Here is a list of what I believe are the important things you should know before buying a computer with a HDTV antenna. It seems pretty basic, but believes me, it could help many people avoid wasting money buying useless junk, and then spend hours trying to get the HD signal out. Here we go.
There is no such thing as a satellite HD TV!
The first thing to know is that there's nothing like an HDTV antenna. Your antenna is not known whether the signal is high definition or not, much as he does not care whether you watch Fox News or NBC Chanel. The antenna is just a piece of metal resonating at a particular frequency and to have desirable electrical properties and radiation patterns. You may have to ultrahigh frequency (UHF) antenna or very high frequency (VHF) antenna, but Fox News antenna or HDTV antenna is nonsense about. To be fair, there are some properties that are important antenna for HD reception. Without going into technical discussions, the bottom line is that the only reason you see HDTV antennas on the market "because it sells better. HDTV is a fashionable word fantasy. Generally, optimization of HDTV is the least important feature to look at when buying an antenna for HDTV.
HDTV outdoor antennas: directional vs. omni-directional (or multi-directional)
Directional antenna can certainly pick up HD signals from a tower farthest. However, as its name suggests, a directional antenna should be directed in a particular direction. Directional antennas are ideal for you if the transmission towers of all the networks you want to watch are located more or less in the same direction from your location. Otherwise, you may end up with the antenna powefull receive only one television channel. Of course, if you're really far from the towers, you have no choice but to use a directional antenna and sometimes even several directional antennas if you want to receive programming from various sites.
Directional Indoor Antenna for HDTV
There are some very popular within the HDTV antenna models. Many of them are pretty good if you're close to transmission towers, but be prepared to "play" with the antenna and move it each time you change channels. This may be very annoying.
Outdoors is better than inside
Yes, even better than the indoor antenna amplified in most cases. Sometimes people tell me they bought an amplified indoor antenna for HDTV because the performance of their former outdoor directional antenna was poor. Somehow they thought that the indoor antenna will do better because it is amplified, it is the HDTV antenna and it is (!?). New Please do not do that. If your old outdoor antenna is not working, check cables, orient the antenna in the right direction, and if that does not work, you can buy an external antenna with a higher directivity / gain or if you are in the violet / Pink Zone consider purchasing pre-amp (yes, for external antenna).
You get what you pay
HDTV antenna is the least expensive components of your HDTV system, but its impact on receiving the HD signal is enormous. That's why I'm not a big fan of antennas with low budget. Once you've spent a fortune on your plasma screen, you want to get the most out of it. When the difference between a mediocre antenna and a star performer is atmost $ 50, it does not make sense to go for an antenna of second order.
Avoid Mistakes when Buying Best HDTV antenna.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009Posted by SQL at 1:09 AM
Labels: Hdtv Antenna
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