I was told you need a digital antenna to receive digital tv obviously not because I'm picking most channels up with an antenna that's like nearly 40years old.
I'm missing like 2 channels out of the 30 i can receive in the area so am i better to replace my antenna? is there any difference in an analogue to a digital? I can't see much difference anyway just by looking at them.
I'm missing like 2 channels out of the 30 i can receive in the area so am i better to replace my antenna? is there any difference in an analogue to a digital? I can't see much difference anyway just by looking at them.
I live out in the country about 30 miles from the local transmitters. I have a box full of old tv amplifiers and I used to have several analogue antennas. I used to enjoy Dx'ing tv stations and I tried just about any antenna/ preamplifier I could get my hands on. Satelite tv stopped all that stuff. Digital tv uses the same frequencies as analogue tv did, therefore the same antennas will work. When switching to digital, many tv stations changed to another frequency but used the same channel number. ie a local channel where I live that used to be on OTA (over the air) 4VHF is on digital 17UHF but it is still called 4.1 Go figure. With analogue it was possible to receive snowy or weak stations or turn the antennas till the picture was as good as possible. With digital, you either get the channel or you don't. There is no in between. It is possible that the station you wish to watch is a bit weaker, or further away or the transmitter is in a different location and you need to turn your antenna a bit and look for the station. You might also need a larger antenna. Find out the frequency of the station you need and where the transmitter is, then you can find the appropiate antenna. It is no good to buy an 8 bay bowtie antenna for UHF frequencies channels 14-65, when you might need one for low vhf channels 2-6. For some reason none of my old analogue tv rf amplifiers ( signal boosters) work well with the digital channels. The digital tuner seems to overload very easily and I get next to nothing. A good friend of mine used to be happy getting 8 snowy analogue channels at his cottage now he gets 0 digital. he is not happy.
Believe the Hype !!!!
You NEED a replacement antenna !!
That's if the 2 missing channels are important to you.
_____________________
We had the same story here in the UK.
You must change your antenna to receive a digital signal.
Remember the year2000 clock stories of planes crashing etc?
Or that you needed to change your loudspeakers to cope with 'digital' music from CDs?
Andy
You NEED a replacement antenna !!
That's if the 2 missing channels are important to you.
_____________________
We had the same story here in the UK.
You must change your antenna to receive a digital signal.
Remember the year2000 clock stories of planes crashing etc?
Or that you needed to change your loudspeakers to cope with 'digital' music from CDs?
Andy
Its ok to believe it, there is some truth to it.
There is actually a dead spot in most Yagi UHF antennas that are installed these days which doesn't necesserially cause any issues but will cause this issue as the OP has said, those 2 extra channels are within the dead spot, hence the hooplah around digital antennas which don't have this dead spot.
But its all rubbish that they put on anyway!!
Its also a good idea to give that 15 year old antenna a refresher if you live in an area that gets a lot of salt air or birds, And masthead amplifiers aren't exactly new either.
But if it works then don't fix it!
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The quick answer is that there is no such thing as a digital TV antenna.
The slow answer is that TV antennas were often very poor implementations of the brilliant Yagi-Uda design. They had lumpy patterns, lumpy frequency response and in most cases no balun so interference was picked up on the coax cable screen. Fotunately, analogue TV was fairly robust and offered graceful degradation.
Terrestrial digital TV has a more fragile signal and suffers from the digital cliff. It is particularly upset by impulse interference, such as that commonly produced by unsuppressed switches in household appliances. Cheap chinese SMPS can create a general RF mush in any modern house. 'Digital TV' antennas typically have wider bandwidth, smoother patterns and include at least a crude balun. When used with decent coax (which can be hard to find these days) they should give a more reliable TV experience, unless you are fairly near the transmitter when an old 'analogue' antenna will be good enough.
Basically a 'digital' antenna is just what any good TV antenna should always have been, but often wasn't.
The slow answer is that TV antennas were often very poor implementations of the brilliant Yagi-Uda design. They had lumpy patterns, lumpy frequency response and in most cases no balun so interference was picked up on the coax cable screen. Fotunately, analogue TV was fairly robust and offered graceful degradation.
Terrestrial digital TV has a more fragile signal and suffers from the digital cliff. It is particularly upset by impulse interference, such as that commonly produced by unsuppressed switches in household appliances. Cheap chinese SMPS can create a general RF mush in any modern house. 'Digital TV' antennas typically have wider bandwidth, smoother patterns and include at least a crude balun. When used with decent coax (which can be hard to find these days) they should give a more reliable TV experience, unless you are fairly near the transmitter when an old 'analogue' antenna will be good enough.
Basically a 'digital' antenna is just what any good TV antenna should always have been, but often wasn't.
Whats that ????
What nonsense, next theyll be trying to make the public believe in pigs that fly and whose meat therefore tastes better. All-out for a buck.
I saw the same situation in my country when we last year changed to digital TV.
The announcement was no tv without new antenna, I saw people running about paying upto 400 euros to get new antennas which were unnecesary in 99 % of the cases. The only ones that had to was a result of the closure of some repeater stations and needed more powerful antennas as the next station available was at further distances.
Digital TV often (at least in the UK) has channels spread over a wider frequency range than the careful planning which went into analogue. Analogue was planned on the basis of providing four high quality signals to almost all the population. Digital seems to be planned on the basis of getting as many channels as reasonably possible with vaguely acceptable quality to most people. Therefore it is more likely that digital will need a wider bandwidth antenna. In some cases this means a log-periodic rather than a Yagi. These are naturally wideband but have less gain so best for strong signal areas.
Double or triple length rabbit ears, standard balun, and an amp immediately after.
Make last foot or so (open ends away from balun) of lossy iron wire. And do not
use wire covered with insulation (close coupled dielectric will change the velocity).
I tie wrap mine to bamboo (A frame) every foot, so dielectric is mostly not touching.
So anyways, you want to lay this thing flat in your attic with no competing horizontal
wires, ducts or foil nearby, nor in the line of sight signal path. Vertical metal things OK.
The open (lossy) end you point at the stations with 30 to 45 degree spread, no wider.
The balun and amp face away from the stations.
This is a non-resonant UHF V antenna that picks up the entire band and all stations.
But the impedance is all over, even with balun it doesn't match 75 for all channels.
Thats why you need that amp close to the balun, to finish the impedance match.
So your cable doesn't favor stations with strong standing waves and omit others.
The amp must be close, so standing waves can't form.
It is directional toward the open end of the V. If you omit the lossy ends it will
pick up off the back too, but becomes a resonant dipole with standing waves.
The lossy open ends on the long rabbit ears are critical to picking up all stations.
The last foot of mine (#10 ground wire, not grounded obviously) is insulated.
Yeah I know I said don't do that, but its only the lossy last foot. And wrapped
a spiral of iron bailing wire such that it does not touch itself or the antenna.
Its important the spiral wrap not touch itself and make a toroid. That would
cut the antenna short, hard, and probably resonant off the reflection...
Anyways again: This works cause the speed of radio in air is slightly different
than speed of radio in the bare wire (insulated wire speed difference is too great).
Not because anything needs tuned to resonance. Resonance is not your friend.
Look you up Beverage, Longwire, V, and Rhombic for more theory...
Use a low noise RF amp for your antenna. Look for +10dB gain or less.
If it doesn't say, then assume it ain't low noise. Cable TV amps are too noisy.
You want a distribution amp AFTER your low noise amp, might be OK.
But I see too much noisy gain causing problems more often than too little.
Expect +12db directional gain from the antenna itself. KD5ZXG
Make last foot or so (open ends away from balun) of lossy iron wire. And do not
use wire covered with insulation (close coupled dielectric will change the velocity).
I tie wrap mine to bamboo (A frame) every foot, so dielectric is mostly not touching.
So anyways, you want to lay this thing flat in your attic with no competing horizontal
wires, ducts or foil nearby, nor in the line of sight signal path. Vertical metal things OK.
The open (lossy) end you point at the stations with 30 to 45 degree spread, no wider.
The balun and amp face away from the stations.
This is a non-resonant UHF V antenna that picks up the entire band and all stations.
But the impedance is all over, even with balun it doesn't match 75 for all channels.
Thats why you need that amp close to the balun, to finish the impedance match.
So your cable doesn't favor stations with strong standing waves and omit others.
The amp must be close, so standing waves can't form.
It is directional toward the open end of the V. If you omit the lossy ends it will
pick up off the back too, but becomes a resonant dipole with standing waves.
The lossy open ends on the long rabbit ears are critical to picking up all stations.
The last foot of mine (#10 ground wire, not grounded obviously) is insulated.
Yeah I know I said don't do that, but its only the lossy last foot. And wrapped
a spiral of iron bailing wire such that it does not touch itself or the antenna.
Its important the spiral wrap not touch itself and make a toroid. That would
cut the antenna short, hard, and probably resonant off the reflection...
Anyways again: This works cause the speed of radio in air is slightly different
than speed of radio in the bare wire (insulated wire speed difference is too great).
Not because anything needs tuned to resonance. Resonance is not your friend.
Look you up Beverage, Longwire, V, and Rhombic for more theory...
Use a low noise RF amp for your antenna. Look for +10dB gain or less.
If it doesn't say, then assume it ain't low noise. Cable TV amps are too noisy.
You want a distribution amp AFTER your low noise amp, might be OK.
But I see too much noisy gain causing problems more often than too little.
Expect +12db directional gain from the antenna itself. KD5ZXG
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The LNA is just an impedance matching crutch.
Purposed to make sure you get ALL channels.
Longwire V itself, picks up plenty of signal.
But you gotta get some crazy random impedance
down a 75ohm cable from the attic. A passive balun
alone isn't going to cut it for any random Z to 75...
An active device wil have flatter impedance out.
Receiving antenna don't need impedance matching
except to drive a transmission line. If the amp is right
there, mostly what matters is signal to noise ratio.
Popular in US? I'm the only one making that I know of.
I figure if the Professor can make a radio from a coconut,
I can darn sure make a non-resonant antenna out of
some bamboo and scraps of wire.
Anyone can bend a coat hanger and get some channels.
Every channel with nothing resonant to tune: DIY magic.
Its still directional, if not tunable, for good signal to noise.
If you got too strong signal, could use an attenuator in
place of the amp. Would still have (lossy resistive) effect
of terminating the head end of the cable better than the
antenna alone. You want the channels to all come out the
other end without standing wave complications.
You don't want the cable to become a resonant stub that
tunes the antenna so its not picking up all channels.
Purposed to make sure you get ALL channels.
Longwire V itself, picks up plenty of signal.
But you gotta get some crazy random impedance
down a 75ohm cable from the attic. A passive balun
alone isn't going to cut it for any random Z to 75...
An active device wil have flatter impedance out.
Receiving antenna don't need impedance matching
except to drive a transmission line. If the amp is right
there, mostly what matters is signal to noise ratio.
Popular in US? I'm the only one making that I know of.
I figure if the Professor can make a radio from a coconut,
I can darn sure make a non-resonant antenna out of
some bamboo and scraps of wire.
Anyone can bend a coat hanger and get some channels.
Every channel with nothing resonant to tune: DIY magic.
Its still directional, if not tunable, for good signal to noise.
If you got too strong signal, could use an attenuator in
place of the amp. Would still have (lossy resistive) effect
of terminating the head end of the cable better than the
antenna alone. You want the channels to all come out the
other end without standing wave complications.
You don't want the cable to become a resonant stub that
tunes the antenna so its not picking up all channels.
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Directional is important cause it cuts out reflections
off buildings from unintended angles. Those can be
confusing time delayed copies of the intended signal.
At the same frequency and similar strength, you can't
easily "tune" a ghost reflection out after your antenna
has accepted it.
You worst "noise" in "signal to noise" is usually this...
off buildings from unintended angles. Those can be
confusing time delayed copies of the intended signal.
At the same frequency and similar strength, you can't
easily "tune" a ghost reflection out after your antenna
has accepted it.
You worst "noise" in "signal to noise" is usually this...
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DIY HDTV ANTENNA!
I just make my own Hdtv antenna from the same plan of the diy hanger antenna from the youtube. I use a copper tube instead of the wire , I bought it from home depot.I'm telling you 60 miles from the tv transmitter where Im at it's still crystal clear baby! and I get more channels that I didnt know. I'm getting 45 local channels with out a drop out.
I just make my own Hdtv antenna from the same plan of the diy hanger antenna from the youtube. I use a copper tube instead of the wire , I bought it from home depot.I'm telling you 60 miles from the tv transmitter where Im at it's still crystal clear baby! and I get more channels that I didnt know. I'm getting 45 local channels with out a drop out.
The Vee antenna will probably have a fairly high impedance so a 2:1 or 3:1 transformer might match it (roughly) to coax downlead in a strong signal area. Not too easy at UHF though. I have heard of this antenna being used for Band2 FM in the US.
For UHF digital TV here I have a log-periodic in the loft for the main TV set. For a small TV in the kitchen I made a simple X antenna mounted on a wooden frame - somewhere between a bowtie and a (horizontal) skeleton biconical - it sits on top of a kitchen cupboard. I get a good TV signal so it is fine except when people move around!
For UHF digital TV here I have a log-periodic in the loft for the main TV set. For a small TV in the kitchen I made a simple X antenna mounted on a wooden frame - somewhere between a bowtie and a (horizontal) skeleton biconical - it sits on top of a kitchen cupboard. I get a good TV signal so it is fine except when people move around!
Have a diy 'designed to needs' antenna system with a rotator and requisite converter.
But in truth it works at it's best when in line of sight with the regional repeater source.
There are TV antenna Forums for this... where All the help, morale , design, and tweeking needed are readily available.
But in truth it works at it's best when in line of sight with the regional repeater source.
There are TV antenna Forums for this... where All the help, morale , design, and tweeking needed are readily available.
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