TV Antenna Testing

I purchased , not yet received a
SDW1850/17 Philips Programmable Antenna Rotator with Remote Control. Will I need one of these & seperate antennas for mulitple TVS.
Will each TV in the house need one to view different channels while two different TVs are being used?
Yes, I HAVE been to Antenna web. I have tested to confirm I will receive 8 channels with nothing more than an aluminum pole.

Here's the magic of how an antenna works. You stick it up on your roof...all the RF transmissions coming from the towers float through the air, hit the antenna, and the signal travels down the cable into your TV.

Unlike satellite, you don't have to do anything special..all you simply have to do is split your antenna line to as many TV's as you want. All the incoming signals are already there (it's similar to splitting a cable line in your house).

The Antena Rotator can only have one control...and this will likely be on the main TV. This has nothing to do with how the signal works EXCEPT that the thing rotates your antenna to tune in the best signal.

You can, in theory, split an antenna signal to as many TV's as you want up to a point that you've split it so much there's nothing left (splitting a signal causes signal loss). Each TV will indpendantly run. Your only issue is if someone on one TV wants to watch a channel that doesn't come in when the antenna is moved. Let me see if i can make it a bit easier.

You have one antenna with a rotator on your roof and let's say...6 TV's. Now, you can use signal splitters and hook those 6TV's up and each one will be able to watch a different channel...after all, all this thing is doing is grabbing all the airwaves and sending them down a coax line. Your issue arises in this. Let's say channels 1, 8, and 9 come in when it's turned the other and channel 4 for example has to be turned antoher direction. Well, if someone wants to watch channel 4 and someone wants to watch 8, that's about the only issue you'll have. Your antenna can only pick up in one direction..and your rotator will only use one controller.

so, for the sake of simplicity, no, you don't need anything special for your Tv's to watch different channels, just split to each TV...it's just fighting over the position of the antenna is likely to be your issue.

2008-04-21 10:12:08 by Pool Gal

Replacing lead-in cable, testing splitters and hints for best reception.

Just bought an HDTV (in the US), and would like to use the (old) existing roof antenna on my house. It has a flat wire, not coaxial. When I tested it years ago it didn't seem to help my reception.

I would like to know the following:
1. Is there a way to test existing cable/wire or should I just replace the wire?
2. Does it matter if I use the flat wire or should I use coaxial? (I could just use a converter at the end of the existing wire if the wire works).
3. I see people mentioning needing to ground the (coaxial) cable from the antenna, such as by using a grounding block. Does this mean the existing antenna (flat) cable is already likely grounded?
4. If I decide I need help, what type of professional do I call?

Note: I'm trying to access over-the-air, not cable-provided, HD signals.

Forget the 300ohm ribbon and use 75 ohm coaxial cable , coax is more versatile than ribbon as it can be run along walls or through rain gutters without further insulation, the talk about grounding is from theoreticians who have never actually seen a TV antenna close up !
Any competent antenna installer will be able to do the job easily !!!

2008-04-13 14:24:46 by mcnb

Bed room tv is only hooked up to indoor antenna but tv is New HD ready. What do I need to do?

First, it sounds as though you might have to improve your antenna system in some way. Digital TV is great if you are reasonably close to the broadcast towers but if you are in a rural area and the stations you want to receive are some distance away, a lot of people may not be happy with digital or at least they may have to upgrade their antenna in some way. Digital TV is much more unforgiving of a marginal signal. With digital TV, instead of seeing a snowy signal, you will get no signal at all.

Put your address in here and see what this site recommends for an antenna:

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.asp x

You then go on to say something about a "HD ready" TV. Sometimes that term is misused, but if you do really have a TV which is "HD ready", it means the TV does not have a tuner and so you can not hook an antenna up to it. You would need a cable box, a satellite receiver box, or at the very least, you will end up having to buy a tuner for this TV.

2008-12-28 18:21:06 by Kitty girl

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My TV gets terrible reception in my apartment. This weeks NOVA ran a story on fractals and interviewed a physicist who discovered fractal antennas by accident.

As a poor grad student he faced the same situation of lousy TV reception. His landlord wouldn't let him mount an outdoor antenna so he began experimenting by bending coat hangers into fractal shapes and testing their antenna properties. They worked great and he discovered how to make antennas with fractal shapes which were much smaller and gave much better reception than conventional antenna designs.

So does anyone know where I can find one of these fractal coat-hanger designs to replace my old rabbit ears?

I also am here because of NOVA. My 16 yr old son and I, using a pattern, board, nails and copper wire, built a Koch snowflake to the third iteration. When hooked up to our digital converter box we were able to pick up all that we were getting through our rooftop atenna with almost as much signal strength. It did not however, bring in any more than we were already getting. It also did not seem to do anything for our analog picture.

2008-11-01 15:27:18 by Quat

I purchased a TV w/digital tuner to prepare for the February conversion.
I was watching TV the other night, and got a failure message for one of the tests one of the networks was running.

Do I need a new antenna on top of my new TV?

The "failure message" just means that you were watching an analog channel.

Go into your TVs menu and have it scan for digital antenna signals. All TV's with digital (ATSC) tuners have a way to scan for digital channels. This should be covered in the owner's manual.

>Do I need a new antenna on top of my new TV?

Until you figure out how to get your new TV to scan for diigtal channels, it doesn't matter what antenna you have.

2009-01-27 14:03:58 by lankeyf