Dish or DirecTV

[JustinG]

Whatever you think you can get away with, get the next size up. I have the amazon basics 25 mile, and wish I had gotten the amplified 50.

[WRXtranceformed]

Nice thanks for the suggestions. Yeah if I was enterprising I could probably figure out how to wire an external antenna into our home's media box and just run cables from the walls but it took 3 different DirecTV crews to figure out how to do it and I don't think I have the desire :lol: I was looking at the 35 mile or 50 mile amplified and will probably just hang them somewhere inside each room where you can't see them (behind the TV or connected to our entertainment center). Hopefully the signal is fine, otherwise I can scoop some longer coax and try one mounted in a window I guess.

We have one right now in our guest room I got at Walmart and it's sitting on the floor providing a fine signal

[HAULN-SS]

Make sure to get one that picks up VHF and UHF. Different TV stations do different broadcasts, and you'll get more options if you get an antenna that does both. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.antennapoint.com/">http://www.antennapoint.com/</a><!-- m --> will tell you what's near you

[HAULN-SS]

FYI if you had satellite, i'm sure the coax is still in your place. They just ran the coax into a splitter somewhere in the house that has one or two ins, and however many outs. You can just hook your antenna into the outside cable, and run the coax from the wall into the ANT portion of the back of your TV

[.RJ]

Lee, I've had poor luck with the antennas hooked up to the TV. Unless your TV is right next to a Window with clear sight in the direction of the TV stations, you are probably not going to do any better - and if you have multiple TV's that means multiple antennas...

FYI if you had satellite, i'm sure the coax is still in your place. They just ran the coax into a splitter somewhere in the house that has one or two ins, and however many outs. You can just hook your antenna into the outside cable, and run the coax from the wall into the ANT portion of the back of your TV

I am hoping this is the case in my house - there's a dish of some sort on the roof. I just need to get up there and see what's going on.

[WRXtranceformed]

Hrmmm I looked off of our deck but I will have to go outside again and see what the hookups look like coming from the DTV dish. They would have to be coax I would assume, but they looked a lot larger than that.

[Evan]

it took me a year of constant calling to get a cablecard charge taken off my FIOS account after I cancelled it mailed it back to them in the box they provided. And now they are refusing to refund me the year of charges.

Id boot them to the curb but Cocks and Comcast are even worse, and Im not messing with satellite dishes (and having to buy internet separate anyway)


Lee keep in mind that most small square antennas are really only good at UHF (even if they say VHF too) which was fine since the early days of broadcast HD most channels were UHF. BUT since the analog switch over, a lot of stations have moved to the VHF channels previously occupied by the analog channels. (antennaweb will tell you)
VHF takes a big antenna, rabbit ears or a yagi.
if you are in fact mostly UHF, you are still going to want a big bowtie with reflector if you are 30 miles out.

if you can mount either in your attic you are going to be much better off than something propped on your tv

[HAULN-SS]

Oh yah - I had one of those flat panel antennas. I think I got about..7 channels on a good day. Mounted the VHF/UHF real deal antenna outside about 4 feet off the ground facing DC and got about 40 channels..def pays to do it right if you're going to do it. I'd probably have gotten more if I had wanted to mount mine on the roof but I'm funny about mounting shit directly to the house. Antenna itself is about 4 square feet in size or less

[.RJ]

Mounted the VHF/UHF real deal antenna outside about 4 feet off the ground

WV state flower :lol:

[JPolen01]

Mounted the VHF/UHF real deal antenna outside about 4 feet off the ground

WV state flower :lol:

Installing an antenna in your yard has to be even more redneck than mounting it the house. :thumbup:

[HAULN-SS]

I mean, i used the same pole that DirecTV used, and its probably less noticeable..soooo..good try.

[WRXtranceformed]

Been reading a lot about an external antenna and there is a lot that goes into it, I'll have to remove the DTV splitters in line it looks like and add a few other splitters. I did see an imgur link where some guy from reddit turned his directv dish into an ota receiver and all of the hardware worked so I might try that. The big problem I have is that the side of our townhouse where the external cables are located is facing in the exact opposite direction of all of the local channels. No matter what I could be fighting an uphill battle with reception.

I plugged a cheap GE ota antenna I had in my office into the living room TV and got 6 channels so it's right on par with what you guys were getting.

[Apoc]

Just run a coax under your gutter from one side of the house to the other.

[WRXtranceformed]

Weeeeelll our townhouse is 3 stories tall and I don't have a ladder tall enough nor the desire to find one and scale it to those heights to do it :lol:

An easier button might be to unplug the DTV dish outside and extend its coax around to another part of the deck that would let me point an antenna in the signal direction. It would still be pointing into the backside of another townhome but maybe better than facing southeast when the signals are all coming from N / NW.

The good news is that I plugged the indoor antenna into the wall jack that the DTV guy "activated" as an input into our home media box and it successfully sent signals to my man cave TV and I am assuming the rest of the coax outlets inside of the house. That bypassed all of the former incoming DTV cables, splitters etc. but at least I know that portion would work assuming I could get a better signal into the home. I thought this whole process would suck but it's actually kind of fun for me to brainstorm. Just pointing the indoor antenna in the general direction of the signals let us pick up 11 instead of 6 channels.

[Apoc]

Weeeeelll our townhouse is 3 stories tall and I don't have a ladder tall enough nor the desire to find one and scale it to those heights to do it :lol:

Just pay someone.

[WRXtranceformed]

Haha meh...

As the first step I took the easiest route and snagged an amplified indoor antenna on Amazon (50 mile range). There aren't a ton of stations to pick up in this area so if it gets most / all of them I'll be set. I can route it directly into our media box so it's like, super easy button. If reception sucks I will send it back and start experimenting with external antenna~

[WRXtranceformed]

So a little trial and error in antenna placement this evening and we went from 9 channels to 31! Crazy how the sound and picture quality is noticeably better than the DirecTV was. I need to pick up a male to male connector and a splitter and I should have the whole house wired up through our home network box!

On a side note, DirecTV called me the other day and tried to say that they never received the box of hardware I mailed back to them 2 weeks ago. Fortunately I still have a copy of the return label and, no joke, I took a picture of me boxing up the stuff and told the rep I could email it to her if she wanted. She seemed really surprised and said not to worry that I wouldn't be receiving any more calls. So glad to wash my hands clean of that shady company.

[JustinG]

Same deal for me regarding directv. Tried to say I owed em $300 bucks for unreturned equipment. Told em the tracking info and that it was marked as delivered so not my fucking problem.

[JPolen01]

So a little trial and error in antenna placement this evening and we went from 9 channels to 31!

What channels are you getting?

[WRXtranceformed]

All of the local networks for both Charlotte and SC (NBC, Fox, ABC, etc.) plus Fox Sports (whatever channel had the World Cup game last night), some random ones that don't exist on cable/dish like LAFF, some channel called Grit that is awesome and only shows guy movies like stuff with Chuck Norris in it, QVC, a few local religious channels, NC and SC public TV (PBS affiliate maybe), several UNC TV channels. I am probably missing one or two in there but it is nuts how many more channels it picked up just by moving it 5 feet to the right. It's enough that I am not going to bother trying to wire something up outside. I also have a FiOS login in case I ever need to watch sports like golf tournaments that don't end up on the big networks, or any of the few shows I used to watch