A rotor allows you to rotate the antenna. You have an inside dial that you can spin 360 degrees, and the antenna is mounted on an electric motor that will rotate the same. An antenna like in the picture picks up much better in one direction, so you may need to rotate the antenna to different directions for different stations.
But not necessarily in the same places.
what is not in the same place?
Many (most?) stations changed frequency. We don’t have any VHF Low stations in the Detroit, Toledo, and Lansing areas any more, for example. Channels 4 and 6 moved to UHF, and 2 moved up to 7, which in turn moved to UHF. I didn’t think there were many stations that stayed in the VHF low band across the country, although I know there are some.
Most of the VHF high stayed put, though; 10, 11, and 13 are still on those real channels, although they were temporarily UHF for digital while the analog stations were still up. Channel 9 from Canada switched to digital in the last year, and is still on 9.
what is being discussed is if an old antenna useful for analog tv is now useful for digital tv. yes it is with very few exceptions. unless your antenna is falling apart there is no electrical reason to change it.
an antenna is made for a range of frequencies, that is unchanged from the transition from analog to digital. actually the range needed is smaller now (on the high end of UHF) though that is unimportant (with few exceptions) in cases of a working antenna.
for the most part recent (past 4 or 5 decades) rooftop antennas would be combination (VHF LO, VHF HI, UHF) antennas. you would get one with the gain (efficiency) needed expressed in miles maybe like 30, 50 and 70 miles.
there used to be many VHF LO stations, there are few now. the OP has one or more they can receive.
there used to be many VHF HI stations, there are still many.
there are many more UHF stations now though a smaller frequency range.
the stations may have changed the channels (real frequency) they are on but antennas that worked for those channel ranges before will work for them now.
so a tv station that was channel 2, and still calls themselves channel 2 (virtual channel) might really be on channel 36 (this is all transparent to the viewer, the tv set handles all this with its electronic smarts, you tell the tv set to get an antenna signals and it sets itself up) and if your antenna worked on channel 36 before then you will see this tv station now.
one example of where a new antenna might be needed is if a person had a 30 mile antenna and could watch a picture that some of the time might have snow in it. that antenna might not get a digital signal now all of the time and they might need a 50 mile antenna.
there are individual circumstances that would affect any person. a general rule would be that if you were able to get a good to excellent picture in the channel range needed before then you will get a digital picture now with the same antenna.
I am glad to hear it is a TV antenna. At our current home we have dropped cable and sat. in favor of Netflix and Hulu. We are saving a TON of money and are quite happy with the selection. We found that when we had satalite TV or cable, that we were mostly watching movie rentals and whatever isn’t found on Netflix, we can suppliment just fine with Redbox. I do miss having local and national news stations and live sports. I get my news now via the Internet and rarely watch sports, so it hasn’t been a problem big enough to warrant paying “Big Cable” again. But if we could get local stations in now, that wold be great, especially since many are in HD now. Thanks again everyone, if we get the house I am sure technical follow up questions are sure to come.
obbn, you can go to antennaweb.org, enter your location, and it will tell you what stations you should be able to get. It’s really meant to help people choose an antenna, but it does give info on the direction to stations, and their frequencies.
I did that for one of the ZIP codes for Leesburg, FL, and all the stations that came up are ESE of you. You can put in your actual street address, to see if any more stations come up for there. If your antenna doesn’t have a rotor, I’d expect it’s pointing that direction. If it does have a rotor, you might be able to point it at other nearby cities, and get a few more stations. ETA: The stations are all about 50 miles away, so you may need that tower to get good reception. Certainly don’t get rid of it until you’ve found a replacement that works, and have used it for a year to see how well it works in different weather and different seasons.
What station is that? I played around on antennaweb, moving the location around near Leesburg, and couldn’t find any VHF Low stations nearby. This siteonly lists one VHF low station in Florida, way down in Miami.
doing a channel search based on address and antenna height is the way to get reliable data.
most of the easy stations (based on my search with just city name) are at 105 degrees. if i had an antenna without a rotor then i would point it there. this gets all the major networks.
there are a few reachable stations at near 30, 75, 118, 200, 330 degrees. the major networks are duplicated in this bunch. independent stations and subchannels on network stations can give a large variety of movie, retro tv, craft, outdoors/sports channels which can make getting these stations desirable.
there is a station on 4 that totally would depend on antenna height. though it is a network with stronger signal on other channels.