Digital Signal Reception Question

[Nertz!]

I live about 80 miles south of New York City and would like to know what type of antenna I would need to get the digital television signals.
Would an indoor antenna work?

 

[dhett]

Consumer Electronics Association should be able to help you with that.

http://www.antennaweb.org

 

[Nertz!]

That was useless and only listed stations I would not want to watch.

 

[dhett]

I tried it using 08401 - Atlantic City. I'm surprised that it doesn't give NYC or even Philly stations. When I try it for my home town, I get signals from almost 100 miles away. Oh well, it was a try.

 

[pabsungenis]

That was useless and only listed stations I would not want to watch.

Then those are the only stations you can get reliably with an antenna.

I've found antennaweb.org very reliable in its predictions so far.

 

[KeithE4]

I tried it using 08401 - Atlantic City. I'm surprised that it doesn't give NYC or even Philly stations. When I try it for my home town, I get signals from almost 100 miles away. Oh well, it was a try.

But we in Arizona have the advantage of having TV stations on top of mountains much higher than the Empire State Building in NYC. Where I live in SE Phoenix, I can pick up a few of the Tucson stations that are on 6500-foot-above-Tucson (9000 ft ASL) Mt. Bigelow, about 100 miles away, on rabbit ears. Not clearly, but they're viewable even living about 6 miles from our TV/FM tower farm on 1500-foot South Mountain.

Try doing that in NYC ;D , although I'd think that the ocean would help in getting NYC stations in Atlantic City.

 

[Markxxx]

There is no such thing as an antenna for digital TV. DTV or analog use the same types of antenna

You need to find out what channels the stations will be broadcasting on AFTER the transition. Most (but certainly not all) stations are using the High VHF (7-13) or UHF channels (14-51) (UHF 52-69 will be eliminated). A good UHF antenna may be able to pick up the High Vs too.

TV stations will map to their analog channels so you need to find their actual channels. Like in Chicago, WGN-TV will be on UHF channel 19 but map to Channel 9. So when you turn your digital TV on, you tune to Channel 9 but in reality the TV knows to look for Channel 19. So you need a UHF antenna.

So that is the key find out what channels the stations are ACTUALLY using and get an appropriate antenna for those kinds of channels.

 

[dhett]

I tried it using 08401 - Atlantic City. I'm surprised that it doesn't give NYC or even Philly stations. When I try it for my home town, I get signals from almost 100 miles away. Oh well, it was a try.

But we in Arizona have the advantage of having TV stations on top of mountains much higher than the Empire State Building in NYC. Where I live in SE Phoenix, I can pick up a few of the Tucson stations that are on 6500-foot-above-Tucson (9000 ft ASL) Mt. Bigelow, about 100 miles away, on rabbit ears. Not clearly, but they're viewable even living about 6 miles from our TV/FM tower farm on 1500-foot South Mountain.

Try doing that in NYC ;D , although I'd think that the ocean would help in getting NYC stations in Atlantic City.

I'm just about in the same neighborhood as you, but I was thinking more of picking up KTTU ch 18, which is on Towers Mtn, comparable in height above Tucson as the ESB is above NYC. Plus, as you said, we don't have the help of the ocean.

 

[BRNout]

I checked it for several addresses and it seems pretty accurate overall. Surprisingly so, in fact. It even seems to take terrain into effect (to a degree).

 

[kc0ltv]

80-100 miles is quite a stretch for DTV reception. I suggest you post a question or look at previous discussion in this thread at AVS Forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=275729&goto=newpost