[mythtv-users] OT: ATSC "omnidirectional" antenna recommendations

[Roger H]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 6:06 AM, Mike Perkins
<mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk>wrote:

> On 08/11/11 04:45, Kingsley Turner wrote:
> > On 08/11/11 14:58, Joann Bessler wrote:
> >>> Finally bought a house after years of renting, and I want to do a
> one-time installation/adjustment of an antenna that will get me all my
> available OTA channels. I had done this earlier with a programmable indoor
> Radio Shack antenna. It usually worked, but required a lot of constant
> adjustment and calibration. I'd like to get something that won't have to be
> messed with. All my stations are "red," according to antennaweb, and are
> all within an arc of 8 degrees or so.
> >>>
> >>> Do people have "omnidirectional" antennas that are working well in a
> low-maintenance setup? Thanks!
> >> We built a modified Gray-Hoverman antenna following the instructions on
> Digital Home Canada here:
> >>
> >> http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186
> >>
> >> The learning curve wasn't too bad, and it was inexpensive (less then
> $50 all in, the second build was much less). We built the first as an
> experiment. It worked so well that we gave away our store-bought Channel
> Master and built another to give to the daughter and son-in-law.
> >
> >    From the website: "You have arrived at this page because your IP
> address
> > has beeen denied access to this website."
> > Nice.
> >
> Perhaps the (Canadian) website owners somehow think radio waves work
> differently
> in Australia...
>

I had the same problem with the Digital Home Canada (DHC) website when I
was on a business trip in China.  I gather they filter out large blocks of
IP addresses in an attempt to reduce the amount of spam on their forums.
It is true that the DHC website is focused on Canada and to a lesser extent
the United States and while the basic RF principles are the same, the
frequency bands used (and the politics regarding broadcast television) in
other countries are different.

Getting back to the original question, rather than using antenna-web (which
is extremely pessimistic and doesn't really give you that much useful
information), I recommended using TVFool instead.  Your choice of antenna
depends on what bands your local broadcasts are on.  In North America they
are VHF-LO (channels 2-6 or ), VHF-HI (channels 7-13) and UHF (now channels
14-51, was 14-69).  There was a misconception that DTV only uses UHF but
post transition, many stations have started using VHF-HI and a few (though
not many) are even using VHF-LO.

Roger
Ottawa, ON, Canada
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20111108/784cb0e4/attachment.html