After signing up for Dish Network, I was shocked and horrified to discover that their much vaunted “dozens of HD channels” doesn’t include, ya know, the MAJOR NETWORKS. Unwilling to give up my “Lost” in HD, I got a Phillips directional UHF/VHF antenna (this one), plopped it on top of my TV, and ran it via coax to the TV, just to get a basic setup going.
Sadly, I can’t get any kind of distinct signal. According to antennaweb.org, my towers are at 165-168 degrees about 14-18 miles away - distant, but not TOO distant, I don’t think. Fox comes in at a sub-cable quality, certainly not HD. I can’t get any other channels to come in, even slightly, even though their towers are in the same direction.
The fact that one network will show up on the TV (albeit fuzzily) while the others give me nothing but static leads me to believe I’m doing something wrong. (If all channels arrived equally crappy, I might blame distance or a weak antenna.) There’s my troubleshooting brain at work.
Is there some other setting I might be missing? The antenna has a switch that alternates between Antenna (crap reception) and Cable (crappier reception). To recap, it’s just a coax cable from the antenna to the TV; once I get something approximating HD, I’ll run the antenna to the Dish box, and thence from HDMI to TV. But for now, HELLLLLPPP!!!
If you’re getting “fuzzy” reception, then it sounds like you’re not getting a digital signal. Does your TV have a digital tuner? Not all TV’s sold right now have digital tuners built-in, and so need an external one. I have a 15-year-old CRT TV that can’t get digital or hi-def, but I hooked up a digital (Samsung) tuner to it over a year ago and get superb reception with a “rabbit-ear” antenna that looks almost identical to yours, just made by a different company. Digital reception over-the-air is a different animal compared to analog signal. Just like anything digital, it’s either on or off, so you either get a nice picture and sound or nothing - not fuzz, but nothing but a black silent screen.
When I switched to the digital receiver, a whole new world opened up and helped me continue to thumb my nose at the expensive cable/sattelite leeches. I went from 9 fuzzy channels to 23 crisp, clean and clear digital channels! Maybe not equal to cable in programming offerings, but totally free…
I know nothing about cable or satellite boxes, but if yours has an antenna-in that looks like coax will screw in, then try it. Your rabbit-ears should work fine if your box is set-up to take over-the-air signals in addition to the satellite.
I just got my first HD this past week so I’ve been dealing with the same. If there is a knob control, crank the UHF all the way up and the VHF all the way down. If not don’t worry about it.
If you are getting “fuzzy” channels you are not in digital mode. With digital you are either there or not. No in between sheep dip.
It’s probably in your TV settings. You need to tell the TV to scan for digital. For mine I had to select the “add digital channels” option. I got about 12 channels in short order. A couple of them I can only watch at night. Any other time it will go to that channel and just say no signal. No fuzzies either completly crisp or none at all. The channels will not be whole numbers. You’ll tune into numbers like 6.1
As an aside, many of these digital channels are in HD. It’s amazing to me that such a high quality signal can be transported over the air!
Look at the antenna in this picture of the one I use for ‘over the air’ TV reception. Of course my station towers are over 30 miles away with a mountain or three in the way. Rotating the antenna affects how strong the signal is and an HD TV should have a place or setting so you can dial in the antenna.
As others said, make sure your TV can actually tune a digital signal. Specifically, it needs an ATSC tuner. If it’s very new, it almost certainly has one. If it’s more than a year or 2 old, it may not.
15 miles is very doable assuming you have a TV with a digital (ATSC) tuner. I’m probably 50 miles from Richmond VA and I can receive their digital HD channels just fine, they’re beautiful.
Make sure you’re tuning your TV to the proper channel. Say you’re trying to receive channel 6 digital. The channel you enter in your remote is 6-1, not just plain number 6. If you’re tuning to channel 6, that’s the old snowy analog channel. Most of the digital channels are split into 2 or 3 channels, like 6-1, 6-2 (24 hour weather here), and 6-3.
There should be a Menu button on your TV remote, in the menus there should be a channel auto-program function. That might be a good place to start. My TV also has a menu option to show the signal strength, that can help you orient your antenna to get the best signal.
Forget about running the antenna into the TV at all for now.
I have dish network. I get my locals in HD from ‘over the air’.
An antenna run directly into my TV doesn’t give HD because my TV doesn’t have an HD tuner.
Run the antenna into your DishNetwork tuner. Then, there’s a menu option to do “HDTV Setup” or something. Do that first, not last.
FWIW, I have an old rooftop antenna that was probably installed in the 1950’s. I run that directly into my TV just in case there’s ever a reason that my HD tuner is on the fritz. It’s not a HD picture, but it’s pretty good.
Dish does have HD Locals in some markets. Not mine.
Otherwise, you can subscribe to “Dish Locals”, not HD.
If you don’t subscribe to Dish Locals ($5 a month or so), you can still run an antenna into the tuner and get HD locals, but you won’t have the accompanying program information.
15 miles in Texas should get you a pretty good signal. You might have to try a different antenna. “HD Antenna” is a marketing gimmick. A $9 antenna might work just as well for you as a $50 antenna.
Also, I’ve had problems with a local that broadcasts their digital in UHF. Antennas are crazy creatures.
The OP states that the quality is sub-cable and fuzzy. A digital signal is either perfect or really blocky. There is no fuzzy in digital, so I would assume the OP is not seeing a digital station, either their TV doesn’t support it or they’re not tuning to a digital channel number (6-1, 8-1, etc.)
Yeah, his antenna is just getting the analog signal that is still out there.
I get that with my rooftop antenna, and just run it right into the TV. I basically NEVER watch it.
He sounds like he doesn’t want to try it through the tuner until it looks all right through the TV. I’m telling the OP that the Dish tuner has an input for a OTA antenna, and a feature in the menu for “LOCAL HD SETUP”.
I have an antenna in my attic (this one), connected to my Dish Network DVR receiver, and I get all my local channels in high-def. To tell the truth, the channels I get off the antenna look better than the high-def ones I get from the dish!
Like Trunk has said, there’s absolutely no reason to plug the antenna into the TV first. Just plug the antenna into the Dish Network box; there’s a spot on the back specifically for antennas. Then, if I’m recalling the menus correctly, you push Menu, go to Setup (#6, I think), and Local Channels (#9). Scan for local channels, and everything that’s available should appear. Then, hitting “Done” should save everything. When you go back to the channel guide, the local over-the-air channels should appear right next to the local channels off the dish; on my guide, the OTA stations are colored yellow, so they’re easy to spot. It may even find more than one “channel” at each location; for example, our local PBS station broadcasts three digital streams, each with different programming.
You may not get the best signal with an indoor antenna. I get 100% signal on every station, but I’m only about 8 miles away from the farthest tower, and I have the attic-mounted antenna. If you’re not happy with the signal you get with your Philips antenna, you might consider something with a bit more oomph. It’s my understanding that this Winegard antenna is pretty much the gold standard for indoor antennas. Or, if it’s an option, put something up in the attic! The higher’s the better when it comes to antennas, especially when the towers are farther away.
edited to add: I noticed that you said you signed up for Dish recently, so you probably got the same DVR I have, the 722. If that’s the case, another cool thing about the antenna is, it adds another tuner for recording. As in, you can record on TV2 and the antenna, and still watch whatever you want on TV1. Or even record three programs at the same time (if one is off the antenna)!
I’m sure they are! I don’t know what resolution the Dish HD channels are at, but they have a big problem which is limited bandwidth. They have to send all their programming through satellites, which can only transmit so much information. To compensate there has to be extra compression, which worsens the picture.
A HD signal over a plain old antenna is the best picture you can get, it’s still compressed depending on your local channel’s decisions on how to split the bandwidth, but it should be compressed the least of any other options.
That’d explain why, when I record programs off the antenna, they take up more DVR space than programs recorded off the satellite. Deleting an hour-long OTA program can free up 1:15 or so of HD record time. So, I usually try to watch the OTA stuff first, to keep space available. heh.
I think the others are right that you’re seeing analog channels, not HD. When you do get HD working, keep in mind that right now, the rabbit ears aren’t doing anything for you. All the HD signals are UHF, and will be received by the square part of the antenna. Make the rabbit ears short, and maybe point them away from the direction you’re trying to receive from.
In a year or so, the analog stations will go off the air, and HD transmissions can move down into the upper VHF band. Others may change their transmission frequency within the UHF band, so you may need to re-search for your channels. If any of your stations move into the upper VHF, you’ll need to spread out the rabbit ears, but not all the way. Make the tips about 30 inches apart, and pointed perpendicular to the direction you want to receive from.
Wow, I’m gone for 12 hours and umpteen responses come in. Thanks for the info.
Sounds pretty clearly like I’m getting analog, not digital. I suppose my TV doesn’t have a built-in tuner. No biggie; when I get home I’ll run it into the Dish Network box and see how it looks. I was just going for a straight connection to see if I could get any reception at all.
Good to hear that DVR will work with the over-the-air transmissions. I’m skeptical about that, though. For instance, I’m guessing that I can’t record two OTA networks at once, right? And without the program guide, do I have to manually set the DVR to record X network from 7:00 to 8:00 or whatever?
You are correct that you can only record one program off the antenna at any one time; there’s only one OTA tuner, so only one program can be watched or recorded from the antenna at one time. However, you can record off the antenna and off your satellite-based local channels at the same time, although the satellite locals won’t be HD. At least you won’t miss your programs, though.
And Dish will download guide information for your local channels, so you don’t have to set recordings manually. It’s just like any other channel.