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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

hd antenna?

Brandon Fraley

Brandon Fraley

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As some of you know, I've been hunting for the right HDTV for my father, and today he told me he went out and bought an HD antenna. I thought that was cool, as I have a friend who uses an HD antenna and the signal looked great. However, apparently the antenna connects via coaxial cable, and looking at the specs for the TVs we were looking at, neither of them say they have coax input.

How does this work?

THANKS! :)
 
All HD sets with ATSC tuners have 75 ohm coax antenna inputs.
 
"HD" antennas are a scam. Radio waves are radio waves. I have been using a 25+ year old antenna that gets digital just fine.

If the sets you are looking at doesn't have a cox input, then they are just an HD monitor because they don't have a ATSC tuner.

Matthew
 
Matthew Rogers said:
If the sets you are looking at doesn't have a cox input, then they are just an HD monitor because they don't have a ATSC tuner.

Matthew
Click to expand...

thats what I thought, but both sets have analog and digital tuners, and both say they have ATSC, but neither list coax inputs. whats up with that? is the coax just a given so they decide not to list it?
 
Brandon said:
thats what I thought, but both sets have analog and digital tuners, and both say they have ATSC, but neither list coax inputs. whats up with that? is the coax just a given so they decide not to list it?
Click to expand...

The standard for tuners input in cox, so they must just not list it. I've never see HDMI or component HD used for coming into a tuner before. You've got to remember that engineers and marketing/design people don't think like normal people:)

Matthew
 
HD antennas

HD antennas

Brandon said:
... and looking at the specs for the TVs we were looking at, neither of them say they have coax input.
Click to expand...

Brandon

What model set are you looking at?

Also I take issue with Matt's contention that HD antennas are a scam. If the antenna is "tuned" to UHF channels 400-700Mhz (ch 14-51) then it is an HD antenna since thiese are the frequencies that digital and HD TV is broadcast over. An antenna that receives these frequencies is an HD antenna. I have used a Radio Shack $59 antenna for years in LA http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103085
Go to www.antennaweb.org and it will help you to decide the appropriate antenna. The distance from the transmitter and the location of the transmitters determines the proper style of antenna. In LA we just point the antenna to Mount Wilson and all the transmitters are in one place basically. Sure there is a lot of marketing crap out there but there is also science and engineering too :-)

Michael
 
chuck colburn said:
An atenna tune to UHF is a UHF antenna it has nothing to do with HD
Click to expand...

Chuck

To be clear, are you saying that a UHF antenna would not receive HD and digital over the air broadcasts? Not sure what "it has nothing to do with HD" means.

I guess to be completely accurate, currently while we have both legacy analog broadcasting AND digital (which includes HD) that stations chose UHF frequencies to not interfere with their VHF (2-13) channel designations.

Starting in February 2009 some stations in some markets will move their channels back to the original VHF designations.

I still recommend www.antennaweb.org for the complete story.The Radio Shack antenna I linked above will continue to work just fine since it handles UHF (current) and VHF (future) for digital broadcasts.

Michael
 
No what I'm saying is that an antenna be it a log periodic, long wire or whatever design that is tuned to a given wave length doesn't care if the signal is analouge, digital, FM, Am or whatever.
 
Michael, Chuck means that there is nothing different between an HD antenna and an analog antenna. Most antennas will cover both VHF and UHF (not all). You are correct about getting an antenna that will cover the distance between you and the tower. The biggest thing that I've found to help reception is to make sure you have a really good coax cable between the antenna and your set. A good tuner also helps!

Matthew
 
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