300ohm and 75ohm coax

[chuckl]

i have a good line of sight for DTV from the mountain.
been using about 15ft of 300ohm on the wall at the ceiling and the black converter transformer from 300ohm to 75ohm with a good strong signal.
i used a fairly inexpensive digital ready antenna and RG6 at 25ft when i lived in a rural area with an excellent signal.
the 300ohm could not bring in the signal.

everything seems to be ok with the 300ohm.
signal strength is usually very good to 100%.
what is your take on using 300ohm or a digital antenna with 75ohm RG5 or RG6 coax?
300ohm is not insulated. does it have some overlap from other TV and FM signals?
will the video be better with an antenna and RG5 or RG6 coax?

[KarMa]

I don't understand your post, considering you say your signal is "very good". Are you wanting more channels?

RG6 will carry the higher frequencies much further than RG59.

I have an antenna on my house with coax wire provided to a couple of rooms. For the my farthest bedroom I had been using the coax that came with house but I never got a good signal on most of the channels. I finally got around to checking the cable and found the previous owners had installed RG59 instead of RG6. After I replaced the wire with RG6 the farthest bedroom was able to get all available channels. RG59 may have worked for analog channels which tended to be in the lower frequencies, for digital TV broadcasters have moved to the higher frequencies so that viewers can use smaller antennas. Only problem is that RG59 does not carry these higher frequencies as well as the lower ones, so RG6 is much better suited for the task and RG6 only costs a bit more.

Should help a bit to get rid of the 300ohm cable as it acts as it's own antenna and can pick up noise from all directions, instead of the direction of the desired transmitter.

[JVRaines]

There is no such thing as a "digital antenna." Digital TV stations broadcast on the same radio frequencies that were used in the analog days. If you have a line-of-sight and 100 percent signal strength, you could probably put up a coat hanger and do just as well.

[drjtech]

"Digital Antenna" is a marketing term, not a technical term. Marketing wants you to throw away your old fashioned (but perfectly functional) Analog Antennas and join the cool kids buying all new modern Digital Antennas.

[chuckl]

thanks for the reply.
>>>>>I don't understand your post, considering you say your signal is "very good". Are you wanting more channels?<<<<

sorry if i was not clear. i have all available DTV channels. i have an antenna and RG6 in a box in the garage.
300ohm is not insulated. some DTV channels are not so good. I guess OTA SD and low definition channels dont work too good on the hi-def TVs. looks like garbage.
the DTV HD channels are good through HDMI and component.
i guess i will have to install the antenna and the RG6 to find out.
thanks

been using 6ft quantum fx hd6 hdmi cable
what are you using?

[redwudz]

HDTV uses about the same band as UHF TV used to. So most any UHF antennas will work.
But I would recommend RG6 cable, quad shielded if you have a 100 foot or so run.

I use a long boom Yagi directional UHF antenna (40 inch boom), which is overkill, but was cheap enough.
It feeds into a distribution amplifier to supply the different TV cable sockets in the house. The house is wired with RG6. I don't have cable or satellite TV.

I have the antenna installed in my attic. All our HDTV stations are on one mountain, about 30 air miles away, so no rotator needed..
Since HDTV uses the higher UHF band, reception is mostly line of sight, so you need to be able to see where the transmitter towers are.
Good news is HDTV uses very high power transmitters. Most around here are about 400KW, so a coat hanger or a pair of 'rabbit ears' will generally work.

[KarMa]

some DTV channels are not so good. I guess OTA SD and low definition channels dont work too good on the hi-def TVs. looks like garbage.
the DTV HD channels are good through HDMI and component.
i guess i will have to install the antenna and the RG6 to find out.

Over the Air DTV has a fixed data bandwidth of around 18Mbit per frequency, after you take away the overhead. So for example if you had channels 9.1/9.2/9.3, these channels are all sharing the same limited bandwidth. All or the majority of that bandwidth usually goes to the main HD channel, which usually gets 8-17Mbit. While any SD channels usually gets the shaft, with 2-4Mbit. Causing the picture to suffer. Compare this to a DVD which can go up 10Mbit, with the same SD video using the same MPEG2 compression.

And remember, with DTV you either get everything or nothing. Getting better cable and a better antenna will not help the quality of the picture. It will only help if the signal is weak and you are getting dropouts, which will cause the image to freeze or big error blocking artifacts.

been using 6ft quantum fx hd6 hdmi cable
what are you using?

I just have a coax connected to my HDTV, which can decode ATSC OTA. I use Denny's "HD Stacker TV Antenna" and a "CHANNEL MASTER PREAMPLIFIER MODEL 7777" distribution amp. I live about 100 miles from the cluster of transmitters that I watch so I need to go to this extreme. Along with a rotor.

[chuckl]

some DTV channels are not so good. I guess OTA SD and low definition channels dont work too good on the hi-def TVs. looks like garbage.
the DTV HD channels are good through HDMI and component.
i guess i will have to install the antenna and the RG6 to find out.

Over the Air DTV has a fixed data bandwidth of around 18Mbit per frequency, after you take away the overhead. So for example if you had channels 9.1/9.2/9.3, these channels are all sharing the same limited bandwidth. All or the majority of that bandwidth usually goes to the main HD channel, which usually gets 8-17Mbit. While any SD channels usually gets the shaft, with 2-4Mbit. Causing the picture to suffer. Compare this to a DVD which can go up 10Mbit, with the same SD video using the same MPEG2 compression.

And remember, with DTV you either get everything or nothing. Getting better cable and a better antenna will not help the quality of the picture. It will only help if the signal is weak and you are getting dropouts, which will cause the image to freeze or big error blocking artifacts.

been using 6ft quantum fx hd6 hdmi cable
what are you using?

I just have a coax connected to my HDTV, which can decode ATSC OTA. I use Denny's "HD Stacker TV Antenna" and a "CHANNEL MASTER PREAMPLIFIER MODEL 7777" distribution amp. I live about 100 miles from the cluster of transmitters that I watch so I need to go to this extreme. Along with a rotor.

**********************
karma>>>>>While any SD channels usually gets the shaft, with 2-4Mbit. Causing the picture to suffer.<<<<<
some SD DTV are not good even with signal strength at 100% on a hi-def TV. Very cloudy, washed out and not good. Some are ok or fair.
karma>>>>>And remember, with DTV you either get everything or nothing.<<<<<
yeah, i got that. When the signal drops out the sound will stop and the video will pixel and freeze. it will come back but takes about 10- 15seconds. Some channels do this more than others.
good line of sight. signal strength is good with 300ohm on the wall. just getting dropout sometimes and some channels are just not good. Most DTV SD channels are ok.
>>>>>I live about 100 miles from the cluster of transmitters that I watch so I need to go to this extreme. Along with a rotor.<<<<<
i did the same when i was in a rural area for awhile. The transmitter was not far but it was behind a tall mountain. it was only 80-100watts. i had a Yagee antenna at 25ft and a mast mounted amp at 28dbs with RG6 and seperate FM pole at 25ft.
it was alot of work because i had to use strong anchor wires and anchors because it was a wicked high wind area.
i lost a few antennas because the 60-70mph+ high winds blew it down. destroyed it. i came home a couple of times after a high wind. the entire mast for TV and FM was on the ground all beat up and twisted. took me hours to fix the bent poles and mangled mess then raise it back up. sometimes i was able to salvage the antenna and go again. assembled the TV and FM mast on the ground then stood on top of the roof and pulled it up with a rope. it's alot of work.
when it was not damaged from high winds it worked well for what i had to deal with.
I'm back in the big city watching from Mount Wilson in LA with about 15ft of 300ohm at the ceiling.
the only thing i can come up with is to install the outdoor Yagee antenna in the attic or on a pole with RG6 and see how it goes.
Should i leave it alone?

[KarMa]

One other thing you have to watch out for is your TV being over powered by one of the channels. There's one TV transmitter close to me that can be over powering on my set up. Even though the transmitter is low power (20kW) it would still give me a very strong signal since it's only 15 miles away. On my large Sony, this was no problem and the TV managed the high signal without issue. On my older cheaper TV it was a problem, causing problems on all the channels. So I put a splitter on the line, right before it hit the TV, to cut signal power of all the channels. This fixed it.