Sheesh, folks. Even if your house isn’t wired for an outdoor antenna, it ain’t a major ordeal. You don’t even have to mount it outside. Mine’s in the attic.
I bought one of those big ol’ aerials, this one to be precise (which is under $30, cheaper than some of the silly supposedly high-tech indoor models), and a mast and mounting bracket. I also picked up fifty feet of RG6 coax. I mounted the antenna in the attic, hanging the mast down from a rafter, and pointed it toward my local signals. For the second half of the install, I needed a second person to assist.
I found the coax line running to my living room TV and had my assistant attach a strong line to it. I pulled the line back up into the attic, attached the original coax and the new antenna coax to it, and had my assistant pull the line back down with both cables. Interior walls are hollow, so it was a piece of cake. Then, I put a new faceplate on the living room wall, one with two coax outlets, and attached one line to each. There we go, easy access to both the satellite and the antenna. And now I’m getting 100% signal on all channels.
If you don’t want to run a separate antenna line, you could muck about with diplexers and such, but I don’t know enough about 'em. I should also note that one friend of mine didn’t even bother to mount his antenna, he just chucked it up into his attic, and it works great. I wanted to do it properly, so I hung it up all nice and pretty. But, it’s not absolutely necessary.
And finally: if you absolutely do not want to do it yourself, hire someone. My 70-year-old dad who’s not up to attic-crawling saw an ad in the paper by some college kids who do antenna installs, little wiry guys who can get around the rafters easily. Fifty bucks later, they have 100% signal too.
I started this before the original DTV switch in February, so I’ve had some time to adjust my setup to what works best.
First, go to antennaweb to find out what antenna works best for your location. Remember that a UHF antenna may work this week for all stations, but once the transition takes place some stations may switch to broadcasting DTV back to VHF. For example, Ch 7 here in Boston is currently on UHF, but will revert to VHF after the transition. So I had to buy an antenna that also would pick up VHF. I installed a UHF/VHF antenna in my attic and adjusted (rotated) it to pick up local stations. It had some trouble with some stations so I bought a second UHF for the attic to pick up the missing stations*. Both antennas have signal boosters. I’m anticipating that I may need to adjust them further once the transition takes place. I also have a powered “rabbit ears” style antenna on top of my TV that helps the signal a bit.
Once the transition takes place, you’ll need to rescan to make sure that you are still picking up the stations. I called a few engineering departments at local stations to see if the signal will increase post-transition. They said it would certainly not decrease, and they were optimistic that it would be better. So even if you aren’t picking up the signal now, you still may have some luck come this weekend.
If you haven’t sent away for the converter box coupons, you can still do that. They knock $40 off the $60 or so that the box will cost you. My suspicious mind tells me that the $60 boxes will soon go for $20, but whatever. If you want to record one station while watching another, you’ll need two boxes. And if you buy the Zenith and the Insignia boxes, beware that the remote can control both boxes which makes life interesting.
Good luck.
*A lot of people advise against two antennae unless they are specifically designed for that and mounted on the same mast. I located them as far apart as I could and it did improve my signal.
No such thing around here, so don’t blindly proclaim it’s all anyone could possibly need.
Per Antennaweb, I need a “Purple” large directional UHF/VHF antenna with preamp to receive the “local” San Francisco stations. Otherwise, the mountains block the signal.
Even having an existing UHF/VHF antenna is no guarantee. There’s an antenna and preamp all nice and cozy in my mother’s attic, free from birds and weather, and it pulls in the analog TV stations just great. With digital, it’s a crapshoot whether she’ll get a good picture or a mosaic with stuttering sound. Needless to say, she’s not impressed with digital TV.