Scan off air antenna stations

General Discussion
1

How often do you need to rescan your off air antenna? I have had my Tablo for about a month now.

2

You “need” to scan only once, if you picked the correct antenna, amplifier, and have the antenna pointed in the correct direction.

And just because you rescan doesn’t mean you have to save the results.

But if you switch antenna or direction or amplifier you should rescan. If you want to know if any new channels or sub-channels are available you should rescan.

Sometimes I rescan when strange weather might affect reception just because I want to see if two weird channels from Mt Wilson have landed in my zip code.

3

Thanks.

4

We tend to recommend doing it at least quarterly.

There are still stations working on the repack so it’s important not to miss a rescan on those transition dates.

5

Sounds good. Thanks

6

Is there a way to add channels manually? Or save from one scan and add from another?

I have a situation where we have to point our antenna pretty close to get the stations as we are not close enough otherwise. But there are a couple of them that are about 90 degrees from the others. I an getting a rotator to move the antenna. But don’t want to have to scan everytime we move it.

1 Like
7

You may want to read this first

What to Avoid: Antenna Rotors (or Rotators)

In order to complete scheduled recordings, OTA DVRs need to ‘see’ the signal for ALL of your local channels at ALL times. Some digital TVs also won’t allow you to maintain a list of all available channels from multiple channel scans.

As for manually adding channels - no, often suggested in feature request. There are various reasoning behind this.

I understand some devices/app may store channels between scans, I’m not familiar which. Although it’s stored on the tablo device, it doesn’t keep them between scans. Tablo defaults to only :heavy_check_mark: the boxes for HD (1080,720) channels. As though there’s no reason to ever want anything else? Or you really want those HD channels no matter what. They already decided! It won’t default to let you see it all and get rid of what you’ll never record.

8

you may want to look at buying another antenna and getting a combiner instead of a rotator. The rotator would not be able to record 2 shows from different chanels at the same time where the combiner and 2 antennas could.

9

You might set your antenna half way between your desired tv stations and do a scan. If you are lucky it will pick up all your channels even if they show weak. Then you can add them to the Guide. Now when you rotate the antenna to your desired tv station it will already be available for viewing with your Tablo.