OT/antenna signal

I just saw fancy antennas that anvertise 50 db's of signal. How much signal do you need for digital and is there a way to measure it. If there is where do you buy the meter? Thanks

Thanks again for the help on the last post about the signal amplifer. I am going to re-wire what I have in the attic.

do a search for a field strength meter. However, a good one to do what you wnat is going to be 3 to 4 HUNDRED dollars

There is a "info" button on my TV remote that puts a little thermometer type bar on the screen to show signal strength. The auto search feature finds stations that have a short bar and no picture. Ones that come in good have over half bar length.

It's not 50db of signal. It's 50db of gain. Signal strength is measured in milivolts.
If the gain is electronic rather than through using more elements. The signal the TV receives could be amplified noise.
More elements is similar to using a larger dia satellite dish
It's not so much about signal strength as it is signal strength that can be heard above electronic noise.
And no matter how good the antenna, amp and TV. If there is a nearby FM radio transmitter, old or wet coax or if a rotor isn't used. There still won't be a decent signal to the tv.

50db of gain is NOT reasonable. I think you're seeing hyped or outright fraudulent marketing materials.

I'm currently contemplating getting a 10 foot long specialized VHF High-Band antenna just so I can pick up NBC on a tower that's over 60 miles away reliably. That antenna only has a gain of about 10db.

This page has the best comparison of consumer tv antennas that I have seen:
Comparing HTDV Antennas

Even for a hundred I think I will pass on that meter

Thanks for your input. Do you really need a new antenna for digital or will your 10 year old antenna work just as good.

I am going to look at that 50db antenna again. All the others I have seen are 10 db's, so I thought that one was really good. I either miss read, miss understood or it was misrepresented. Thanks

I will check and see if I have that feature on my TV. Thanks

Well, knowing a bit about antennas, thet 50dB is either one huge piece of aluminum, or there"s a lot of wishful thinking on the advertiser"s part, or they are rating it against a dummy load burried in a lead casket 30 feet below the surface. 50db is a huge amount of gain! Even if it has an electronic amplifier, that much gain would be almost impossible. Such an amplifier would be extremely noisy.

If, on the other hand if it is true, I want one, meanwhile, I remain highly skeptical.

de WB8VWK

Well, knowing a bit about antennas, thet 50dB is either one huge piece of aluminum, or there"s a lot of wishful thinking on the advertiser"s part, or they are rating it against a dummy load burried in a lead casket 30 feet below the surface. 50db is a huge amount of gain! Even if it has an electronic amplifier, that much gain would be almost impossible. Such an amplifier would be extremely noisy.

If, on the other hand if it is true, I want one, meanwhile, I remain highly skeptical.

de WB8VWK

Ray... You are Right On with that Comment, that is unthinkable Gain from a TV Antenna. Larry KF4LKU

> Do you really need a new antenna for digital or will your 10 year old antenna work just as good.

Will your old antenna work fine? Yes and no.

Yes, your old antenna will work fine since digital TV uses the same frequency ranges(1) as analog did.

No, if you tolerated a very noisy signal on certain analog channels before you will probably have to upgrade your antenna to receive the digital channel.

(1) digital only uses channels 2 through 69 where analog UHF antennas were designed to pick up additional higher frequencies as well.

dtv is from only channels 2 through 51. 52 through 69 are disappearing for the same reasons channels 70 through 83 and previously channels 84 through 114.
Channels 2 through 6, 54 to 88Mhz are going to be mostly ignored by dtv. They are low frequency and require the long/wide elements on an antenna.They suffer interference from the FM radio broadcast bands and vice versa.
Channels 7 through 13 are 174 to 225 Mhz. Channels 14 and up start on the upper side of the 470Mhz Ham and and two way radio bands.
The so called "dtv" is usually built without the specific long elements for channels 2-6. This causes no loss on channels 7-52 and cuts the antenna width by 2/3 and reduces the length by half.
My antenna has no elements for channels 2-6 but receives them just well as the old antenna. The TV signal maybe weaker but the amount of FM radio interference has also been reduced.It's about a draw on performance.
The advantage is a much smaller antenna that doesn't wind load the tower and rotor as much.
The main problems are old crummy RG-59 coax, no antenna amp, no rotor and a poorly designed/poorly constructed dtv converter box.