What Kind Of TV Antenna to Buy
December 28, 2007 – 11:06 amFor most HDTV set-ups, a regular old fashioned tv antenna will do the job. You don’t need a special “digital antenna,” as some are advertised.
Antennas come in all shapes and sizes and have their special features. You can get different types of antennas that are highly directional or multi-directional. To figure out what your needs are, check out antennaweb.org. There you can enter your zip code and it will tell you which direction your signal will be coming from. If all your channels are coming from the same direction it is highly desirable to get a directional antenna. Otherwise, you’ll have to use either omni-directional antenna or a directional antenna accompanied by a rotator.
Most of the digital broadcasts in the US are in the UHF band. Hence, a UHF antenna is probably sufficient in most locations. If some of your favorite channels is transmitted in the VHF band, a VHF antenna might be necessary.
If you can get away with an indoor VHF antenna, you are lucky. That’s because deep fringe VHF reception is not so simple to achieve. Large directional VHF antennas are heavy and difficult to install. If you happen to live close to the towers, then an indoor VHF antenna may work fine for you. The best known indoor television antenna, known as “rabbit ears” is OK in large metropolitan areas.