garage tv - hd antenna - what are you using

vartz04 · Jan 16, 2013

No way am I paying for another box for the garage. I only want it for news / sports which I can get on broadcast channels.

I have an old laptop that the screen broke off of so I plan to use the tv as a monitor for that and for a tv.

I want to put an antenna in the garage attic. Any idea of which one would be best. I'm not out in the sticks so I dont think I need anything too crazy. I checked the distance on a website before and it was in the "good" signal range.

What are you guys using or what would you suggest.

Falcon67 · Jan 16, 2013

Dish Network Hopper in the house, 100' of coax from the incoming hub, Joey in the shop, $7/month for the extra Joey. All 250 channels, HDTV on the 40" Samsung plus sat radio channels. DTV out here gives you 2 stations. Any TV antenna is a DTV antenna, don't pay extra for BS. Find out of the stations you want are on UHF or VHF and buy the appropriate antenna.

hifi_hokie · Jan 16, 2013

The old "UHF-only" antennas have had a resurgence because of off-air HDTV.

Are there stations you want to receive from all directions around you, or are they mostly in one direction? Antennas are often a compromise between "gain" in one direction or being able to cover a wider swath.

Another antenna truism - the better it works, generally, the uglier it is

mayday0017 · Jan 16, 2013

A paperclip, works great...

Give it a shot before you spend $$ you might be surprised.... It is all I have on my TV's in the house and never have a problem...

softballrz · Jan 16, 2013

I connected a coax cable from the cable box in the basement (70') to the TV in the garage. In the basement I use the HDMI connection off the box for the TV. Works great. Get all the channels. Only drawback is you must watch the same channel. No issue here as the kids are grown. No issue with changing channels as comcast as a Iphone/Ipad app. all good

hifi_hokie · Jan 16, 2013

mayday0017 said:
A paperclip, works great...

Give it a shot before you spend $$ you might be surprised.... It is all I have on my TV's in the house and never have a problem...

UHF wavelengths are pretty small - the same principle as those antennas made from ribbon cable commonly provided with FM receivers.

At 600MHz, the half-wavelength distance is only about 9 inches.

vartz04 · Jan 16, 2013

Looks like most is in one direction. And 40 miles away max.

theoldwizard1 · Jan 16, 2013

The dipole is by far the cheapest and it will work well, but the length of the dipole is important.

There are several different "styles" of homebrew HD TV antennas on YouTube. They all work.

Height helps. Most of these antennas are more or less directional, so one station might come in well and another not so well. Actually, with digital TV, wither you have a picture or you don't.

SCscoutguy · Jan 16, 2013

I have Time Warner cable but got tired of paying for the cable boxes each month so I built a media center pc and installed a Ceton Infinitiv 4 cable card tuner in it. It gives me 4 tuners that I can put a media extender box onto via my home network. I didn't want to spend allot of money on extenders so I bought used xbox 360's at the pawn shop whose disc drives didn't work for $5-$10 each. I now have HD tv with DVR on each of the flat screens in the house and in the garage all being broadcast over cat5e network cable and I save $100 a month on my cable bill (DVR box $25x4).
This isn't my video but it is what it looks like.

dogmir · Jan 16, 2013

I make my own fractal version of a hoverman antenna. If you are putting it in your attic it wouldn't matter just google diy hoverman antenna and you see plenty of ideas. It takes about 5 min to make and cheap as dirt.

DRP6833 · Jan 16, 2013

I made a fractal antenna for our main TV. It sits on the shelf above the TV and works great (even on the high VHF channels we have around here) at about 50 miles. I used left-over 14GA copper electrical wire and some metalized heating vent tape. My only suggestion would be to scale it up as much as you can; like most things, bigger is better.

Stuart in MN · Jan 16, 2013

Find out if the over the air channels in your area are all UHF - depending on the location, some are still on VHF and will require a different style antenna.

BrianL · Jan 16, 2013

I have a phone line and a coax piped out to my shed/workshop. I pay $5/month for the digital box. It's nice having all those channels when I want to relax and have a few beers.

4t64rd · Jan 16, 2013

http://www.walltenna.com/

and one of these:

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/motorola-cable-signal-booster-1307.shtml

On the Walltenna site there is a link to find out where the direction from your house the digital air broadcasts are coming from. I got 3 channels with the Walltenna alone and I got another 20 or so with the booster. It just depends on your area, But I got 4 channels each of the 2 PBS stations, local sports network, 4 channels of NBC, one FOX, 4 channels of CBS, and some other local channels... still working on ABC... all in HD.

The Walltenna itself looks like something that could be put together yourself, with a piece of plexi, some copper tape and one of those adapter thingies, but it's hardly worth buying all the stuff for the price.

Like the guy said about the broken Xboxes and PS3s at a pawn shop, they work via RJ45 or Wifi, then you can get Netflix (movies, TV shows, documentaries), HuluPlus (network TV programs, usually no more than a day or two after broadcast) for $8 a month each, and anything else you can get off of iTunes (Top Gear episodes newer than 2010, Netflix has them all back to 2003 now), or anything on the web including YouTube.

Matt M PA · Jan 16, 2013

At least where we live you need a roof antenna to receive digital tv.

You can here...

http://www.antennaweb.org/

...to see what type of antenna you need to pick digital tv off the air.

I got an extra SD box for my FIOS in the garage...it's worth it to me...

Eagle Point · Jan 16, 2013

I just wall mounted a 40" LED in the garage and upgraded the Directv with the new Genie whole house. I like being able to record 5 shows at once and playback on any TV and fast forward the ads, pause, rewind etc. :thumbup:

jhogan2424 · Jan 16, 2013

I am VERY ignorant to all of the HDTV and cable stuff. I would appreciate it if someone could give me sort of a breakdown of what types of channels can be picked up with an antenna. Is it simply local/news channels? Are they High definition? Will the antenna connect to a modern flatscreen through a coax cable? Do you still need some type of box with an antenna? I am absolutely clueless when it comes to this type of thing. A few years ago it seems I could pick up Memphis and Jonesboro, AR channels with a regular old tv with an antenna. Is that what I should expect to pick up now?

pattenp · Jan 16, 2013

jhogan2424 said:
I am VERY ignorant to all of the HDTV and cable stuff. I would appreciate it if someone could give me sort of a breakdown of what types of channels can be picked up with an antenna. Is it simply local/news channels? Are they High definition? Will the antenna connect to a modern flatscreen through a coax cable? Do you still need some type of box with an antenna? I am absolutely clueless when it comes to this type of thing. A few years ago it seems I could pick up Memphis and Jonesboro, AR channels with a regular old tv with an antenna. Is that what I should expect to pick up now?

New flat screen TV's have a digital tuner so you just need an antenna and can pick up local channels in your area. HD and non-HD, what ever is available. No box is needed.

Go here for station map.. http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/

*

chrisMason · Jan 16, 2013

Who is your cable provider? You shouldn't need a box for cable. I simply split the coax coming from the wall in my basement, fed it through the wall into the garage; connected to the TV directly.

dipper · Jan 16, 2013

that's what i did too. this gets you up to channel 99 in standard definition.

chrisMason said:
Who is your cable provider? You shouldn't need a box for cable. I simply split the coax coming from the wall in my basement, fed it through the wall into the garage; connected to the TV directly.

4t64rd · Jan 16, 2013

http://antennaweb.org/

Type in your address and you can find out what digital air TV stations you might get.

http://www.tvfool.com/

For more, plus the online TV guide for digital air stations

NUTTSGT · Jan 16, 2013

chrisMason said:
Who is your cable provider? You shouldn't need a box for cable. I simply split the coax coming from the wall in my basement, fed it through the wall into the garage; connected to the TV directly.

dipper said:
that's what i did too. this gets you up to channel 99 in standard definition.

I did the same thing, splitter and run the cable out to the garage.

OP, what do you have for TV in the house ? Cable, Dish or DirecTV ?

vartz04 · Jan 16, 2013

Comcast cable. I like the idea of splitting off the box in the bedroom and using my phone for the remote.

carhouse · Jan 16, 2013

You Just have to spit it off after the box (going to the tv)
Another option instead of using the phone you could get an IR to RF IR Extender Kit that way you can use a remote in another room.

vartz04 · Jan 16, 2013

I use hdmi to the tv so I could use the coax out to the garage.

SCscoutguy · Jan 16, 2013

vartz04 said:
I use hdmi to the tv so I could use the coax out to the garage.

You could as long as you did not want to watch both televisions at once.

vartz04 · Jan 16, 2013

Nope I can't see a reason both would be on at the same time.

elav · Jan 16, 2013

Matt M said:
At least where we live you need a roof antenna to receive digital tv.

You can here...

http://www.antennaweb.org/

...to see what type of antenna you need to pick digital tv off the air.

I highly recommend this. While most digital OTA broadcasts are over UHF, NBC here is still VHF. In addition this site will let you know if there are multiple locations your antenna needs to point. So you may want to consider a rotary antenna. In my situation I have some stations in San Jose (South of me), some in Oakland and some in San Fran (both North of me). In addition one station is still VHF. I purchased a UHF antenna and a UHF/VHF combo antenna. I pointed the combo between San Fran and Oakland and I pointed the UHF to San Jose and used a combiner. I now get all the stations in my area without having to adjust the antenna and because of the VHF I also get FM radio receptions.

IndyGarage · Jan 16, 2013

My shop doesn't have cable, so I bought a round plastic HDTV antenna for about 10 bucks and put about 10 feet of cable on it back to my TV, which sits near the doorway. I zip tied a bent piece of sheetmetal to the the antenna mount and glued some super magnets to the other side of the metal so that it can stick to the metal outside the door.

I just pop it onto the outside wall with the cable running through the door while I need it, then bring it back in when I'm done. I get about 20 channels of TV - never more than 2 worth watching at a time, and sometimes none. The best channel is something called ME TV that plays old sitcoms from the 60's and 70's - but drives me nutty with all the elderly commercials - "just call *** for your free powerchair, now" (somehow I think it's not really free...) or "do you use catheters? you need the new EZ catheter, we'll ship it right to your door"....

Free TV, you've got to love it...

NUTTSGT · Jan 16, 2013

vartz04 said:
Comcast cable. I like the idea of splitting off the box in the bedroom and using my phone for the remote.

It should be like TW cable then, I would think. If you split it somewhere in the house, you should be able to run a cable out to the garage. That should give you the basic or standard package.

Do all the TVs in your house have cable boxes ?

mpraddict · Jan 16, 2013

These work very well for me
http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/antennas/?sku=ANT1450BR

carhouse · Jan 16, 2013

NUTTSGT said:
It should be like TW cable then, I would think. If you split it somewhere in the house, you should be able to run a cable out to the garage. That should give you the basic or standard package.

Not always,
Or at least in my situation when Comcast changed to all digital my newer tv (2010) will not get any cable stations without a box or a DTA.

SCscoutguy · Jan 16, 2013

carhouse said:
Not always,
Or at least in my situation when Comcast changed to all digital my newer tv (2010) will not get any cable stations without a box or a DTA.

That is the reason that the FCC is requiring all cable providers who did that to provide a digital cable box to everyone for free until 2014 and then after that it will be .99 cents a month per box. This is only for basic channels that they changed to digital format.

pmason0 · Jan 16, 2013

I'm using the Leaf antenna

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004QK7HI8/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Higgins · Jan 16, 2013

Here in N IL, i'm 42 miles west of Chicago. I have a 8 ft long fringe antenna mounted on top of a 25 ft mast. Cable runs into house aprox 40 ft. then out the other side of the house and aprox 40 ft. to the garage!

Local TV channels come in great!!

Curtis_Peterson · Jan 16, 2013

I got cable ran from inside the house, and the Directv box that I use for the ice house both in the garage...that is unless I am ice fishing of course!

garage tv - hd antenna - what are you using

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