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Old 13-Jan-2010, 10:55 PM   #4
mtownsend
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 632
There are all kinds of things that can affect signal strength and quality over time. People walking by, cars driving by, trees blowing in the wind, changes in the weather, interference from power tools / appliances, and any number of other random factors can cause your signals to fluctuate.

If you are getting hit-or-miss reception on some of your channels, it probably means that you're operating too close to the minimum required levels. Either the signals are borderline too weak, or the signal is getting too much corruption from signal "echos" or "ghosts" that bounce around the environment. It looks like a little variation one way or the other is causing some channels to appear and disappear. To have a more stable viewing experience, you need to have more "signal margin" (stronger and/or cleaner signal) to deal with the natural signal fluctuations that are present in your situation so that you never dip below the point of seeing the picture break up or go away. A better signal will give you more of a "buffer" to help your tuner maintain its channel lock.



Just so you know, Terk has a reputation of making over-priced antennas that have poor performance. That doesn't mean that all of their antennas are bad, but in the majority of cases, they do not even publish their true performance specifications (because they do not stack up well against the competition). At this point, your current antenna is somewhat of an unknown because they don't provide any information on its true gain and antenna pattern. Just based on its size and construction, I really don't expect it to perform any better than a $15 rabbit ears + loop combo. I have not seen any information that would indicate otherwise. All antennas are subject to the laws of physics, and the Terk does not appear to have the size or structure needed to have better gain.

No matter which indoor antenna you go with, the signals can usually be improved by moving the antenna higher (i.e., second floor or attic). That is because the number of things that cause signal reflections/interference (e.g., walls, cars, trees, neighbors' houses, etc.) are usually more sparse the higher you go. In other words, as the signal comes to you over the horizon, the signal doesn't have to pass through as much "clutter" to reach your antenna if you install it higher up. If the signals can pass "over" stuff (like neighbors' houses) instead of "through" it, the signal strength and the signal quality will improve. You can test whether sticking the antenna out the window or moving it higher up makes things any better for you. Things should improve slightly, but it's hard to say how much improvement you need to avoid the channel pixellation/dropouts.



If you really must have an indoor antenna, I'd suggest returning your flat omni and getting either a Philips PHDTV3 or a Terk HDTVi (this is probably the only Terk I would ever recommend). Both of these antennas are copy-cat designs of a well known decent performing indoor UHF antenna. Both of these antenna models have added a pair of rabbit ears so that they can handle VHF frequencies as well (since WTVD and WBTW are on VHF channels).

Either of these antennas are about as good as it gets for compact indoor antennas. They are not "omni", but are rather slightly directional. This helps them get better gain than your existing Terk. Antenna gain is very much related to the directionality of an antenna. The more directional an antenna is, the greater its gain. These antennas need to be aimed at the transmitters you want to receive rather than being "omni", but the advantage is that you get a much better signal out of them.
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