OT-digital TV reception

On the farm, we can be watching a tv program one minute and the next the picture starts breaking up and finally disappears. The station can be "gone" for minutes, days or weeks then "magically" comes back. Turning the antenna doesn"t help. Weather doesn"t seem to be a factor either - still, windy, cloudy, raining or clear.

Anyone know what gives?

The antenna is 20+ ft high, but the trees have grown up around that end of the house where the antenna is located. Doesn"t seem to matter if the trees have leaves (spring/summer) or not (fall/winter).

We"ve been thinking about moving the antenna or getting a new one. Any advice?

I bought a new antenna from Amazon.com when the tornado took ours down couple of yrs. ago. I also bought a motorola amplifier to boost the signal strength. We get lots of channels with it now. Very pleased with "free" channels...

While its true moving the antenna may be required BUT I THINK I WOULD FIRST CHECK ALL THE CONNECTIONS AND WIRE FROM IT TO THE TV. There could be a break or short or corroded resistive connection somewhere.

Any chance you have or can get another piece of coax like RG 6 (assuming thats what you have instead of old twin lead 300 ohm) and rig it temporarily from the antenna to the TV and see what happens???

Any chance you have 300 ohm twin lead to matching 75 Ohm coax converters at the antenna or TV you can try a substitute to see if that helps???

Finally if the wire is good,,,,,,,,any 300/75 ohm adapters are all good,,,,,,,,the antenna and at TV connections are all good THEN ID TRY MOVING THE ANTENNA......

The adds talk about DIGITAL TV ANTENNAS but an old one (from analog days) or new (so called digital) is still basically the same thing ....

Do you have a digital TV or an old analog one requiring the converter box???????? If so the box may be at fault!!!!!!!!!

Connections,,,,,,,,,,wire/coax,,,,,,,,,,,adapters,,,,,,,,,,converter box,,,,,,,, Id try all that FIRST, but then maybe try moving the antenna

JohnT NOT a TV expert but thats my opinion and approach, hopefully other "TV" men can help

Just a weak reception on channels that you're lucky to be getting in the first place is my whole theory on it. We get one Fox station that's quite a ways away and I like to watch the 10 o'clock news on it because it's up near the cabin and it's not the Grand Rapids or Lansing media market where the local news comes from all day.
Last night,the wife said the whole channel disapeared from the selection. You could run up or down through the channels and the number wasn't even there. She asked if I wanted her to rescan it. I told her no,just turn it off and leave it alone for a little while. Turned it back on an hour later and it was back. I don't even pretend to know why.

Nancy........it aint'chur digital TV, ittz'chur eyeballs. (really) Heres the deal, in the OLD DAYS of analog TV, you'd gitta WEAK signal and the TV pic would gitt "fuzzy" and you'd just squint yer eyeballs some and watch ennyways. Now digital TV turns weak noisy signal into "blocks" and yer eyeballs can't un-block the picture.

There are many causes of weak TV signal including TREES. ...but... the secret cause of most weak TV signals is yer BAD TV co-ax signal cable. Surprizingly enuff, sunshine kills TV cable. ........HTH, Dell, FCC Licensed TV engr 1958

I have the same problem in ohio.I was told the signal is good for about 50 miles.I'm on the outter frindges.I bought one of those plastic antenna's from walmart with a booster.It looks like a 4 ft 2x4,but it works pretty good.It's made to mount on the eves of your house or lay in the attic,doesn't need a tower.It works inside the house if it's near a window.Digital signal doesn't need a tower.

Nancy, I had the same kind of trouble,couldn't find a good ant. anywhere, Finally a TV repair guy got me a round dish type, all horizontal tubes , This thing is about 4' in dia, Never looked backed. The best Radio Shack one was the worst I ever had. HTH Jim in N M

Look for a digital multidirectional antenna first. There is a double loop (kind of looks like 2 figure eights side by side)that I bought, and it just about doubled the stations I've been getting. Then, look at the distance from your antenna to your set(s0. If it's over about 75 feet, you can get a signal booster, and put it inline. It needs a power outlet (what doesn't) so if you can put it in the basement, or somewhere before your 1st set, it will amplify a weak signal. I have also noticed a difference in tuners. My oldest set will pick up a couple of stations that my newest (digital ready) set will not. And my cheapest analog seems to work on days that my newest one will not. But the newer antenna was the biggest improvement.

Look for a digital multidirectional antenna first. There is a double loop (kind of looks like 2 figure eights side by side)that I bought, and it just about doubled the stations I've been getting. Then, look at the distance from your antenna to your set(s0. If it's over about 75 feet, you can get a signal booster, and put it inline. It needs a power outlet (what doesn't) so if you can put it in the basement, or somewhere before your 1st set, it will amplify a weak signal. I have also noticed a difference in tuners. My oldest set will pick up a couple of stations that my newest (digital ready) set will not. And my cheapest analog seems to work on days that my newest one will not. But the newer antenna was the biggest improvement.

A powered booster will make a big difference, I went from 1 channel reliably & 4 or so now & then, to getting 9 channels (some have 3 sub-channels each) all the time and another 3 channels over 1/2 the time.

Plug in unit at the bottom, a little plastic gizmo goes at the top, no splices in the cable in between. Under $30 at Radio Shak, really helps.

If you got an old cable, the connections can get water in them, corrode, cable itsle gets old.

--->Paul

Neither digital or analog need a tower if your TV is close enough to the transmitter.
Being that NH is some distance away and signal drops as a square of the distance. They need a tower, a 7-51 deep fringe antenna. A mast mounted amp, a rotor and low loss cable.
The 7 to 51 antenna compared to a 2-69 antenna. #1 suffers less FM radio interference from channels 2-6. #2 suffers less wind loading without the long and wide 2-6 elements. Having the 52-69 end shortened is a benefit too.

I have something like what Paul has and yes it made a big difference. The amp goes at the top of the tower by the antenna (where the signal is the largest - hasn't been attenuated by the cable length) and the power unit is on a ceiling joist in the attached garage.

I had analog TV from Dallas' Cockrell Hill, which is about 75 miles as the crow flies. I am on a 30' mast, on top of a hill with a 175 mile rated log-periodic antenna.

With analog, it was subjected to ghosting, weather in's and out and usually snow, sometimes overwhelming in the picture.

Bought a digital converter that sits between the antenna down cable and the TV input.

Was totally amazed at the picture clarity with the digital and loss of snow and fuzzy pictures.

Yes weather can knock it out just as it can my satellite TV and satellite internet. But that's ok.

Mark

I don't think any of this will ever improve, trees or no trees, antenna hooked to a kite, if it don'y want to turn into reception, it won't. Yes, as mentioned below, the cables are finicky, can't be nudged 1 mm, and might unscrew themselves on their own.
I used to get stations from 90 to 100 miles away. Nothing beyond local now. We were thrown into the 1940's on purpose.
We lost 'analog' because those frequencies were 'going to local and state police agencies to make us all safer'. Funny, the cops made no changes, but the cell phone coverage is now as nice as TV used to be. And the endless frustration helps to drive everyone to cable and dish providers. Personally, I concider this fraud and treason to the American public, and all politians that voted for the end of analog should be hacked up in the streets of Washington with pieces of broken TV tube.... and the bodies hung with anntena wire and video tape. Yes, just a bloodthursty day dream, but I like it, everytime the screen sits there like a snapshot....or everything turns blue...

This may or may not help you - I found that when I coiled the extra antenna cable to make it neat, I lost a lot of reseption.
I shortened it to what was needed. Big diferance now.

If all else fails, you might consider going to DirecTV, or Dish network. It'll give you a lot better reception, except when and if it rains hard.
C. L.

It's simply a weak signal. Back in the days of analog, if the signal was weak you got a snowy picture. Now with digital, it's basically "all or nothing." Perfect picture, or a break-up into none. That can change on a daily basis and by season. Might be a perfect picture one day and none the next with the wrong equipment.

A low-noise $40 preamp AT the antenna will probably make a huge difference. So will the correct antenna depending on what you're watching. There is NO such thing as a "digital antenna" or "digital amp." That being said, many TV stations changed frequencies and bands when they went from analog to digital. In most rural areas, reception is now better, not worse IF you've got the correct equipment pointed in the correct direction.

Go to a place like TVfool.com and type in your address or GPS co-ords. It will give you a print out of all the channels by their "fake" numbers and their true numbers along with all the info needed.

Just go here and type in your info:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29

Here's a sample of a free signal map you'll get at TV Fool. Top to bottom are the strongest to weakest TV channels. If you look under column "NM(dB)" that is the signal strength of each channel. The lower the number, the stronger the signal. Anything up to 22 NM(dB) should come in well with the correct antenna an amp. Up to 30 if you use some very good equipment.

You will also see each channel with the "real" channel number and the "virtual" channel number. In reality, the "real" one is the fake one, and the "virtual" is the real one. Yeah, it's confusing. But, to know what antenna you need, you must look at the "virtual" to see what band it's really on. A favorite channel 7 might of been on VHF a few years ago, and now -even thought it's still called "channel 7", it might actually be on channel 23 which is UHF, not VHF anymore. You must know this to get good reception.

A good preamp is very important. Not an amp on the ground or in the house. The amp needs to be on the antenna. A ground or house mounted amp can only offset line loss but cannot regain a lost signal up on the antenna. You can buy a good preamp for $30 with no power wires needed to be added (powered through the RG6 or RG11 coax).

<a href="http://s104.photobucket.com/albums/m162/jdemaris/?action=view&amp;current=TVfool.jpg" target="_blank"> </a>

Digital signal is no different then an analog signal when it comes to needing a tower or not.

What often DOES make a difference is when a channel changes from VHF to UHF - which has
happened with many. UHF has totally different long-distance characteristics -regardless if analog or digital.

I suspect many people who had long-time favorite channels and then lost them after the change - don't really know what frequency they are now on - or what new direction they might be coming from. Many old-time TV stations leased digital towers that are nowhere near their original VHF towers they used previously. I'll also note that the FCC really confused things by letting TV broadcasters keep the appearance of having the same channel numbers. What you see on the screen for channel ID is usually NOT what the real RF channel is.

Higher antenna, amplifier and RG6 wire. If you are more than 60 miles from the tower it still might not clear it up completely.

We went from getting 9 channels analog to 7 digital - 3 of those are PBS, one is a spanish station, and another plays blurry westerns from the 40's all day. That leaves FOX and Thw WB. We get ZERO network (ABC, CBS, NBC...) stations. What we DO get pixelates out if a cloud passes by. Forget ANY reception if it is raining.

Never did watch too much TV anyway - it's MUCH nicer without it, except for severe weather season.