Quote:
Originally Posted by fonzie888
Oh, by-the-way "I think that using a UHF antenna for VHF reception is a bad idea. hardly describes why.
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While several UHF only antennas can receive VHF, they do so with unpredictable results. The secret to reliable DTV reception is a clean signal without multipath. To achieve that signal, you need a directional antenna. If a UHF antenna happens to pick up VHF, but does so with a pattern that does not aim in the correct direction, the signal that it picks up may be strong enough, but could be riddled with ghosting such that your tuner can't decode the signal.
You may hear many stories on the Internet about how a particular person in a particular town is using an UHF antenna for VHF reception on a specific VHF channel. For instance, the original Channel Master 4228 worked extremely well on channel 10. It was awful on channel 7. What is not mentioned is if the tuner used may be a high performance 6th generation DTV tuner. 6th generation tuners can receive a signal even in the presence of multipath. Because there is no indication that your tuner is a 6th generation tuner, you cannot assume that any of the Internet success stories with UHF antennas are relevant to your situation.
Yet even a 6th generation tuner, which might work reasonably often, would be less effective when an airplane flies overhead or a truck drives by your house than if you used a proper VHF antenna.