I know this isn’t really the place for a technical kind of question, but SDers are a clever and generous bunch, so I thought someone might offer some advice.
I live in an apartment. I don’t get cable, partly to save money and partly because I’m already embarassed by how much time I waste watching TV. There are 10 television stations in my area, 3 VHF and 7 UHF, but I can get a decent picture on only two of them. Since cable and/or an outside antennae aren’t options are, can anybody give me some suggestions on how I can improve my reception?
There are a lot of factors here to consider, which may be difficult not knowing the layout of your place.
First, are you just using ordinary rabbit ears? You can buy some much better indoor antennas from a place like Radio Shack, and they normally have a very liberal return policy if the item doesn’t work.
Do you have a window at all near the TV? You could get a remote indoor antenna to place in the window, and run the wires back to the TV.
Are you sure that your apartment does not have an indoor coaxial jack to connect to a master outdoor antenna? The last 2 apartments I was in (before my house) had them, they just never told us about them. Look for any strange coax jacks in the wall that are not cable, near where a TV would go, and try plugging the antenna feed to your TV or VCR into it - it can’t hurt.
I hear they have invented a new and amazing system for TV where you do not have to look at any screen to follow what’s hapening and the programming is much better and fewer commercials.
I think they call it “radio”.
They make a TV antenna that uses your house(apartment) wiring. I would try that.
Anthricite is right. It is impossible to troubleshoot a system without being there.However I would first approach your landlord about the reception. Ask your nieghbors and try to follow the lead in wire. Many times it is just a broken wire and most of the time it is right at the antenna.
Here in central North Carolina, I receive 8 stations with good signals (2 VHF, 6 UHF), plus 4 more with varying degrees of snow (2 VHF, 2 UHF), all from a very basic setup on a first floor apartment.
Some hints:
I bought a cheap signal amplifier, which doesn’t make a huge difference, but does help some on weak signals. These only cost a few dollars, and are available in most store’s video supplies section.
You should have rabbit ears for the VHF signals (channels 2-13) plus something separate, for example the loop that usually comes with the set, specifically designed for UHF signals (channels 14-69).
Even if you have a master antenna connection in your apartment, it might not be active any more. Same cable companies have convinced various apartment managements to remove their master antennas, in order to help promote cable sales. (This happened to me when I lived in Herndon, Virginia).
The “whole house” antenna is usually much worse than rabbit ears- save your money and try a couple of antennas from Radio Shack. whitetho has some good tips, here are a few more:
Make sure you use the loop antenna (or buy one for under $1 at radio shack, for UHF channels (14-69), as whiteho said.
Try as many combinations as possible. Try rabbit ears and a couple of different antennas from radio shack. Experiment with antenna placement- that’s often crucial for fringe stations. In a college dorm many years ago we spent about 2 hours hunting for a good spot for the antenna- it ended up being taped to the wall (with duct tape of course!) about 30 feet away from the TV. We got crappy reception on 2 stations, and decent reception on one more, vs. almost nothing anywhere else, including just 1 foot away. You may even end up with more than one antenna, switching between them for different stations (you can use a video game A/B switch to easily switch- available from radio shack if you don’t have extras from old Ataris/Nintendos, etc.).
If you try a telescoping dipole (two telescoping antennas on a common base- it’s what normally comes attached to a TV, when they used to have antennas built on), try different lengths as well as different positions. Again, you could end up with different settings for different stations, especially if the transmitting towers are far apart.
If you end up putting the antenna away from the TV, use the correct wire. Typically you’ll need 300 ohm “ladder line”, which is two wires separated by about 1/2 inch of plastic. Again, it’s available at radio shack. This is the proper cable for screw-terminal connections on the back of a TV or VCR. The terminals may even be marked “300 ohm”. If you don’t have that, but have the round coax connector (an “F” connector), you need to use coax cable to run to your antenna. This is standard 75 ohm cable-TV coax, available at radio shack. The antenna itself is almost certainly 300 ohms, though, so you’ll need a 75 to 300 ohm transformer, available at radio shack of course :). You may have one hanging around from an old video came. This provides the proper impedance match between the antenna and cable.
Have fun!
