Hello everyone, i’m posting today to ask for antenna advice. I have attempted to get a log in over at TV Fool,but for some reason the moderators are not responding to my requests.
About my setup: I’ve had the Tablo for almost a year, and overall I like it. I’ve been using an indoor antenna for that time, and there a couple of channels that I do not get a good signal and it’s time to upgrade the antenna. I have an old directv post on my roof that still has coax running down, so I’ve decided to mount a rooftop antenna to the mast and wire it to the existing coax, I needs a couple of splices, but the coax has about a 60 foot run down to my living room. The question is which antenna is best for me. Here is my TV fool report:
With my indoor antenna I generally have no problems with ABC (25.1), NBC (10.1),CBS (19.1), and PBS (35.1). I am having trouble receiving Fox (57.1) and CW (47.1). My thoughts are using a magnetic azimuth somewhere around 070-075 This is the antenna I am considering:
Will this set up work for me? Anyone have any advice or recommendations? Thanks in advanced!
As in real estate; location, location, location. If ALL the desired broadcasts are centrally located ( coming from same general direction), I’d go for the unidirectional Winegard suggested here. If not, I’d go with the Clearstream.
Both these antennas are highly rated in most recent surveys.
the one I linked is supposed to come with “hardware for mounting to a mast”, so you should be able to attach it to your existing DirecTV post with little or no trouble.
I would say yes. Orient your antenna towards the weakest channel within the 10 degree perimeter.
This should allow you to split signals between Tablo and a direct to TV OTA signal as needed.
Personally almost all my viewing is from recordings (mind numbing commercials drive me nuts). Sporting events too since it cuts my viewing time almost in half, particularly golf tournaments.
PS: We (finally) took home the Ryder Cup - Hoorah! Thank you Patrick Reed.
Hello everyone, I wanted to update you on my results and thank everyone for their advice.
I purchased the Winegard suggested above and yesterday finally got on my roof to do the installation. There were a few issues that I encountered that I figured would require extra work, but TL:DR, I plugged the antenna in and it worked 100% from the start!
The pitch on my roof was steeper than it looked from the ground (aren’t they all?) Because this the Directv post wasn’t quite tall enough and the back left quadrant of my antenna comes very close to the roof. I expected this to interfere with the signal and that I would need to slip a pipe inside the mount to raise the antenna a foot or so.
There is about a 80 foot cable run to my Tablo from my roof. About 30 of this is pure slack that the tech left in my attack for no apparent reason. I expected that I would need to cut the slack out to ensure the best signal. I also thought a pre-amp might be necessary because of the cable run.
Despite these potential issues, I went ahead and mounted the antenna and plugged the coax in, and lo and behold I get perfect reception on all the channels I wanted! The antenna is so good, I expect I could have just laid it up there and it would get a perfect signal.