Cutting the cord: Antenna vs. Cable and DirecTV

Most of my readers already know that I am all about cutting the cord on cable and DirecTV.  If it was not for cable internet I would truly have all cords cut coming to my house.  That being said I did a lot of trial and error on antennas for my home setup.  This is my personal experience and the products that worked well for me.  I am very cheap so the cost impacts much of my buying decisions.  I tried many indoor antennas until I finally invested into attic antennas.

First thing to know when buying an antenna is that today TV signals are digital.  They are still transmitted over an analog antenna but your reception will either be on or off.  There is no middle of the road with a digital signal.  The skipping you may see with some channels is simply your TV catching some of the signal on or off and doing its best to render it.    That being said don't get fooled into thinking that you need a signal booster.  In fact my experience with them is that they simply don't work.  They amplify both good signal and noise.  My best results were simply using the antenna itself.  Receiving signals from all stations requires that your antenna be able to receive both VHF channels (channels 2-13) and UHF channels (channels 14-51).  You can get an all-in-one antenna or you can get 2 antennas and combine the signals.

I recommend you take the multiple antenna approach.  The reason is that it is very unlikely the TV station will be transmitting both UHF and VHF.  This means the UHF stations may be in a completely different direction from the VHF stations.  Having two antenna's you can mount them on the same pole.

The antenna I used for VHF was this Winegard HD-1080 HDTV High Band VHF Antenna. I was able to mount this on a pole in my attic and avoid going outside.  This antenna instantly picked up all the VHF channels with no problem at all.

UHF antennas are a different story.  This represented only a few channels and they were more difficult to tune in.  I used a WINEGARD HD-9032 UHF High-Gain 35-Element HDTV Antenna.  I have no affiliation with Winegard they just happened to be low cost antennas on amazon that did the job.  They actually exceeded my expectations and I was able to mount both of these on a pole in my attic.

Once you have the two antennas mounted you can get this very cheap RCA Antenna Satellite Diplexer Splitter signal combiner.  The splitters also can be used to combine signals.  Combine the two antennas into one and then feed that into your TV/Media Center PC.  All of these parts on Amazon are less than $125.

Once you have this all hooked up in the attic have someone man the TV signals. Then adjust the direction of the antennas until all of your signals are coming in.  Sometimes a turn as small as half an inch makes the difference between getting the digital signal or not.  I had this on the UHF signals all the time.  There is some setup in making sure that you have a good signal.  Once you have this setup then you simply tighten up the mounts.  One more reason that I have these in the attic is that the weather does not impact my reception.  No blowing winds, snow or ice build up or connections that get moisture in them.

Good luck installing your antennas.  Please share or post this article if you found it helpful in cutting the cord.