advice on TV antennae

Lots of good advice here, thanks guys! I'll definitely be putting it to use.

My TV is about six months old, an HDTV Sanyo with NTSC/ATSC tuners, and in the menu options it has Channel Scan Memory and Manual Channel Search, so does that mean I could use the rotary antenna and add additional channels instead of having to totally rescan every time? Or is that function actually part of the antenna and not the TV?

I had an older TV and was using a converter box, and it had something like "scan for new channels" or something like that. I ran it at different times of day, and it would pick up new channels and add them to the ones already in memory. I couldn't get all channels all the time, but some I could get in the morning only and some in the evenings only. Never did understand that, seems like if you get them at all you should get them al the time, lol, but I'm the first to admit I don't understand all this stuff! I rely on people like y'all who do know and can then tell me. I follow directions great!

I bought a used HDTV at a garage sale...I assumed I would not need the black box, but I was wrong. Had a guy come and set it up for me yesterday....I have just an old antenna, but he told me the signal is not strong enough to reach, (about 45 miles away from the station) but he set it up with the little black box and hook it to my old antenna, I at least get three clear stations...don't give up...maybe you need the little black box, too..LOL...Now I have to try to hook up the DVD player...DUH !

I believe you are correct, the manual channel search should 'add' more channels that are found, rather than erase all and start looking fresh. So it should work with the rotor.

Love the picture & quality of the Samsung, but as someone else mentioned, they for one don't allow one to add more channels. Rather disappointing.

GrannyG:
In the beginning, they came out with HDTV's that did not have digital tuners in them. So they can show the nice clear wide digital picture; but it can't tune them in as it only has an analog tuner.

Why you ask? Due to delays, the people in charge couldn't decide which of 3 different digital spesifications to use. Typical govt delays. The TV manufaturers were kinda stuck, they had ramped up early production of the TV's, but couldn't put in a digital tuner because no standard existed. So they had to sell them as 'Digital-Ready' but no digital tuner. I'll assume the TV was on the garage sale for that reason - it is an HDTV, but does not have a digital tuner.....

--->Paul

Thanks Paul! I thought that's what it meant, but wanted to be sure, lol. Now I just have to sort through all this and decide which steps to take. Thanks again everyone for your help!

My daughter lives 1/4 mile up the road and gets 7 or 8 stations with some sort of plastic box looking antenna stuck to the side of her trailer. (Yassah boss, we po' folk) I used to get 2 stations at our house with the rabbit ears. Now we get nothing. Although we have a small flat screen "HD" tv, I don't know if it'd digital capable. How do I tell? It's maybe 3 years old and works fine with the satellite, but I miss my locals.

Also, I have a 85-90 foot silo near the house. I assume if I put an antenna on a staff way up there I'd be able to pull in stations from Paris, Moscow, Bejing, Rio, Antarctica and probably the Andromeda system. Okay, so I exaggerate a bit. If I put it up there I should pick up a lot more stations than if it was 20 foot off the ground, right? Would it conceivably be worth the $$$ to do it?

In the manual, or on the TV, it should mention 'digital tuner'. That means it will pull in the new digital TV directly. If you have the original remote, are you able to punch in (for example) channel 12.2 ??? If it has the dot or dash & allows you to do so, it should be digital.... You don't need to _get_ the chanel, does it just let you type it in?

The taller antennea will work great. One thing with a silo - either you would need to get up on top above, which can be pretty tough... Or you need to be on the side of the silo wher all the station towers are. If you are not on top of the roof but 60 or 90% of the way up, you will have a blind spot as it won't pull stations through the side of the silo very well.

You might run into length of cable issues, I donno how long a cable you can run before it loses too much signal. That is where the amp thing mentioned will really help, even at 50 feet it helps a lot, not sure how long you can go....


--->Paul

Hi cc-rider! I have a newer sharp hdtv, i went to walmart and bought a phillips amplified antenna and i get 7 crystal clear channels on uhf, had to buy a set of amplified rabbit ears for vhf 4 channels there, i live in ohio, rural area between alliance and canton. I recieve most of my stations from youngstown, pittsburg, and akron, also some pbs channels. I think i paid 35 dollars for each of the antennas. I dont have a tower, if i did i would buy a nice antenna from antennas direct on the web. good prices on packages. Them main this is that your tv has a digital tuner. if not walmart had separate digital tuners for older tvs. hope this helps some.

www.meritline.com has an Artec antenna on sale now. The price is 10.99 with free delivery. A limited time coupon reduces the price to 6.99 shipped. I have this antenna and really like it. Just for kicks I bought a 29.00 amplified antenna from Wally World a few days ago. I got the exact same channels with the same reception as this one. I brought the Wally World one back. I hope this helps someone. Most of my stations are 30 miles or more away.