VHF antennas is much larger than that of a UHF antenna.

Tests so far seem to indicate that high VHF channels (7-13) are quite well suited for DTV broadcasts, and many broadcasters plan to move back to their high VHF channels at the end of the transition. VHF transmitters also cost much less money to operate than UHF transmitters.
END QUOTE

FYI, VHF channels 2-6 are below the FM Radio Broadcast band, and 7-13 are above. Hence the name low VHF, and high VHF.

[Frederick L. Simson]

I like the idea of being able to rotate an antenna, as there's a front and back with superior reception, even in the so-called omni-directional ones, as this diagram from the above link shows.

My antenna is directional, and I usually rotate it (it just dangles from the plastic tube) by grabbing the bottom of the rod where the coax connector is and turning until my desired channel is clearest. It also covers both the VHF and UHF frequency bands.

I just received my TV Converter Box Coupon in the mail, so I will be purchasing a converter very soon.

[Gina D.]

I am a vidiot.... and am NOT a Videopile, er, phile.

my question is...when the official transition hits, even if I am getting an HD signal hitting my wire, will I still be able to get an analog signal at my TV? In other words, if I don't have a converter, can I still see the station in analog?

The HD sigs I get from San Diego tell me this is the case, but I still am not sure if it is a temporary simulcast. You would think that a strictly digital signal needs to be converted. I am so confused...

[Patrick M.]

Analog will be gone come next year! Get that converter or just donate those analog TVs to Goodwill (just gave them a nice 17") and get that shiny new LCD widescreen.

I think your station is brodcasting the same signal in both modes and preferred showing "HD" to "SD and HD for our advanced viewers".

[Byron Kinnaman]

I am a vidiot.... and am NOT a Videopile, er, phile.

my question is...when the official transition hits, even if I am getting an HD signal hitting my wire, will I still be able to get an analog signal at my TV? In other words, if I don't have a converter, can I still see the station in analog?

The HD sigs I get from San Diego tell me this is the case, but I still am not sure if it is a temporary simulcast. You would think that a strictly digital signal needs to be converted. I am so confused...

In February 2009 analog TV is gone. HD is just one type of DTV. DTV is in, ATV is out.
Without a TV that will receive digital tv or converter box no tv to watch. Go to dtv.gov to read all about it.

[pjanits]

My understanding is if you have cable the cable box will do this conversion for you.
But if you are out camping....... You're gonna need a converter.

[Chris C]

Read through this and you won't have to assume or guess anything.

http://www.dennysantennaservice.com/1161550.html

[Frederick L. Simson]

My understanding is if you have cable the cable box will do this conversion for you.
But if you are out camping....... You're gonna need a converter.

IF you have a newer TV that includes a Digital Tuner in your trailer, you'll be good to go.

IF you have a dinosaur Cathode Ray Tube with an Analog Tuner (like Me), then you'll need a converter.

I just used my $40 government coupon (a credit-like card actually) and less than $15 out-of-pocket to purchase my new RCA model DTA800 Digital TV Converter.

I hooked it up and programmed it. (Note to manufacturer: Proofread the (!@#$%^&*!!!) manual before you send it out.)
Once I got the Menu Programming figured out, It took just a few minutes.

And the results?
AWESOME!

Before: 4 semi-clear and 2 fuzzy-snowy Analog Channels.

After: 13 Perfectly Clear As-good-as-if-on-a-plasma-TV Digital Channels.

[Joe Z]

Fred.....
How do you get that $40 goverment coupon?______ Sound like you got much better television reception after getting that digital converter which sounds interesting to me.
thanks for any info.
Joe

Update: I found where to get it and will apply for two myself:
https://www.dtv2009.gov/