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Best Terrestrial/OTA HDTV Setup For an Apartment?

Posted by kdawson on from the i-want-my-i-want-my dept.

thesandbender writes "I don't watch TV but keep an HTPC for watching movies. One of my relatives is very ill and I'll have a lot of family rotating through my apartment and I'd like to have a few more options for entertainment. I'm running Vista MCE and bought a Hauppauge HVR-1800 with a DB8 HDTV antenna and I've used AntennaWeb to point the DB8 in the best direction. The results have been terrible and I'm looking for recommendations / suggestions for hardware and setup. I am on the first floor of a three-story apartment building and I can't mount any external antennas (I know this is a major issue). Thankfully almost all the transmitters are located in the same place so a good, compact directional antenna might be effective. And please... no platform bashing. They all have their issues (I have a lot of h.264 encoded files... hardware/GPU acceleration on Linux is very, very limited at the moment)."

13 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Not enough gain? by ColaMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try a masthead antenna amplifier. Get a good quality one and (hopefully) it will help compensate for the god-awful frontend in your TV tuner.

    (Yes, I know masthead amps are really to compensate for long cable runs, but a low noise amp at the front upping things by 10-12dB is sometimes all it takes.)

    --

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    1. Re:Not enough gain? by Knackster · · Score: 5, Informative

      The low noise benefits of mast mounted pre-amplifiers are good. Remember that most ota hd channels are in the UHF range so get an amp with gain in that band. Also: Try www.tvfool.com for aiming. Lots more information available to use.

    2. Re:Not enough gain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've been watching terrestrial ATSC with an indoor antenna and a MythTV box for several years now. I agree -- amplification is key. In my case, I don't have the luxury of power near my antenna, so I just installed an inexpensive (~$25) powered amp near my PC, and it had a very positive effect. You can pick one up almost anywhere...you can even try the A/V section at your local Target/WalMart.

      Cabling to your antenna is also important if it's any distance from the PC. I recommend you keep it at least across the room from the PC, which can generate quite a bit of RF noise. Plus, the extra cable length will give you room to maneuver/aim your antenna. I suggest RG-59 (coax) as opposed to twisted pair. Again, you can get it cheaply at WalMart.

      For an indoor antenna, I use a small outdoor UHF-only antenna I got at Radio Shack for ~$25. (It's basically just the small front piece from a full-size rooftop antenna -- a ~3' "spike" in the middle of a V-shaped reflector.) It takes up some space, but works a lot better than indoor antennas I've tried.

      Lastly, it will take some amount of experimentation... AntennaWeb will give you a good idea where your local transmitters are, but indoor antennas are subject to lots of reflections and noise, so you might get better results by aiming the antenna a few degrees off of the "correct" orientation...left, right, or even vertically.

  2. Only solutions... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1- violate your lease and get your antenna higher.
    2- get cable tv.

    sorry but you cant find a magical antenna that will pull in signals without getting it off the ground. you have to get an antenna into the air and away from obstructions. you can try to get a pair of high gain UHF bowtie array antennas from wineguard or channelmaster, but those will look very ugly and take up 4 feet by 3 feet in your sliding glass door.

    --
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  3. Get satellite tv by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're in the US, you can tell the land lord to piss off, they can not stop you from getting a satellite dish. I had a similar problem with my HOA, and Fed law trumps HOAs and landlords.

    1. Re:Get satellite tv by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 5, Informative

      You only have the ability to do this when it comes to sticking a dish on your porch. You still don't have any rights to have the install guy go nailing a dish where ever it may be needed to get a signal.

      If your porch faces north or if there's no place on the porch to get a signal due to buildings or plants, you are still out of luck.

      The best thing he can do is just stick an antenna on the porch or in a window frame and hope for the best.

      Speaking of outdoor antennas, go to some place like Best Buy with a no-hassle return policy. Get a cheap model, try it, if it doesn't work, take it back and keep upgrading until you've got something that works. It's a nice way of doing a bit of experimenting on their tab. More expensive doesn't mean better, as I get all the local HD channels with a pair of rabbit ears hooked up to my setup.

      Nothing looks as cool as a $4200 panel with a $5 radio shack pair of rabbit ears stuck on top of it. :)

    2. Re:Get satellite tv by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Informative
      Section 207 of the Federal Communications Law of 1996: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/Orders/1998/fcc98273.pdf (PDF format). See Section 2 of the Introduction:

      In practice, under the amendment to our rules, renters will be able, subject to the terms of our Section 207 rules, to install Section 207 devices wherever they rent space outside of a building, such as balconies, balcony railings, patios, yards, gardens or any similar areas.

    3. Re:Get satellite tv by Flying+Scotsman · · Score: 4, Informative

      47 C.F.R. Section 1.4000.

      Read more about it here. The rule applies to "video antennas including direct-to-home satellite dishes that are less than one meter (39.37") in diameter (or of any size in Alaska), TV antennas, and wireless cable antennas."

      There are some restrictions. For example you aren't guaranteed the right to mount your dish/antenna on a common area such as a roof or a wall. However, balconies and patios are fair game. As another poster else-thread mentioned, if your unit faces north, you're pretty SOL as far as dishes go.

  4. You may not be able.... by jeiler · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...to mount an external antenna, but you may be able to mount one inside a window. The glass should be more radio-transparent than the walls.

    I strongly recommend the HDTv Antenna Labs website: especially the HDTv Antenna Reviews.

    --

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  5. Re:I like your style, young man by AlterRNow · · Score: 5, Funny

    "hardware/GPU acceleration on Linux is very, very limited"

    As opposed to being a system requirement for the command line on Vista?

    :)

    --
    The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
  6. amplified antenna by greenrom · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you can find one, try to get an antenna with part number 15-1880 from Radio Shack. They've been discontinued, but your local store might still have one in stock or you might be able to find one on ebay. It's a simple indoor amplified UHF antenna and passive VHF antenna. I used it in an apartment surrounded by trees about 45 miles away from the towers and was able to get all the HD channels except CBS. CBS used VHF, that's why I couldn't get it. People on AVS forum rave about the antenna, and they were right.

  7. Stay away from Best Buy by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nearly all of the B&M electronics retailers sell absolutely horribly shitty antennas. (There are occasionally decent ones but it's RARE.)

    If you want to get a good antenna you need to go to a specialty store (likely online) or in many cases you'll have luck at home improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowes.

    Look for products from Channel Master or Winegard. Both make good antennas and preamps. There are a few other good brands but those are the two that come to mind first.

    If you fail with CM or Winegard - get cable. Unfortunately reliable terrestrial HD can be difficult. I don't even bother in my apartment. Everything else about your setup is fine, your OS makes no difference if reception is bad. Garbage in, garbage out.

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  8. Re:Idea by mpoulton · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you sure you don't need MONSTER CABLES?

    Joking aside, Lumpy is right. The connection between the antenna and the tuner is not a "wire", it is a "transmission line" -- an impedance controlled duct for RF energy. That's not BS, that's physics:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line

    The quality of transmission line used has a huge impact on received signal strength and signal:noise ratio if the cable run is long. RG6 quad-shield is sort of the standard for high-quality TV coax. RG59 is the other commonly available option, and is not really suitable for long antenna feedlines because of the high loss and poor shielding.

    Now Monster does produce some coax products, and apparently the real physics and engineering of RF transmission lines isn't "cool" enough for their marketing department, so they decided to spout a bunch of random buzzwords instead to ensure that they avoid any hint of legitimacy in their advertising.

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