In this age of fiber optics, premium cable channels, and satellite TV, a lot of people have forgotten that there exist television stations that broadcast their content. You know, over the air. As in, they transmit electromagnetic waves through the air from a big tower. No cables required.
There is one important reason to be interested in this new-fangled wireless transmission: it’s free. What’s that? It’s ad-supported? Millions and millions of cable subscribers willingly sit through advertisements and they PAY for the privilege. It’s time to wake up America. You are getting screwed. Seriously. And somehow all these people have been convinced that cable television is a UTILITY, that is, something they can’t live without.
So in my personal quest to improve my life (i.e., watch less TV) AND stick it to The Man, I have been cable-less for just shy of one year. It’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I save over $60/month and I get more done around the house. I have since replaced television with Hulu and the Roku player.
As great as Hulu and Netflix are, though, a few things were still missing: the occasional sporting event, the local news (whatever that’s worth), and of course, Sesame Street. So a couple of weeks ago, I finally turned off the Roku (so much for getting things done!) and installed an over-the-air TV antenna.
Gathering intel
I had been sitting on this project ever since I dropped cable, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. A while back I did some Googling and stumbled across the site AntennaWeb. There, you can type in your address and get a list of broadcast stations are near you, what RF channel they’re on, how far away they are, and what direction they’re in. The site will also tell you what kind of antenna you will need to pick up each station. Since I live about 45 miles away from the DC area broadcast towers, indoor rabbit ears weren’t going to cut it. Plugging my address into the FCC’s DTV Reception Maps page confirmed this.
Here are the results from AntennaWeb for my address:
Because the digital transition finally went through on June 12, virtually all major broadcast stations require the use of an ATSC tuner to be able to view. Modern TVs have these, but the old tube TVs don’t. This is the reason a lot of old people need one of those converter boxes.
Notice that I didn’t say you need an HD or a digital antenna. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN HD/DIGITAL ANTENNA. AN ANTENNA IS JUST A BIG PIECE OF ALUMINUM.
If you look at the chart, you’ll see the column “RF Channel”. This tells you which frequency each of the station broadcasts on. Channels 2-6 are the VHF low-band, channels 7-13 are the VHF high-band, and channels 14 and up are the UHF band. Look at these when choosing an antenna. Many stations in the US have switched to UHF, which means you might be able to get an antenna specifically designed for that band. Unfortunately, I have to use a combo antenna just to accommodate two stations.
The other “Channel” column tells you the channel that the station will use on your TV. Thanks to PSIP, stations can be broadcast on one RF channel but displayed on your TV on another channel.
The next step was to figure out how big of an antenna I needed, which depended on the stations’ power output and distance. According to AntennaWeb, I was going to need a large directional antenna with a pre-amplifier.
In a future post, I will cover the other phases of this project: selecting the equipment, installing everything, and admiring the results. As they say in the industry, tune in next time!
You mentioned that your antenna doesn’t care if the signal is HD or not.
Does that mean that the stations are being broadcast in HD?
The stations aren’t necessarily broadcasting in HD, but most of them are. Some of them also broadcast a standard definition equivalent on a subchannel (which I’ll discuss in the future).