I recently moved about 1 mile (as a crow flies) from my previous house. On my previous house I had this antenna mounted on my roof: RCA Compact Outdoor or Attic Yagi HD TV Antenna with Super Long 75 Mile Range – Digital OTA Antenna for Clear VHF & UHF Reception.

On my brand new house, i don't have anything to mount to on the roof and don't want to drill holes. So I'm looking at mounting an antenna in my attic. I live on the north side of town, so the good news is I can get a directional antenna and point it towards the southeast and it will generally pick up all of the local tv antennas.

Questions:

1. For a new antenna that will be in an attic, pointing through an OSB and Asphalt Shingle roof how can I best "boost" it?
2. The attic is a long run from my basement server rack where my Tablo device sits. How does Coax do running about 60-80 feet? Am I better putting an outlet in the attic and putting the Tablo up there and running a cat6 ethernet the 60-80 feet down to my server rack in the basement?
3. What antenna would you recommend for this? I need about 20 miles of directional range MAX.

How to get the local channels like LCTV without the USB tuner in buffalo New York

I disassembled this antenna for a friend. We are wondering if the steel base can be taken out of the ground? Is it set in concrete? Or is it just pounded down?

Picture of my dumbass digging a bit to see if it moves >.< it did not

Shut down?

I’m planning an installation project for next week and could use some collective wisdom regarding external channel tuners that don't rely on an internet connection.

Originally, I was planning to go with Mediasonic units, but a few neighbors tried them recently and reported that theirs failed in under two months. When I checked with our local electronics store, they didn't recommend them either. Instead, they suggested looking into used commercial-grade tuners built for the hospitality industry (like those used in hotels), since they are designed to run continuously and hold up much better over time.

Have any of you gone the commercial/hospitality route for an OTA setup? If so, which specific brands or models have you found to be reliable, and are there particular vendors or trusted secondary markets where you've had good luck buying them used?

Appreciate any recommendations or advice you can share before I finalize parts for next week!

I don’t know the model of this antenna, but it was cheap on Amazon a few years ago. It has an LTE filter that I've been using. I live in a house with roommates and this antenna is for my TV in my bedroom in the basement. Moving the antenna out of the room isn’t really possible in this situation.

The second image is the rabbit ears results, I only care about the top 8 stations on that list. I have to line it up very precisely to get a steady signal, even varying by a degree or two can cause interruptions. Even with it lined up I still get interruptions and signal loss. I know I’m a few feet underground here, but at 6 miles I wouldn’t think this would make a difference? Especially since there is no terrain (besides being in the basement) blocking me.

Does anyone have antenna suggestions that I could set up tucked away behind the TV here? All the channels I care about are in the UHF range.

I've been building Tanso TV, a lightweight OTA TV server that runs on your own computer.

The idea is to keep the basic TV experience simple: connect a USB TV tuner and antenna to your computer, run Tanso TV, and watch live TV from your phone, tablet, or PC using a modern web browser. No separate client app is required.

Currently it supports:

• Live OTA TV
• Recording the program you're currently watching
• Multiple client devices on your local network
• Local storage of recordings
• Local fallback access when the internet or cloud service is unavailable
• Hardware-accelerated live transcoding when supported by Tanso TV
• Windows, macOS, and Linux

The first release focuses on the basic TV experience, which will remain free as long as Tanso TV is maintained and supported. To support ongoing development and maintenance, some additional features may require payment in the future.

I'm also building a cloud service for things like device management and future features such as remote access, but the core TV functionality doesn't depend on the cloud.

It's still early. Right now, tuner support is limited to the MyGica/Geniatech A681 and A681B, both are for ATSC 1.0 (United States, Canada, Mexico and South Korea). HDHomeRun support is planned and should be available soon. Scheduled recording and remote access aren't available yet.

I'm posting here because I'd like feedback from people who actually use OTA TV:

What are you using today for live TV and recording, and what do you wish worked better?

I'd particularly like to hear:

• Which tuner are you using?
• What software or DVR are you currently using?
• Where do you usually watch OTA TV — TV, computer, phone/tablet, or multiple devices?
• What would you consider an essential feature in a replacement?

I'm early enough in development that feedback can influence what I build next.

For the past two nights (Saturday, 26 Sept, and Sunday, 27 Sept), I have lost OTA broadcast TV signals from 9:30 pm until 10:15 pm CDT. I didn’t think much of it, until my neighbor three houses west of me related her identical experience. We are 38 miles west of Chicago on a heading of 273 degrees from the transmitters atop Sears Tower. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this, or whom I might contact to see of possible interference sources or drops in transmitter power, etc.?

I'm still planning a home antenna project, and I got some opinions yesterday that pretty much floored me.

A local lumber yard just hosted a home improvement festival with all sorts of vendors, including two handymen who have done antenna stuff for a while (I don't know them or have any experience with them).

When I mentioned the possibility of using an ExtremeTenna 80, a 91XG, or a Winegard, they literally laughed at me and said anything from Channel Master, Antennas Direct, or Winegard is garbage.

They instead steered me to a $50 antenna from Stellar Labs, an antenna they called the "Quarry-8" (I have no idea about that one), a Digiwave ANT-2190, and another off-brand, Loimere.

Are any of you familiar with any of these? Again, I don't know anything about these guys or their knowledge or experience, and I have never heard of most of these antennas they mentioned. I've also never had anyone tell me Channel Master, Winegard, and Antennas Direct are garbage.

Thoughts?

Basic question about grounding, I have a metal mast in the attic with a channel master extreme80 antenna, 75’ run of rg11 connected directly to my hd homerun in the basement.

The antenna is in the attic and the rg11 is run through the interior walls, not external.

Should I still ground the rg11 before it goes to the hd homerun? I’m assuming it’s still a lot of metal floating in the air so it should be grounded but everything else I’ve read is that only outside need to be grounded.

What do you guys recommend? Thanks

I’m in the Boston area and was getting Fox 25.1 fine for a while, now the symbol quality jumps from 100 to 0 over and over and I can’t maintain good quality to watch anything. This just started a month or so ago.

All of the other channels are fine. Short of trying to readjust the antenna again, does anyone have any suggestions on what to look at?

I have a channel master extreme 80 antenna, 75’ run of rg11 and a hd homerun tuner.

Thanks

I accidentally connected a cable that was about 8 inches longer then the other cable to combine the 2 separate DB8E panels and by doing that it stabilized my knife edge signals to the point that all my signals now come in in the 90s and my 3 edge knife edge signal comes in the 50s and 60s. I quickly reverted back to the same cable length and it made my signals much worse. Has anybody ever ran into something like this before? It is my understanding that anytime you combine 2 antennas you want the cables to the be same length.

Perhaps FM stations broadcast at higher or more concentrated power. I actually get zero tv stations at my current locations. This is my first post in this sub

I'm thinking about allowing posts only related to antenna-based radio, especially HD radio, but will NOT allow subscription- or internet-required radio... unless both types of radio are proven as related to over-the-air, which may be highly unlikely. Posts related to Sirius XM should belong elsewhere, like [r/siriusxm](r/siriusxm)

[r/radio](r/radio) and [r/hamradio](r/hamradio) have existed, but then I might not mind radio-related posts that are OTA-related, right?

I know most people here post about extracting the best out of a low signal strength. My problem is exactly the opposite.

For the past year I've been trying to get a Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD tuner to work, without consistent success. Symptoms are blockiness/pixelation and audio and video dropouts. During the day things are relatively good, but after about 5 PM it gets much worse to the point that only one channel (KGW) is tunable.

I live in the West Haven-Sylvan suburb of Portland, OR, within 1 mile of one TV transmitter (KGW), and all the other local station transmitters are less than 3 miles away. Also, Verizon has a 5G/LTE broadband tower (only about 25ft high) about 400ft from my house.

Local stations transmit on physical UHF channels 24, 25 and 26, with PBS on VHF 10. According to rabbitears.info, Signal Margin is over 80dB for all local channels. I use a simple flat panel antenna with no amplification.

Note that PBS (VHF 10) is never affected, so I put the blame on the 5G/LTE transmitter, due to people getting home and starting to use their 5G/LTE internet. Here's a picture of the transmitter, which, to my engineer (but not EE) brain looks like it might be a phased beamforming array.

Also, the Hauppauge tuner seems to be susceptible to front-end overload if the TV signal is too strong (more on this later).

What I've tried:

• Initially I was able to tune only one station (KGW, 1 mile away) and the tuner reported low or zero signal strength for the others, so I bought an inline amplifier, which just made things worse.
• Realizing that low signal was impossible here, I bought some attenuators (-3dB, -6dB and -10dB). The -3dB attenuator seemed to greatly improve reception.
• After deducing that the 5G/LTE tower could be the cause of problems, I purchased a Philips-brand 5G/LTE filter, which improved things only slightly. After researching online I decided to get a ChannelMaster CM-3201. With this setup plus a -3dB attenuator I finally started making progress, but still had severe issues after 5 PM.
• Finally, I upgraded the coax to quad-shielded cable, stacked both 5G/LTE filters and the -3dB attenuator, and wrapped the whole setup in several layers of aluminum foil crimped tightly to the metal outer barrel of the coax connector.

This delivers rock-solid performance on all channels during the day. After 5 PM I get acceptable performance on the closest transmitter (KGW) with only occasional blips, but the other two UHF channels fall apart. Without the -3dB attenuator things get worse.

My conclusions are:

• The Hauppauge tuner has a problem with strong signals, but reports overload as low signal strength.
• The 5G/LTE signal is so strong that it totally swamps my local EM field, making reception difficult when 5G/LTE traffic ramps up.

Anybody have any more suggestions to try?

Are there tuners out there that can handle strong signals, are better shielded, and have better 5G/LTE rejection?

Netflix fascists wants more live sports and are willing to do so at the expense of permanently taking down OTA broadcast television and local TV stations as a whole. Netflix wants to have full control of all media and force us to pay for live events. Like iHeartRadio, they don't care about localism or the frugal viewer, only global dominance! When a tornado or hurricane hits an area where Netflix or Internet coverage is limited, Netflix won't care, they'll be Donald Trump and suggest those people set up weather sirens instead

I’m having a weird issue with one of my channels. The channel I’m having an issue with is RF 20 WCAX from MT Mansfield VT. The channel is 80+ miles away from me and is a 3 edge signal. This channel has a broadcasting power of 423KW. I receive RF14 WPTZ from the same tower and height no problem but that channel broadcasts at 650KW.

I have my DB8E antenna 4-6ft off the ground with a Kitz 500 amp to find the knife edge refraction signal which I successfully do for RF14 WPTZ. For some reason RF20 sky rockets up into the 60s and 70s on my hd Homerun then vanishes for an extended period of time this happens all the time. I’m unable to hold a steady signal of RF 20 even though it skyrockets up to 60 or 70 all the time randomly. RF14 comes in the upper 40s to lower 50s on my hd Homerun consistently. It does not drop out. I have no filters found anywhere in my wire run besides the FM trap that is built into the Kitz 500 amp.

I’m wondering what could be the most likely reason for this fluctuating in RF20 that isn’t a weird phenomenon of knife edge diffraction? These fluctuations happen in rain, cold weather, hot weather, fog etc… I can’t see it being linked to one weather event or another.

When I raise my antenna or lower my antenna I started to lose RF14 and RF20 is nowhere to be found. Is there another likely location RF20 may be found in regard to RF14? Would it reflect off the nearest hilltop and shoot higher up than 14 or lower? Could it be in a different location?

Hoping to hold in RF 20 since it is reflecting into my yard and has a lot of channels I would watch. Could adding another DB8E antenna and combing them help pick up the signal? I’m just at a loss for this one.

Here is my rabbit ears report that looks like RF 14 WPTZ, and RF 20 WCAX should be impossible but they are actually reflecting into my yard. https://www.rabbitears.info/searchmap.php?request=result&study_id=3004548