On January 26, 2013 at 03:06, Ernie Gilman said...
There's no difference between an analog TV antenna and a digital TV antenna.
New antennas won't work better because the old ones did nto work, but because the new ones aren't corroded and broken.
Most new antennas are still 300 ohm devices but have a matching transformer -- the famour 300 ohm to 75 ohm flat lead to coax transformer -- on them so you can use coax. You could just as well use twin lead, but nobody does.
The comment that antennas with coax coming off them are newer antennas may just be the comment of youth with little experience. I put up Winegard antennas that could take twin leads, but had a PC board you could add on for a coax feed, in 1985 (and since). That's 18 years ago, old enough to corrode to death. The latest antenna I put up for myself was a ChannelMaster that had a 300 ohm output and a matching transformer, so a coax downlead.
Right now the antenna is working, perfectly, if I owned the place rather then rent, I would put up a new antenna, I would put it on the main roof, with a grounding link, just before it comes inside, then run the cable in the attic until I can drop it down inside the framing to the livingroom or to the basement. Considering it would be up another 10' I don't think I even need an amplifier.
What is irritating though, now that Global is digital, the old VCR can't record Global shows, debating a couple of solutions, one would be a digital tuner box, that I could set to Global and then let the VCR's analog tuner deal with the other two channels, so for example if the digital tuner outputs composite, then the composite input would be used for Global, if it outputs RF then I would simply record that channel. What I will probably do is take an old WindowsXP computer, throw a tuner card in it and go from there....
