Why won't my OTA antenna work?

October 9, 2018 9:00 AM

I've cut the cable cord and while streaming has answered most of my concerns, my over-the-air antenna sometimes shows a blank screen or a digital "blurry" image. Any ideas on how to fix it?

Tired of paying for cable I wasn't watching, I cancelled it. My plan is to switch to streaming and an over-the-air antenna. While streaming has worked out, the OTA antenna I bought cuts in and out. Sometimes the picture is as crisp and clear as cable and sometimes I get a "no signal" error or the screen is full of digital artifacts.

It's near a window, pointed towards it in the hope of strengthen the signal. It doesn't seem to matter if the windows are open or not. There's nothing around it, so it doesn't seem like something could be blocking its signal.

The model is a GE foldable one, model number 26438 (Here it is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/GE-26438-Amplified-Reception-USB-Powered/dp/B017Y46ER2).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

posted by jaybeans to Technology (9 answers total)

First thing to check: where are your broadcast signals coming from?
posted by asperity at 9:02 AM on October 9, 2018

I have a digital antenna and the difference in quality varies enormously based on placement in the room. If we really want a good signal, we stick it to the wall way up near the ceiling. Obviously this is not a great solution if we have guests or want the room to look nice for some reason, but it's not hard to move around.
posted by something something at 9:10 AM on October 9, 2018

seconding asperity - you gotta make sure the antenna is pointing in the right direction of the transmitters (not out the window). Get a magnetic compass, or use an app on your phone, and you can get the antenna pointing in the correct direction.

FCC has a zip-code tool for it.
posted by k5.user at 9:50 AM on October 9, 2018

Yep, it's all about moving the darn thing around until you get consistent reception.
posted by praemunire at 9:56 AM on October 9, 2018

TV reception involves a lot of trial and error. Sometimes an amplified antenna will make things worse, if the signal is already too strong. Sometimes if you have an amplified antenna but you don't power the amplifier, it's worse than having a passive antenna. And sometimes you do need an amplified antenna, but it's really sensitive to aim and multipath interference (which is when the signal bounces off something else on its way to your antenna, and the antenna picks up both the original signal and the reflection. This is what used to cause ghosting back in the days of analog TV). Sometimes you need a different antenna. Sometimes you just have to fiddle with it a whole lot.

You should check TVFool (or the previously linked AntennaWeb) for broadcast tower locations and distances, which will help you figure out if you need a different style of antenna. If you have the right style of antenna for your location, you should then experiment with locating and aiming it, which could mean putting it closer to, or farther from, the window, and angling it towards or away from broadcast tower locations. Even with the best possible antenna recommendation for your location, you'll still have to experiment for the best results, though. If you're still within the return period for that antenna you might want to try a different style to see if it's better. There's an antenna comparison at HDTV Primer that can be pretty overwhelming, but is also really useful once you figure out how to read the charts. For an indoor antenna probably the most useful comparison is the antenna once sold as the Silver Sensor or one of its lookalikes. I'm not even sure that brand name still exists. Mine was a Terk, functionally identical to the Silver Sensor. And lots of people now really like the Mohu Leaf, but I've never tried it so I can't vouch for it.

And it's not the question you asked, but if you have access to the roof and can install a rooftop antenna, a good rooftop antenna is a far better experience for cable cutting than any indoor antenna. I have this one because I actually needed a more multidirectional antenna than some of the other recommendations there. In the page on a related antenna they say "The ClearStream4 is the most directional medium gain antenna available. The ClearStream2 is the least directional medium gain antenna available. The difference is profound. In an urban or close-in suburban setting, one of these antennas will be a good choice, and the other probably a very bad choice."

To sum up: try a different style of antenna, experiment with placement, and go on the roof if you can.
posted by fedward at 10:02 AM on October 9, 2018

I have also had incredibly good luck building my own antennas; they are much, much better than commodity antennas, in my experience.
posted by kdar at 11:21 AM on October 9, 2018

The only issue that hasn't been covered is that it is entirely expected that your reception will vary throughout the day if you're not using a good (attic mount or rooftop) antenna or are very close to the transmitter. Radio signals propagate differently depending on time of day and atmospheric conditions, so you'll have a much more reliable experience if you can get the signal strength pretty high, about 80-90% of the maximum on your TV's signal strength--not quality--meter should give you good results unless it's more than 5-6 years old. ATSC chipsets have improved dramatically since the early OTA HD TiVos and 720p LCDs (or CRTs!) selling for thousands of dollars. Even in the past decade yet more progress has been made in improving reliability when there is multipath (think a nearby mountain, tall building, billboard reflecting signals from the transmitter that you otherwise wouldn't receive) or impulse noise. That last bit is becoming more important now that the FCC has seen fit to further hack down size of the OTA TV band, forcing many stations back onto VHF-lo, which was basically abandoned as mostly useless after the digital transition.

Very few stations were actually transmitting on channels 2-5 despite keeping their old analog "channel" for display and marketing purposes. With few exceptions, stations you'd see (and tune) as 2-1 were actually somewhere in the UHF band. It previously caused much confusion regarding antenna type. Expect another period of confusion as a bunch of stations people currently receive with small UHF-only indoor antennas suddenly go away when they move back to VHF. Worse, a lot of antennas sold since the digital transition don't work well on VHF-lo, since nobody was there and making an amplified TV antenna that supports VHF-lo and VHF-hi without overloading the TV tuner with stuff from the FM radio band requires an extra notch filter. Not much point in that when there's basically no market for them anyway.

Now that there is again, expect a lot of frustrated people shouting on the Internet.
posted by wierdo at 12:00 PM on October 9, 2018

In the Bay area, OTA reception is all about line-of-sight direction toward Sutro Tower, which is where almost all the digital antennae are (except a few near San Jose). And as kdar recommends, building my own also worked best. Mount your antenna as high as possible if your window faces the wrong direction, or run the coax to the roof if you can- it can be over 30 meters long. In the East Bay hills I've always had a great signal (better than HD cable), but topography can completely block reception too.
posted by TDIpod at 4:28 PM on October 9, 2018

It looks like it's working! All I had to do was turn the antenna in a circle until I found the direction where the signal was the strongest. Thanks!
posted by jaybeans at 7:13 PM on October 11, 2018