http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...9e7403cf57edca
(This is a different report than the one higher up in the thread - this one has a bigger height value due to the fact that I have something in the attic now).
NOTE: This is in Garland, TX, right outside of Dallas.
I'm bumping my own thread, as I have an update to all of this. I have been operating for a couple of months with the getup in the pictures above. It mostly worked, but I could never find that one sweet spot that would get me every channel I wanted (let alone everything that I know was available). I could get several channels at once well, but others, not at all, or too blocky to be worth it. I've put up with it for awhile, mostly because I couldn't afford to run cable (nor do I have the skill). My wife's heard me swear at the rabbit ears on several occasions.
Anyway, this past week I was talking to a friend of mine at church about his TV setup, as he is antenna only. He has one of those big ol rooftop antennas, but in his attic. When I asked how he ran cables up there, he said he didn't. When he bought the house he never activated the cable TV that was already in the house. He just disconnected the cable that runs to the TV's and plugged it into the antenna he stuck in his attic. He says he gets everything that way - just the odd channel problem when there's really high winds around.
I didn't think anything of it until today when I was thinking about the way my house is wired. When my wife and I first bought this place, we hooked up DirecTV. We had two cables running to the living room and the bedroom from a splitter that used to be up there. When I switched to Time Warner Cable, I didn't need all those cables, so one of the two going to the living room was disconnected, and just sat there. I thought of that cable this morning, and went up to the attic and looked. Sure enough it was just hanging there connected to nothing.
So I took one of my rabbit ears I wasn't using at the moment (RCA ANT111R), and stuck it on the other end of the cable, and just sat it up there. Pointed it in the general direction I believe most of my transmitters are coming from and went back to the TV and did a rescan.
I figured it would pick up just a few channels - I was mostly doing that just to test the idea of the cable working. I was QUITE surprised that it picked up every channel I was interested in, some I was marginally interested in, and a ton that I don't care about, including a handful I didn't even know existed! I was quite stunned by that. Every important channel is rock solid. No loss, no nothing. $8 rabbit ears in the attic. I wouldn't have thought that would work.
I then went to the signal strength meter on my TiVo's diagonstic's menus, and the big network channels are surprisingly strong:
4.1/Fox - 68
5.1/2/3 - NBC - 83
8.1/2/3 - ABC - 66
11.1 - CBS - 77
13.1/2 - PBS - 48
The one "UHF" channel that I cared about comes in as 73, so I'm quite pleased with this. I checked out the rest of the channels out there, and everything else is anywhere between 45 and 73. There's a couple that are lower than that which I have problems with, but I don't much care about them.
I'm going to stick with this for the time being, wait and see what happens when there's a storm (bah, if you know Texas weather, our 100 degree record is legendary this year), or wind or something and see how it's disrupted. I'll probably look at some sort of larger antenna up there to help with strength before too long. It's not bad with the rabbit ears, but at least one channel I care about (PBS) is lower than I'd prefer signal strength wise.
There's also this:
There's also a few oddities. Several channels it found were blank. Including one (19.1) which had a strength meter of 77, but no content - just a black screen. That channel doesn't show up on the tvfool report, any idea why I'd get such a strong signal, but no programming? Just curious, it's not a huge deal.