The Old Antenna - Part 1

Depending on your age, the idea of getting TV via antenna may or may not be familiar.  If if you don't have personal experience with this, I think that most people have seen images of a television set with a large set of rabbit ears, or those comedic skits where someone is dressed in tin foil standing in some unnatural pose so that the ball game comes in with even the most minute clarity.  Many of those memories will be accompanied by the sound of a television that has lost signal and blares out white noise, or the loss of picture just before the most climatic moment of the program.

The truth is that antenna based television, a.k.a. Over the Air (OTA) has come a long way over the years.  In fact now, more than ever, the signal you can get with an antenna might be highest quality signal you can ever hope to get.  The best part of all this is that after a small initial cost, most of which you've probably already paid, you won't have to pay another penny for it!  All of this is thanks to the DTV conversion.


Let’s begin with a quick review of the DTV conversion and what it meant for over the air TV via antenna. The switch to DTV, or digital television, was made official 6/12/09.  On that date stations no longer sent out analog signals. Analog signals were the ones that gave you those static filled broadcasts that left you constantly readjusting the aforementioned rabbit ears. The arrival of DTV basically meant you got all or nothing, with not much in the middle. While that seems like a bad trade off, DTV made up for it in superior picture and sound quality, as well as expanded programming.  It meant the arrival of FREE HD!

Now that doesn't mean you're going to put an antenna up and start getting hundreds of channels.  The easiest comparison to what you might get with OTA-DTV is whatever the most basic TV package is from your local paid service.  This would likely include the local ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, and NBC channels.  Some will recieve more, others less, but as we'll see in future posts OTA can bring us much more than those 5 networks due to some neat features of the system. 

The impact antenna can have for you could be tremendous, or it could be next to nothing.  It all really boils down to the location of the antenna in relation to the transmitter.  That can mean where your house is, where the antenna is in your house, or both.  However, if you are in the Charlotte area you can probably get upwards of 20 channels fairly easily.  For our readers in other areas, if you're close to a metropolitan area you'll probably experience similar results.

Since the antenna is the only "free" alternative to a paid television subscription we're going to spend several posts covering it.  Stay tuned!