I am cancelling cable service, and going to just OTA.
Here is the
signal analysis page for my area.
I ordered
this antenna from amazon. I hung it from a rafter in the attic and ran the cable down to the TV. I know it's an indoors type antenna, but since I'm fairly close to the towers in the area, I thought it would be enough. It seems to do a pretty good job when connected directly to my TV, but when I hook the antenna to my TiVo Premiere, I'm having a bit of trouble.
From what I've read, this isn't unusual, the tuner in the Premiere can be a bit temperamental. In one thread on the Tivo Community forums, several people reported improved reception when they do not tighten the antenna cable all the way onto the tivo, or trim back the center conductor of the coax cable. The theory there was that the tuner is easily overloaded by too strong a signal, and that by intentionally making a poor connection the strength of the signal going into the Tivo is reduced enough to suit the tuner.
The main issue I'm having is with channel 4. Initially, I was only getting a few frozen pixels when i tuned to that channel. After reading the thread about the Premiere's tuner, I tried putting an 8 way splitter in line, to see if the attenuation would help. At that point, i got intermittent audio and video with some pixelization. However, that also seemed to introduce some occasional pixelization and freezing on other channels. (In particular, channel 8, during my wife's soap opera. Needless to say, I quickly heard about this.)
I took the splitter back out, and just planned on not receiving channel 4 until I came up with an alternative. I ordered a couple of high/low band vhf splitter/combiners and a few different strength attenuators, so I could put an attenuator on just the low band vhf signal and then combine the high and low back together to feed the TiVo. It sounded like a great idea, in theory... After putting the 2 splitter/combiners in and testing different attenuators on the low band side, it seems that the best signal strength (based on the signal strength meter in the tivo) for channel 4 was with the high/low splitter/combiners in line, but without any attenuators on the low band side. I'm not sure that makes sense, unless the splitter combiners are affecting the signal just enough to help without adding attenuators... Or, very possibly, the results were skewed by the fact that I was testing on a different day, potentially with different weather conditions. This exercise could have been a complete waste of time and money.
As of right now, I left the 2 splitter combiners in line, but without any attenuator installed. I'm getting a consistent signal strength of approximately 55 on channel 4, and 65-75 on most other channels. When I was flipping through last night, all channels seemed to be coming in clearly, but I didn't watch any for an extended period. Assuming that the splitter/combiners aren't actually helping anything, I expect we will continue to have issues with freezing and pixelization as we watch tv the next few days. If so, what else should I try to identify and correct the issue?
I can always try a big 'outdoor' type antenna, I just didn't figure that would be necessary given my location. If I do go that route, I'd prefer to hang it in the attic, if possible, rather than installing a mast outside. My house is a single story home, as are the others around me, but we are located on some of the highest ground in the area.
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you can offer.
Aurock