The Old Antenna - Part 6

By this point we've discussed which types of antennas are out there, which kind you might want to buy, and where you want to put it.   Most households will probably be best served by a suitable outdoor installation, keeping in mind that you cannot be prohibited by HOA or town ordinances in most situations according to Federal Law.

Let's entertain a hypothetical solution for a moment.  You've bought a Clearstream 2V and mounted it on the roof, taking care to point it in the direction of the transmitters. You've grounded the system correctly according to code and now you're ready to check out the results.   You rush into the living room and begin the auto channel search on your TV.  You get excited as your number of channels climbs quickly jumps from 0 to 8 and then it doesn't change again.  At this point you become disappointed, you expected to see at least 20 channels based on your TV Fool report.  You check your connections thinking you left one loose, but they're all tight.  You begin to wonder if you made the wrong choice....


What I've shared above is a very plausible scenario.  It is a major let down if you spend all that time getting something installed to find out it isn't going to work the way you had hoped.  What today's post is about is making sure you reduce that chance.

Depending on the age of your home, who did the TV wiring, and just how much wiring there is all factors in to this scenario.  Let's say you have a home built in 2009, the electrician used modern cabling, and the amount of cable in the wall to your living room TV is 75 feet.  Well for starters the age of the home lends itself to using at least RG-6 cable, which is pretty decent.  If you have an older home, or you did a lot of the wiring and looked to save a few bucks you might have RG-59.  This matters because signal fades over long cable runs.  This includes all the cable from the antenna to your TV,  While there might only be 75 feet in the wall, there might be another 25-50 outside.  If you have good high quality quad shielded RG-6 cable the signal loss will be noticeable but likely manageable.  If you have RG-59 it might mean that this project wont work at all due to signal loss.  If you know you have older RG-59 and you don't want to go through the hassle of trial and error, an indoor DTV antenna option might be your best bet.

Splitters also weigh into this.  If you have a splitter, then another splitter, and then another splitter in the route between the antenna and the TV you will have significant loss at each one.  The rule of thumb for television connections is to use high quality shielded cable, keep the run short, and avoid unnecessary connections in the line.  So use RG-6 Quad Shielded Cable,  use as little as possible, and avoid splitting and inline connections whenever possible.

Amplifiers are electronic devices that use electricity to increase the strength an incoming signal.  In musical applications we think of an amplifier as making the relatively quiet unplugged electric guitar into the monster head banging noise machine.  TV Antenna amplifiers work pretty much the same way.  They take the signal coming into the antenna and pump it up to a higher strength.  The reason they're important in today's discussion is that they can overcome some physical obstacles we might face. In our scenario a pre-amplifier mounted on the mast of the antenna can boost the amount of signal enough to overcome all those losses that we might encounter through the other variables that we don't have as much control over.  Likewise an inline amplifier can be utilized inside the house just before the TV to do the same thing, albeit not as well as a pre-amp.

However, using an amplifier is not all sunshine and rainbows.  Amplifiers boost all incoming signal both desirable and undesirable.  Noise is our biggest enemy in our antenna applications. What is noise?  All electrical things create a radiofrequeny, or R/F, which we can consider noise for this discussion.  Ideally when using an amplifier we purchase one that has technology that limits the amplification of that noise and reduces the ratio of signal to noise.  Signal good, noise bad.

Here at CCC we use this pre-amp which is pretty affordable, and has performed well for us.  Our main interest was the decent noise reduction technology, and a price point that very much fit our initial budget.  HQ does not have a lot of things working against us, so a top end pre-amp was not an absolute necessity.  However if you are in the market for a top end amp, our research indicates that the Channel Master CM-7777 is among the best.  Whichever route you decide to go remember that the amp needs power.  Inline amps will have their power supplies attached.  Preamps require you to send power through the cable line, but dont worry this is as simply a small connecter that connects between your cable jack and TV.  Keep in mind that if you do have a splitter between the power source and the amp, that splitter needs to have a power pass through design.  This is just to allow power to flow one way through the splitter, and you can often look at the splitter and see which kind you have and which way the power goes.  Some will allow power over multiple connections, others fewer.

While an amplifier can be all that is necessary to make your system work, not everyone will require one. Antenna pros often hate dealing with the topic of amplifiers, basically because so many people try to make them do things that they wont do.  Our recommendation is to try your system without one first, preferably with the TV connected as closely to the antenna, and with as short at cable as possible. Then run a channel scan and see what you come up with.  From there run a channel scan at another point in the house.  If you have differences it likely means you are losing enough signal through the cabling and connections in the house to lose channels.  In this scenario a quality amplifier should help overcome this.  However if you come up with the same results its likely that an amplifier won't make a difference for you.    Until next time, stay tuned!