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Old 10-Feb-2010, 5:48 AM   #2
mtownsend
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 632
Hello and welcome!

You are really close to some transmitter like WGRZ, WIVB, WKBW, WNGS, and WNYO, which is what makes them very easy to receive.

Stations like WUTV are further away and on the north-west side of the house. That will make them more difficult to receive, but an attic or rooftop antenna should be able to pull them in quite nicely.

Would you consider a rooftop antenna installation?



The Canadian digital signals are at the edge of being receivable. You can probably get some of the channels most of the time, but it's hard to get reliable reception at these distances. In order to have a chance at getting these, you'll definitely need a rooftop antenna.

The analog Canadian channels seem to be a little easier to get, so you can at least enjoy them until their analog shutdown deadline of August 31, 2011. After that, we'll have to see how much power their digital transmitters come up with.



From what I've heard, these antennas are built cheap (rotator gets stuck or fails after just 1 year) and have poor performance (not good for weaker signals). Your strong local transmitters are probably also too much for the built-in amp to handle (will cause overload). I'd steer clear of this antenna.



If you're only interested in local stations, then a smaller antenna like the Winegard HD7694P or Antennacraft HBU-33 would suffice (these antennas only cover channels 7-69 and are fine for the local broadcasts).

If you want to also get the Canadian analog broadcasts, then you'll want to go with something bigger like the Winegard HD7084P or HD8200U (these antennas have more range and also cover channels 2-6 so that you get CBLT). It's difficult to say whether this will be enough to pick up the Canadian broadcasts after they go fully digital because we don't know how much they will tweak the signal power as they deploy these new systems next year.

Do not get any antennas with a built-in amp. Your closest stations are too strong for most amps to handle, so you are better off without one.
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