best rooftop antena?

dave shepard

This weekend my wife and I desided to upgrade to HD Directv. We went with the Total choice plus W/HBO we are not in the right area to recieve local channels for 4 rooms and a monthly rate of $60.99 for the first 6mo.'s then $70.99 for the last 6mo.'s. Our cable with 1 HBO would have been $76.00 mo. and not even in stereo to boot. I was wondering if anybody has any opions on another place to look into rooftop antenas other then RS or are they the best place to get one? In the past I have gotten them and put them up (for parents when they lived in FLA) and thought that it worked good but was wanting to look at others before getting one. The one channel we watch is Fox from Cleve., OH (70mi away). Are there any better ones that can reach out further then the best RS model?

Thanks

Dave

stevew14

Dave,

I got the most expensive vhf/uhf RS had at the time. I had tried just the uhf, as that is what most digital local channels are broadcast on. It was much cheaper and worked quite well (when mounted high up on the roof). However my PBS digital channel was the only one that was broadcast on a vhf frequency, so I took the uhf back and bought their biggest combo. It works great! I am about 70 miles from the broadcast towers for most of my locals, and it picks them up fine. Even when the Direct TV signal breaks up sometimes, I can usually count on my OTA reception. I forget what I paid for the antenna and mast, I think it was on clearance or something. I want to say it was about 70.00.

There may be better choices, but I think if you get the longest range you can find, Radio Shack should be just fine.

wlrandall

http://www.winegard.com/

danger boy

i use one of these for OTA HDTV Terk TV55

not to big and it's easy to mount. so far it's working pretty good.

nebborjk

There is no such thing as a HDTV antenna. Any UHF/VHF antenna will receive both analog and digital signals.

wlrandall

Originally posted by nebborjk
There is no such thing as a HDTV antenna. Any UHF/VHF antenna will receive both analog and digital signals.

No there is not...BIG marketing scam. All of the HD channels fall into the existing UHF/VHF bands.

dave shepard

Thanks guys,
I have put up twice for parents (baaad Fla. storm knocked it down) the biggest one RS had for recieving Orlando stations from Edgewater (near Daytona) and it did it very well. I didn't know if there was an even better one but RS will probably be good enough.
One more thing if I do put one up can I hook it it the sat. dish (like the add-on OTA atenna for sat) and get the recievers to show the channels on the guide?

Thanks again

Dave

nebborjk

Yes. Your program guide will show your local channels from both DirecTV and OTA. You will need to run the "search for channels" feature on the STB. Also, note that you will probably have 3 or 4 different listings for each of the big 4 stations.

Example: (my CBS is channel 12)

Ch. 12 - DirecTV
Ch. 12 - ANT.
Ch.12.1 - ANT Digital (the HDTV Station) this channel is remapped from its actual channel of 31.
Ch. 12.2 - ANT, Weather radar loop

NOTE: Some PBS Stations are running up to 6 sub channels.

dave shepard

Thanks I was hoping That would be the case. It would have ended up being one more PITA button to push to watch something else if that wasn't.

Thanks

Dave