Hi, found TV Fool yesterday and boy what a find.
I built a diy antenna from following along with this video....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcUSW...eature=related
Here's my home location info
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...3cf448b13e8eae
Once the antenna was finished, I climed up on my roof, and mounted it up on top of my old DISH dish, just kind of jutting out of the stand, not mounting it with the dish behind it. The antenna does not have shielding on it (yet?), but it is pointing directly to the N NW (towards Sutro in SF).The coaxial cable running from it goes down the side of the house, into the basement and then up to the living room (I'd guess 40 to 50 feet of cable). I then plugged it into my new Tivo Premier and had it scan. Channel 36 (and it's 4 channels) showed up, nothing else.
Fast forward to last night, unplugged antenna, then plugged it into Tivo with 5 foot coaxial cable (this is inside the living room of course) and ran a scan. 30 new channels found, and boy was I excited. I started browsing and was dissapointed to find out that I don't speak Korean, Farsi, Spanish, or Chineese. I did manage to get 5 channels of PBS, along with the random other foreign HD broadcasts, but no NBC, CBS, ABC, Channel 2 etc. Then I thought of an amplifier. Went to Radio Shack and they want $40 for them.
I've only got one HD TV, so the signal isn't split. I do have a splitter about 10 feet from the Tivo box, so that another room could get reception (installed years ago, but unused)
Is an amplifier what I need?
Should I get a better one than a Radio Shack version?
Do you think I should be putting a shield on my antenna.
Do I need to toss out my diy antenna and buy a professional one?
According to the charts that I've viewed on this site, I should be mostly in the green zones.
My house is in San Mateo, on the top of a hill, rear of house facing east over the SF Bay.
I'll gladly give more info if needed.