Hi, I have a TABLO 4 tuner. I have a directional antenna on my roof which works well for most of my channels. The other channels are located in the opposite direction and come in week to good at best. My question is: do I need to have two directional antennas and a uhf antenna for the best possible reception. The towers are at most 40 miles away with many closer. This seems like a lot of hardware on my roof. and splicing them all together could be over my pay grade.
Things are unwatchable now but I do get frustrated when those off direction channels record choppy or pix-elated.
Sugesstions?
Thanks,
Mike
This what I use, where we live tower are in 3 different location about 30 miles works great get all the major networks and more.
This one is great omni directional antenna and has great review
@mlayow There are different solutions to your problem. I found I had a similar situation after I installed my antenna and Tablo (to a lesser extent). I was missing one or two channels I wanted that were in the opposite direction.
What worked for me is installing a 2nd antenna. I left the first pointed mainly South (150 degrees), which was on my garage roof. I installed the 2nd antenna in my attic pointing North (5 degrees).
It is very easy to combine the antennas (you can just use a splitter in most cases), but in reverse. The hard part is making sure you don’t have multi-path interference. I used directional antennas, used a pre-amp on one of my antennas (and not the other), and finally found a combination that worked. I now get good solid signal on all the channels I wanted even though they are in ‘opposite’ directions.
When using multiple antennas, they recommend keeping the cable length the same to both antennas, but I couldn’t do that easily. It seemed to work with different lengths for me. Time will tell how stable it is, but for now, so far so good. I’m also going to try some RF shielding when I have some more time (for the antenna in the attic).
There may be easier solutions (1 good omni-directional antenna), but I’m a skeptic on antennas picking up long range signals from all directions. I guess that will depend on your area, terrain, and if they are VHF/UHF.
We’ve got some basic tips on that here:
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/how-to-antenna-ota-signals-multiple-directions/
1 Like
I have 2 antenna going into a reverse splitter and into my Tablo 4 channel. Both have equal length cables into the splitter. One is a Mohu and the other is one of those DIY using hanger wire on a board. They both work equally well. They are mounted 90 deg opposite each other and it sits up in my garage office right next to my Tablo. I get pretty good reception from all the possible channels I could want. I do get breakup in wind and storms due to my location being at almost the bottom of a hill and my house being a ranch and surrounded by 2 stories. Been using it like this for at least a couple of years now.