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Thinking of getting an HD antenna
I wasn't sure if this should go in ~tech or ~tv. Feel free to move if it's more appropriate over there.
I am planning to cut the cord soon and get rid of cable TV. I have an older TiVo Premiere that's rarely over 5% full. I'd like to get an indoor HDTV antenna to connect it to for those rare occasions when we want to watch something live, or record something off broadcast TV. I know next to nothing about HDTV antennas, though. I see that BestBuy carries them for prices from ~$20 to ~$120. I'd like one that works well and can be kept out of sight. (I've read some can even be painted over!) Does anyone have any recommendations or any things I should be aware of in getting one?
The first thing you should know is that there is no such thing as an "HD antenna". It's a marketing term that doesn't matter.
There are different designs for antennas that are more or less efficient, but frankly it's hard to find any useful information on most consumer antennas. So I do things as simply as possible: basically, the bigger the better. The best antenna you will ever get is a large aerial antenna on your roof, followed by an attic antenna pointed at whichever TV station is most important to you. At the bottom of the list is the indoor antennas you will find at home goods stores.
There is no difference between an antenna which can get NTSC (analog) TV signals and ATSC (digital) TV signals. There is a large overlap between the signal frequencies.
Granted, there are specialized antennas that are better at picking up certain frequencies, but then we are talking about RF engineering and that is black magic as far as I'm concerned. In any case, most TV antennas on the market are generally not engineered anywhere near that well.
I'm in a large city with lots of stations. According to the map that @tomf supplied, I'm directly southwest of the majority of antennas in my area, and south east of a couple more. (It's ocean to the south and west of me, so no stations in those directions.) I won't be putting anything on the roof, but I do have an attic I could put an antenna in.
Where do you recommend finding a decent attic antenna?
As long as you're that close and have some line-of-sight to the antenna (in other words, no big hills blocking the way) almost any antenna will do. Here's the list of best-sellers on Amazon, for example.
You don't need a big attic-mounted set at that range, any of those "flat" antennas will do (and they can be painted, like you mentioned).
If you want, you can get one that includes a small USB-powered amplifier. If your TV is recent it probably includes a USB power output on the back, which can power the amplifier. That would marginally increase your reception of any far-away signals from antennas outside your city, and perhaps improve reception a bit in stormy conditions. It may or may not improve reception of the nearby antennas under ideal conditions (unlike analog TV signals, digital signals either come in perfectly or not at all, so there's little to no benefit on picture quality of having a bigger antenna than you need).
If you did want to go further and get a serious one that can be mounted in the attic, you'll want to look at Yagi style antennas. It probably wouldn't make any meaningful difference in TV picture quality, but it might be a fun home improvement project while quarantined. It would also probably let you pick up broadcasts from other cities or low-power antennas, if you're into that sort of thing.
OK, good to know! Thank you so much for your help!
To be honest, it's been such a long time since I bought an antenna that I can't recommend anywhere.
I think the last antenna I bought was in Radio Shack.
It depends where you live, but a site like https://www.antennaweb.org can help you predict which channels are available to your location.
TheJorro's suggestion is about the same price or cheaper than building your own antenna. :)
quick edit: http://forum.tvfool.com/index.php
Very useful! According to the first link, I'm fairly close to dozens of stations.
Nice! There are a few sites like this. tvfool had a great tool, but it isn't working for me.
If you have an Android device, Digital TV Antenna is a good first step into seeing what you can expect to get in your area in the first place. Even in the middle of a city, you can be drastically affected by what direction you point your antenna because of all the tall buildings reflecting the signals. It will at least give you an idea of how much to expect.
For myself, a cheap flat Amazon antenna works just fine since I am in the middle of a city. I could probably get more channels with a better antenna but it turns out I watch TV broadcasts so rarely that I only ever used it to watch the Good Place live, and that's finished airing so I'm not sure when I'd ever use it again.
Thank you very much for the links! I, too, am in the middle of the city and it looks like there are about 60 channels within 30 miles of me, so I should be good with something simple and cheap.
So, if you want to save some money, call your local TV stations and ask if they have any antennas. When I worked for a local television affiliate we had dozens of very high quality antennas in the corner of our studio that we would give out for free to people if they called complaining that their signal was weak.
Interesting idea! I never would have thought about that. Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks to @TheJorro, @tomf, and everyone else who chimed in on this!
So I finally did this. Hooked it up today and it's working! I got a flat in-house antenna from Best Buy and it seems decent. I had to re-setup my TiVo to work with both the antenna and the cable, but once I did that it was fine. (I'll be cancelling cable soon, but I figure while I've got it, I'll keep it hooked up.)
So in doing this, I realized that I know nothing about how modern over-the-air TV works because I've literally been using cable for 25+ years. Apparently there are multiple channels per channel number. There's like channel 65-1, 65-2, 65-3, etc. I have no idea what any of that means, but luckily with a DVR you don't have to know any of that. It just finds the shows and records them. But it does strike me as being really technical for something as basic as television. I guess most people are probably just watching video over the Internet (and admittedly, the vast majority of what I watch is over the Internet as well), so it's probably irrelevant to most people.
Anyway, thanks! I can still watch the Super Bowl or the Oscars or whatever, and still cut the cord.
that's awesome! OTA is underrated (depending on your location.)
How many channels in total did you end up with?
I haven't counted, but it's quite a few. I don't get every one, but it looked like there must be at least a hundred or more listed. I didn't do any real tuning of the direction my antenna is facing, so it's possible I could get more with better placement.
whoa! that's pretty great. Where I am we only get the basics -- which still cover a lot of ground.
Nice work!
The first number is the old-fashioned bandwidth channel; it determines what frequency your tuner is set to listen on. From there on, digital transmissions are so much more bandwidth-efficient than the old analog standard that we can fit multiple video streams within it. I'm sure you've noticed that there are a lot more OTA channels now than before.
Also you don't really need a Tivo. ATSC supports broadcasting TV guide info.
Yeah, I was really surprised that things like the Home Shopping Network have OTA channels! I thought that was a purely cable phenomenon.
Well, I like to record things so I can watch them when it's convenient and skip ads, so I need something to do that. But that's pretty cool to know!
We bought the first one we found at BestBuy or WalMart for like $20, and it's worked great for local TV. It gets crackly when the weather's bad, but I assume they'd all do that. We're also in a pretty flat part of the country, though, which means YMMV.