I know this "remote" central but being as you guys all know your stuff, and I just dont know enough about this stuff... The off air antenna that VOOM sent out is is p.o.s. we are only about 30 miles from the empire state building in NY but have five hdtv sets. I know I need an antenna upgrade,a pre-amp and a distribution amp, none of the runs are farther than 50 feet fromm the headend. Suggestions?

Give Voom a call and expain the problem to them. They will authorize an antenna upgrade for you.

I am about 40 miles from both Baltimore and DC and get 22 locals with the Winegard, however have issues with a couple of channels losing signal. Installer is coming out tomorrow to upgrade antenna at no extra charge.

Got to be worth a phone call.

the antenna that was intalled for you is probably fine...just need to raise the antena up higher.

Think anyone from voom will answer or care anymore now that they will be bought out and become dish net?

Well they certainly did when I called them last week. CSR could not have been more helpful.

They have not been bought out, or changed to dish net, and it could be months before there are any changes, if any at all.

Dadio,

You should probably call the Wall Street Journal and fill them in, because they ran this article a few weeks back. I've attached an excerpt. Voom is over.

jcmitch

EchoStar to Buy
Voom's Assets
From Cablevision

By PETER GRANT and ANDY PASZTOR
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 21, 2005

Cablevision Systems Corp. will shut down its Voom satellite service and
sell most of the assets of the money-losing business to EchoStar
Communications Corp. for $200 million in cash.

jcmitch,

The fat lady ain't singing just yet.

Some of the other forums, satguys in particular, have real busy threads on the "future" of Voom and what is potentially happening. Latest news appears to be that Charlie Dolan is trying to take over Voom outright and continue broadcasting, and some of the guys there have a lot more inside knowledge than either me or the media reporters. (Some of whom stated that Voom would cease transmissions by the end of January!).

Will it happen?

I don't think anyone knows for certain, but in the meantime I'll keep enjoying it until the screens go black. If and when that happens, at least I'll still have a decent OTA antenna, installed at no expense to me, and I'll possibly have to buy an OTA receiver if they either take back the Voom STB or send a hit decommissioning the box.

As a very late adopter of the Voom service, I thought long and hard before signing up under the current fragile situation, but decided I had nothing to lose, (except the $1 plus tax for installation), and can always go back to my half dozen or so HD channels with cable if it all falls apart.

I just received an email newsletter from Voom which contains the following comments from Voom Vice Chairman Mickey Alpert :

"We are pleased to inform you that a new company, VOOM HD, LLC, has signed a letter of intent with VOOM's current corporate owner to purchase the VOOM service and continue providing you with our state-of-the-art service, supported by the existing VOOM management team.

We are delighted that you are enjoying VOOM and that we can continue offering you this service. Moving forward, VOOM remains committed to providing you with the broadest and best quality of HD programming available".

Guess I should probably call the Wall Street Journal then.

OKAY, okay, thank you all for all you’re input about how you think voom will eventually go down. And, for those of you who told me to call a csr and get an installer, guess what, I am one. We got certified voom way early in the game and the 1/2 day lecture didn’t tell me anything about antenna upgrades, nor do I know enough about digital off-air to properly advise my client on what to get. I ask you guys for advice because I don’t want some fly by night Voom-monkey to come out and mess up all our beautiful work and touch our racks. I’d rather just get up on the roof and do it ourselves. What I need is advice on model numbers of antennas, pre-amps and distribution amps.

Dadio

A company called Unity Motion sent out letters like that as well.


Dave

davethed

We use a Channel Master 4221, 4228, and a chanel master 7777 preamp(when needed).

Dave

Unity Motion!!!
After they imploded, that $1000 box came in handy as a demo box for the PBS loop that was still live, if you oriented the dish just right. I used that plus the Sencore HD loops server (on loan from Mits) until the local terrestrial feeds started broadcasting. Actually, I took the modulated feed from that Sencore HDTV loop server and demodulated it with the terrestrial tuner side of the Unity Motion box and distributed it for our projector displays.

The owner was demonstrating stunning HD content on $3000 box sets, and DVDs on $15K projos...

I would still pick one up as a cheap ATSC tuner, they worked great.

I once used the UM box to watch MNF in HD on ABC, Leno in HD, and the PBS feed. I just happed to also have a C-Band dish at home at the time for ABC-HD. None of these UM boxes were designed to pickup these feeds but the UM service. We have two collecting dust now.

Dave

Sorry, I got nostalgic about UM...
Back to the antenna question. If you are a sat installer, it would do you good to learn more about terrestrial antennas and their application.
Call your sat distributor or Winegard directly if you need more info than this, there are usually some salty old DXers that can offer you a more detailed education in a pretty brief conversation.

The basics are get the correct antenna with enough size and elements to get proper signal strength, antennaweb.org is a good resource for determining the correct antenna.

Mount the antenna where it has a nice high and unobstructed vantage point, or as much as is possible for the site.

And be sure to use compression fittings and high quality splitters and grounding blocks if you aren't already.

An RF meter is expensive, but is a good investment IMHO.

OK, here's my suggested setup to you, components and all.
Sorry if this seems like a Winegard push, but that's what I use and am familiar with.
Channel Master would have equivelent models.

Select the antenna from www.antennaweb.org
I recommend one of the Winegard PlatinumHD models because the 75ohm transformers for F-connector use are included and you can just use the coax and connectors you already have. You mentioned a location 30 miles from the Empire State building, the HD7210 Ghost Killer may be a good choice if you have tall buildings on other angles beside and behind the house because they can cause significant RF reflections (ghosting). Ghosting in the actual picture isn't an issue with digital TV, but the reflections that cause them on NTSC are an issue with acquiring a healthy signal to feed the ATSC tuners.
Confirm the recommendation with your local distributor, who definitely has a better idea of NYC issues than I would.

AVOID the cute little plastic ones that bolt to the sat mount arm unless you get a hearty recommendation from a pro that knows your area very well. These are popular because they look nicer, not because they are better. The big aluminum jungle jim look is they way to go IMO.

Next, select a mast mounted preamp:
Winegard AP-8700 is a good choice if the run to distribution is short, which it sounds like it is. If it were a 2 or 3 story, or if the distribution were on the other side of the house, I would use AP-8780 which has more kick on the UHF side to accomadate the longer run.

Back at distribution, use your favorite RF amp (ex. Winegard DA-1118) and high quality 8 way splitter to get the amplified signal out to the wallplates.
Another option, more popular these days, is to use a preassambled 6 to 8 output amplified RF module for your favorite structured wiring system that does all this for you.
I would use the OnQ 363468-02, which is a 2x6 Enhanced (amplified) video module, because I always put OnQ can(s) at distribution.
The additional input could be used for modulated CCTV feeds or something down the road and is supposed to be automatically gain matched to the other (antenna) input.

Good luck.