oh man you sound like you had just about the worst case scenario! were your stations scattered in different directions too probably? thankfully for us all of ours are about exactly the same direction/degree so thats helpful.
which antenna did you end up having the most luck with? i have a coworker that swears by channel master…i’ve had the best luck w/ clearstream (only brand i’ve tried to be fair )
The stations here in Atlanta are all in one location. I just had to aim at 205 degrees.
I finally built my own antenna after I had heard great results from others on the Internet - the Gray Hoverman. I built a double GH (two stacked GHs) and that did the trick (along with a good preamp Kitztech 501). I followed this guy’s YouTube video on building one (he has a single GH - I doubled it and added NARODs for VHF):
looks great! sucks you had to go through so much to find one that worked but always good when you get it working!
Since i’ve always been so lucky in the past without needing to formally mount my antenna’s before now, does anyone have any rips on rooftop mounting (for a C4 in my case) to ensure it doesn’t do any damage to the roof / leaks / etc? the C4 comes with some sticky strips to go between the roof and the bracket so thats good but any concern other than that to know going in? making sure you pick the proper spot right away obviously is important i know
There are some videos on YouTube for mounting a C4 on a roof.
well i had a pretty good bit of luck today…since we’re only 2 weeks into this new house we’re still discovering things. We have a large 2nd detached garage that is directly in the path that I would have had to point my antenna if i mounted it on the house roof. That garage i noticed the previous owner had run coax to that i traced into the basement of the house and also has a full size walkable attic . when i went up there i saw that he had run the coax from the house up into that attic , into a splitter and down into the wall where the jack was so i just disconnected from the splitter, sat the c4 max on the ground pointed towards MKE and i’m getting eveything full 5 green dots in tablo (both engine and OG 2. I now connected into the hauppage app to check the actual signal and since we’re only concerned about the 4-5 major network channels i checked those and abc, nbc, fox all get a SNR in the 25.5 - 26.5 range (green) and cbs gets about 22.8-23 (yellow).
I know being in the attic and the long run of coax probably dings me a little and i’d like cbs to be a bit higher but good start i’d say and not having to mount it out in the elements. I do have a winegard pre-amp but whenever i’d try it before this spot it would make things worse so i’m not currently using it. I wouldnt imagine trying it w/ this setup would help much would it? i guess i could try taking my laptop up there and go directly in w/ a short run of coax and test
you had mentioned these conditions are going to be the best signal since its cold and no leaves but hope these numbers are decent (still learning all of that). As for height i’d say its about 12-16 ft up. i can get it maybe another 3-4 ft up if i mount it on a beam up there too so maybe have a little playing around to do
thank you for everyones help!
Anything above 17 will get you a signal. 20 and above means a stable signal. 22.9 is not bad. 26.5 is great. 30-31 indicates 100%. My bet is that the 22.9 will show on the Tablo as 5 green dots. If 30 is 100%, then the 22 is about 75% and the 26 about 85%. Good…not bad at all. The yellow on the Hauppauge meter does not equate to a Tablo yellow. I’ve seen where a Hauppauge yellow translates to a Tablo green.
What Winegard preamp do you have - LNA-200 or LNA-100 (or an older model)? The LNA-200 is the outdoor model, medium powered.
The preamp would probably boost the 22.9 to about 25 and the 26 to 29-30-31. May be irrelevant in winter but in the summer… That 22.9 may go down to like 18 or 19 in summer and be on the borderline.
The other positive sign is that the meter does not show a persistent set of errors below the color bar. Means signal is not being corrupted.
Well this also confirms that the Tablo Hauppauge is indeed a true Hauppauge that will work with pure Hauppauge software.
The attic mount is fine - I’ve done attic and roof mounts and the attic will do OK. I’d check if the coax cable you found is RG6 or RG59 (older). Eventually replace the RG59 with RG6 since it has less transmission loss. I’d stay with the C4 for the attic and try the preamp once (if it is an LNA-200).
cool thank you for the info!
well i actually have the Hauppage tuner (not the tablo variant so cant confirm if theirs works w/ the meter app or not)
I tried the pre-amp (Winegard LNA-200 Boost XT ) but it actually made things worse or no signal at all so i wonder if i have a lemon. would you recommend a different one?
Right now w/ the setup i have it going to a 2 way splitter (going to my shield and my og 2 and plans to have it go to engine and my plex server so i can still stream tv since engine cant do that. I found that when i removed the splitter and went straight to just shield it brought my numbers up to 27/28 and 25.5 (up from 25.5 / 23) on my channels. Not surprising since i know splitters will degrade things a bit so hoping i can either find an amp that works or a better splitter to let me use that 2 way split
I will have to check which cable they ran…unfortunately i’m pretty sure they have it buried between the garage and the house but i’ll have to verify. hopefully he used the right one right off the bat
Hoping if this holds the summer time doesnt change things too much.
So far my first recording try tonight failed saying unspecified error - due to weak signal. that channel has worked fine before and after that happened so maybe a fluke. it let me re-record it 20 min in so we’ll have to monitor it. I thought i might direct plug in my laptop w/ the hauppage app and fine tune my spot up there
thanks again for all the help!
The Winegard LNA-200 is a good preamp. With signal measurements in the high twenties, there may not be any need for a preamp. Without an amp, the two way split may slightly lower a signal from say a 26 to 25. My experience has been that a 4 db loss because of a splitter translates to a 1 or 2 count lessening in the Hauppauge signal monitor. If the signal is at 17 than a 1-2 lowering may make that channel unwatchable.
Instead of a preamp, a distribution amp such as the Channel Master 3414 or 3412 placed right before the device split inside the house would replace a splitter without any signal loss or overdrive. The price difference between the two is minimal so I went with the 3414 which gave me 4 outlets without any loss of signal for future lines.
BTW your testing has confirmed what many suspected here at the forum. That internal 4 way split inside the Tablo 2 does us no favors when only two were required. The Tablo Engine (or rather Hauppauge) does it the right way. Dang!
so I returned my winegard pre-amp since it wasn’t helping like i mentioned and currently just have an Extreme 2 way splitter and seeing the slight drop like I said. so if i replace that basic 2 way splitter w/ something like you are using (channel master 3414/3412) that would serve the same purpose that I am doing now but w/out the drop in signal?
Ya so far i’m happy w/ the hauppage usb tuner other than it gets REALLY REALLY hot so i had to get creative w/ placement so its propped up a bit to breathe.
Yes, the CM3414 or 3412 will ensure NO drop on a split (since it is THE splitter - won’t need the Extreme splitter). In fact it adds a slight 8 db (3412) or 4 db (3414) to the signal which may up the meter by a 1 (which it did in my case) without overdriving the signal (which the Winegard may have been doing). In the summer, that extra 8 or 4 db may come in handy as the antenna will drop from 4 to 6 db (in my experience) due to the heat, humidity and leafage.
A 3414 will allow you to attach both the Tablo Engine, the Tablo 2 and a media server like Plex in the future (with a spare line left over which can hook directly into a TV). There are many people at this forum using a distribution amp like the CM3414 (or another brand).
I have a KWorld USB tuner - it gets hot when plugged directly into my PC. Instead I got a short USB cable and plugged the tuner into the cable and the cable into the PC USB port. That cooled it down a bit. The same with my Roku - a USB device plugged directly into my Roku gets hot but not when plugged into a USB cable that then gets plugged into the Roku.
awesome thanks! so ultimately all i really need is it to split to my shield / engine setup and my plex server (phase out the OG 2) so sounds like it would make more sense to go w/ the 3412 so that i get the most gain on each output right?
my hauppage actually is connected to a 1ft usb extender already since the tuner is too wide on its own to allow both it and my usb hdd for tablo. maybe it would get even hotter if it directly plugged in i guess.
Do you have a TV tuner at the Plex server (like a Homerun)? If not, then you don’t need a coax cable going to the Plex server - only to the Tablo Engine. No splitter needed if the Plex server doesn’t have a TV tuner.
well i should mention that i am not using my shield as a plex server but instead have a dedicated quad core pc with ubuntu server running just plex server. for that setup i think i do need a seperate tuner i’d imagine right?
i think if i used shields built in ability to host plex media server then maybe i could share the hauppage tuner is what you’re thinking maybe?
I opted for the dedicated box since theres slight transcoding limitations using shield for plex compared to a dedicated box
If the Plex server doesn’t serve up or record any TV channels (just other media files), then it doesn’t need a coax. Were you thinking of getting shows from Tablo to Plex from the Shield? That requires just a LAN connection.
ahh ok i see what you’re saying. so up until now i’ve just been using it as a media server so of course both my shield and PMS are connected to my home network so i can access my library. since i made the switch from OG 2 to Engine i loose the networking ability of tablo so i thought i’d just hook in another hauppage to my PMS server to use their live tv capabilities (and keep tabs on how that system develops to see long term which works best for us). This way i get the local benefits of engine (quicker channel changing, 5.1 sound ,etc) and can still stream tv anywhere w/ PMS (i’m really the only one in the house that cares about that part although the last time i tried that feature on plex it didnt work well on my old fire tv box)
Yup, if you add a tuner to the Ubuntu box for Plex then you have two recording centers and THAT would require a split (a CM3412) - two coaxes.
That’s not a bad strategy since this is what I use. I don’t count exclusively on my Tablo since there are programs we wish to absolutely record without fail. I will record the same program using my Tablo and my PC (as a backup tactic). I had this happen just a few weeks ago where the Tablo recorded 90% of a show and then dropped it the rest of the way. Fortunately the PC recorded the whole show. And vice versa where the PC recorded 80% of the show and the Tablo did 100%. These tuners are finicky creatures 
In the future you can decide which one to count on to be the primary one - though having TWO recording centers gives you safety (unless the power goes out in the whole house).
yup thats the plan!
so even better results now…i went back up with my laptop/tuner to fine tune things a bit and found if i go about 8ft to the left and up about 4 ft all my major stations are now coming in at 29-30! even after coming down to the house and hooking in at the furthest coaxial run i’m still getting 28-29 and thats using the standard splitter (my distribution amp is arriving tomorrow so we’ll see how that affects it)
only hiccup i messed up at is i wasn’t thinking and to get the antenna to the height i needed i mounted into the roof of the attic and used too long of screws so they went right through the roof and shingles (i used thin wood screws) so tiny holds through the roof now). I went back and put the sealing pads on to protect from anythign coming in into the attic but i’d imagine i have the tips of the 4 screws poking up in the roof now so i’ll have to see if i can get up there after the winter to seal the off there. glad i used thinner wood screws
all in all a pretty good improvement though! i would hope even in summer i’d be in good shape now
Those signal strength numbers are great - attic or roof. You can afford to lose the 4 db summer lowering and still have strong signals.
BTW you mentioned a Ubuntu Plex server. I just finished up my $35 TV server - a Raspberry Pi running Openelec with Tvheadend as whole house tuner server and PVR. Amazed at how well this $35 thing works (using my KWorld USB tuner). My friends get a kick out of seeing this tiny open circuit board sitting on a shelf serving up media streams through Kodi.
I was even able to get a two week EPG using XMLTV freely to give me a grid view of upcoming programming.
My wife is asking me to move it out of sight because “it ain’t an ornament” and “electronic things aren’t pretty despite what males think…”
haha that sounds pretty cool! i’ll have to check that out! i am mainly using ubuntu server because we had some lenovo towers w/ quad core processors at work that we were ditching so i turned that into my plex box since plex is cpu intensive
I took a look outside at the garage roof from outside and the screws actually poke out pretty far ( 1.5-2inches). hope thats not an issue for the winter. whoops!
Hook some Christmas ornaments around them 