Antenna Sales Are Rising, In Another Sign of Churn In TV Watching (startribune.com)

Rick Schumann shares a report from Star Tribune: Twenty percent of homes in the U.S. use a digital antenna to access live TV, up from 16 percent just two years ago, according to Parks Associates market research in Texas. The Twin Cities has an even higher antenna percentage. Local antenna installers say business has been rising about 20 percent to 25 percent annually for several years. It's the eighth largest broadcast-only market in the country, with more than 22 percent of homes using antennas to get local TV, according to TVb.org, a local broadcast trade association. Duane, Wawrzyniak, owner of Electronic Servicing in Silver Lake, Minnesota, cites high TV bills every month for the increased antenna sales. According to the report, "In the Twin Cities and much of Minnesota, antenna users can receive 10 to 60 TV channels, often in high-definition quality, over the air at no expense."

You can check the DTV signals that are available at your location here.

Comments

How many are making their own antennas...

[Sooner Boomer]

versus buying one. I've made a bunch of Gray-Hoverman style antennas using foam board and foil tape (indoor use only, obviously). These pick up everything in my area and cost less than $5 each.

Re:How many are making their own antennas...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I've made a bunch of Gray-Hoverman style antennas using foam board and foil tape (indoor use only, obviously). These pick up everything in my area and cost less than $5 each.

I made one out of a piece of wood, six screws, some leftover # 14 wire from a house rewiring project, and a balun (also lying about).

The townhouse is within about a mile of the east end of the Dumbarton in silicon valley. Pretty much ALL the digital signals the FCC says are detectable in my area are on on of three towers: North San Jose on a hilltop overlooking the bay (and a naked-eye object from my front yard), Sutro Tower near the Castro in San Francisco, and one to the east, just over the hills (near Walnut Creek if I recall correctly)

Left off the reflector, since the SF and SJ towers are almost exactly opposite directions at my site. No reflector means I hit them both at about 3dB down from what I'd get from just one with the reflector present.

Did I need to put it on the roof? In the attic? Heck, no. I stood it up it behind the TV -and-audio cabinet on the ground floor of a two-story house. It works just fine right through the wall, insulation, orchard, neighbors' houses, etc. (Also through the TV console to hit San Francisco.) AND it gets the signals from the one over-the-hill in the middle. (Didn't really expect that.)

In fact the only thing it DOESN'T get is the last analog TV signal, a low-power channel-6 station south of San Jose, run by a church (mainly to broadcast their services to their shutins, from what I hear).

For those familiar with analog TV, the channel 6 FM audio carrier is just below the FM band, and many older FM radios will pick it up just fine. That's probably why they didn't go digital.

The Gray-Hoverman is a great (and open source!) design. And while digital TV doesn't carry quite as far as analog (because it suddenly dies when the signal-to-noise ratio overcomes the forward error correction), when you CAN get it it is either just perfect, or (if on the ragged edge) has the occasional freeze, while analog would be "receivable" but horribly corrupted by multipath ghosting and "snow" from noise.

PBS made a big mistake

[Bruce Perens]

Over the past few years, most PBS stations have sold off their broadcast licenses. You read that right, they no longer have a right to broadcast on the air. How are you still seeing them with your antenna? The PBS stations are renting sub-channels from commercial broadcasters. The way HDTV channels work, you can't tell by the channel number. But the result is that they can't broadcast with the bandwidth (resolution) they had before, and they can't broadcast all of the sub-channels they had before.

If you have cable, PBS stations can provide their full bandwidth to the cable head-end. But they no longer own that bandwidth to use over the air.

TV stations sell their licenses to make money. The mind boggles.

Re:PBS made a big mistake

[Trip Ericson]

This is false. I have no idea where this is coming from. There are about 20 PBS stations that sold spectrum in the 2016-2017 auction the FCC held to channel share, and considering there are hundreds of PBS stations out there, it's certainly not "most." And among those, most are not "renting" from commercial licensees.

The complete list of such stations and what they're doing follows:

KOCE Los Angeles, CA - shares on KSCI (commercial; no programming was lost)
KLCS Los Angeles, CA - shares on KCET (non-commercial)
KQEH San Jose, CA - shares on KQED (its PBS sister station, which was already airing its programming)
WEDY New Haven, CT - shares on WEDH (its PBS sister station, of which it was a 100% simulcast)
WXEL West Palm Beach, FL - shares on WPBT (its PBS sister station)
WUSF Tampa, FL - shares on PBS WEDU and sold the license to them
WYCC Chicago, IL - shares on PBS WTTW and sold the license to them
WCMZ Flint, MI - went off the air entirely; PBS remains on WTVS/WDCQ
WNJN Montclair, NJ - shares on WNJB (its PBS sister station, of which it was a 100% simulcast; no programming was lost)
WNJT Trenton, NJ - shares on WNJS (its PBS sister station, of which it was a 100% simulcast; no programming was lost)
WPBO Portsmouth, OH - went off the air entirely; PBS remains on WOSU/WKAS/etc.
WLVT Allentown, PA - shares on WBPH (commercial; no programming was lost)
WYBE Philadelphia, PA - shares on WBPH (commercial) and sold the license to WLVT
WVIA Scranton, PA - shares on WNEP (commercial; no programming was lost)
WRET Spartanburg, SC - shares on WNTV (its PBS sister station, of which it was a 100% simulcast; no programming was lost)
WVPY Front Royal, VA - shares on WVPT (its PBS sister station)
WMSY Marion, VA - station was already off the air for financial reasons
WSBN Norton, VA - station was already off the air for financial reasons
WVTA Windsor, VT - station will share on WVER, its PBS sister station of which it is a 100% simulcast, and will refill lost coverage with booster signals that are being built right now
WMVT Milwaukee, WI - shares on WMVS (its PBS sister station)

The vast majority of the above did not have any change in resolution. To the extent there's a change in bandwidth, newer encoders have better performance, and you cannot measure picture quality from bandwidth alone.