Just realized that CBS does not broadcast in HD on DirectTV, I wan't to see this weekends playoff game in HD, I live about 40miles from Milwaukee and 60 from Chicago so I should be able to get an OTA HD feed.


Question is do I have a chance of getting an HD signal on a cheap antennea? I can probally get it to the 2nd floor which is east facing. But I see all these people with huge ota antennea's on the roof and whatnot and this is clearly not a quickfix that I need.


Any suggestions?

First question is do you have an ATSC tuner. At 40 miles out it may be tough if not impossible with a cheap indoor antenna, if you are up high enough you might get lucky though there's only one way to find out.

I was assuming I could run the cable wire from the antennea to the tv and use the tv as the tuner, I can get this thing outside and run a long cable but a suggestion on an antennea would be very useful since I don't know zip and time is not on my side.


Thanks

I was assuming I could run the cable wire from the antennea to the tv and use the tv as the tuner, I can get this thing outside and run a long cable but a suggestion on an antennea would be very useful since I don't know zip and time is not on my side.
You do not know the zip code? How about the town and state? WBBM-DT CBS 2 in Chicago which is broadcasting on VHF 3 is a notoriously difficult station to get because it is on VHF 3. Checking wikipedia, the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee is WDJT-DT CBS 58 which is broadcasting on UHF 46. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDJT-TV. If the station is at full power, it is broadcasting at 1000 kW on UHF 46 which is the maximum power allowed for digital UHF transmission (follow the FCC database link on the wiki page)

Since you don't have time to mail order, you want to get a good UHF antenna locally. We don't normally recommend Terk antennas, but the Terk HDTVa is a Silver Sensor UHF antenna & rabbit ears for VHF with an amp. Or get a Radio Shack "mushroom" antenna, #15-1892 which is shown on the Radio Shack website as on sale this week. Keep the receipts in case they do not work.

"I was assuming I could run the cable wire from the antennea to the tv and use the tv as the tuner"

Does your TV have an ATSC tuner built in? What's the make and model?

Zip was a poor choice of words, I was saying basically that I don't know much about OTA antennas, I'm in Kenosha (53140)

Thanks for the feedback I will try this out and if all else fails I'll have to watch in SD :(