Central New Jersey - OTA - Page 73

This is for people living in Piscataway, South Plainfield. I got the Terk amplified HDTV Indoor antenna ($59 at PC Richardson's in Rt 1, Edison store). The store people were discouraging me... saying that I will have to return it.. I said that I still will take a chance.. ( I am 26 miles away from the NY towers). I pointed towards the New York feeds in my second floor apt and getting 33 digital and 24 analogue channels. Most of the analogue ones are not that watchable.. however the digital ones are totally different story. Only channel which is not that reliable and consistent is WNET 13.1 and 13.2.. However.. little callibration gets me that.. I am also getting all the NJN channel (including the HD).. whose orientations are not 74 degree north.. from my location.... I was initially thinking of trying the Philips/Zenith Slver Sensor/PHDVD1.. but none of the nearby store have it in stock right now.. I couldn't wait further.. after getting the delivery of my Olevia 537h.. I am outrightly satisfied with the OTA.. am not using the vhf dipole of the antenna though.. so can't comment on the vhf reception.. I am not using the TV55.. I am using the HDTVa antenna pro model.. which looks exactly like the Zenith Silver Sensor.. except with the booster and the VHF dipole

kousikb:

just curious, have you tried the hdtva without the amplifier attached (is this even possible to do?...would it work this way?). I am asking because I was thinking of trying the terk hdtvi, which appears to be exactly the same antenna, without the add-on amplifier (I may be wrong on this point....it is possible that there is some other difference between the two....but I am willing to hear anyone's input on this). Ultimately, I may consider adding a separate amplifier to the hdtvi.

Also, have you by chance tried aiming the hdtva down to philly? Just curious to see if it can pick up anything there?

by the way, as of yesterday, the Phillips PHDTV1 antenna was in stock at the CC in East Brunswick (Rt. 18).

AnthonyR: I tried without the amplification, that was the first thing I tried, to see whether I'd need amplification or not.. and to decide whether I'd go for the philips one. Both the antennas are similar in design. I got only four channels, all of them are NJN (probably from New Brunswick). I didn't try aiming at philly, I was always trying towards NYC. Antennaweb didn't say anything about the philly orientaion. I will check the philly thread to see whether I have a shot on that.

PS: Just checked now.. was watching the NBC Good Morning America with full blast HD. I switched off the booster keeping the direction same. The picture froze. May be the philips one is good as a non amplified unit. haven't given it a try.. so I really can't say anything about it..

you might have a shot at philly. I'm in flemington and can easily get philly with an unamplfied silver sensor in my attic.

You might be 10 more miles as the crow flies but with the amp it could be a wash. I've seem posts that from Long Branch, Philly is possible with an amp.

Hey guys. Are there any cheap antennas I can use?
The tv I want to get has a qam tuner as well as a astc tuner. Will I be able to get channels like tnt or yes, msg, basically cable channels for free with the qam with an antenna in this area?
I have cablevision of monmouth

you can't get any "cable" channels for free with an antenna.

For free on an antenna you can get the "normal boradcast" chanels in HD (cbs, nbc, fox, my, pbs, etc). Many stations also have "cable replacement channels" for free as sub channels. There are 24 hour news, weather, and music video channels in the sub channels (but not the "cable versions" instead of CNN or FOX news there is abc's newsnow, instead of the weather channel their is NBC's weatherplus, no mtv but intstead "the tube"). PBS has pbs kids, etc.

You MIGHT be able to connect your cable wire to the QAM input on your tv and get some "free cable" channels- for the most part though those consist of the rebroadcast channels above. You might occaionsly get lucky and your head end might have something like TNT for "free" but YES, MSG, HBO, Etc are all going to be encrypted so you will need to pay for them via cablebox or cablecard.

For those free antenna channels - try a silver sensor (in it's many incarnations) that works great for many.

Thanks a lot I will look into it. Io is just too expensive otherwise I would take the hd package from there.

if you aren't avers to cable phone and you already have or wouldn't mind cable interent then trible play is rather economical (at least for the first year...)

already have phone and internet. Io is $50 a month, right? or would triple play work for me with those 2 already?

generally as a "new triple play" customer they will give you all three for 99 bucks.

But to be honest you should call them. I'm not a cablevision expert or even a customer of theirs for that matter.

I am getting ready to Go to Our Little house in Manasquan NJ wher we Have Cablevision of Wall Township N.J. even though I went for Comcasts insistance of Needing a Box to receive ANY HD Channels, here in PA I get all the Local Channels including 3 Great PBS Channels in HD/Digital After Using My SONYs Built In Tuner to Scan Off My Comcast Anaolg Cable Line. I also Get quite a Few Bonus Basic HD Channels Like TNT and a Music Video Channel. I also Get all the Digital Music Channels, A&E, Animal Planet, Bravo and a Few Others in their Better quailty Digital Signal in the upper 80's. My question is this. Does Anyone Out there who Has CableVison Know if I will be able to do this On their Cable system Because I do Not want a Box Happy with Standard Cable which is Paid for By Our Tennent on the 1st Floor. I am Planning On Buying the 37" Panasonic Plasma with Both digital Tuners on Sale at Boscovs for Under a Grand. But No sense if CableVision Scrambles the Network Channels in High Def. Thanks..

would this thread include OTA HD channel lineup for Atlantic County NJ (AC, Ventnor, Margate) where can i find this info. I recently connected a new tv with ATSC/QAM tuner and picked up a ton of decimal point chans which I assume are OTA HD and want to know what they are. Where can one find this info.

Comcast is the cable provider and its in a highrise condo building so HD antenna must be on the roof (cable is free to all residents as amenity and prob part of condo fees)

anyway to use a better connection then coax without paying comcast per mo. for an HD box? Even just a converter box one could buy themself which takes the coax input and has an hdmi output to tv. it doenst have to change chans or have any other features. anything like this exist??

Since your TV has a QAM tuner, you can directly connect to your TV's "Digital Antenna In" coaxial input. Once there, put your TV into its digital tuner and do a digital cable scan.

Here in New Britain, CT (southwest of Hartford), I get five of our locals in HD when available...all without a cable converter: presently ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and CW. Our local PBS station provides a cable-only HD feed to Comcast (no over-the-air digital for this station yet).

Shorebreaker,

See attached image for analysis details. Longer bars indicate stronger signals.



My interpretation:

- The strongest signals (one with a green background) are probably good enough to be received using an indoor antenna like the Silver Sensor (known under many names like the Zenith ZHDTV1, Philips PM-HDTV1, or Terk HDTVi).

- The Philadelphia channels are pretty far away (58 miles) and they're very slightly blocked by some minor terrain blockage (1Edge under signal path column indicates single edge diffraction, as opposed to LOS, or line-of-sight). The signal strength from these channels is still very good, but you'll need a good roof-mounted antenna to get them. All the digital channels are currently in the UHF band, but I believe that WPVI will be moving to channel 6 (VHF-Lo) in February 2009. In the short term, you should get good results with a Channel Master 4228 or AntennasDirect XG91 pointed at Philadelphia. However, you may need to add a VHF antenna (like the Winegard HD4053P) in the future when WPVI changes to channel 6.

- WMGM, from Wildwood, should be coming in quite strong. The CM 4228 and AD XG91 are highly directional antennas, so you might not get WMGM while you have the antenna pointed at Philadelphia, but maybe you don't need to. You should be able to pick up WCAU to get NBC from Philadelphia instead of having to get WMGM. BTW, it looks like someone entered a typo into the FCC database creating an extra entry for WMGM-TD (instead of WMGM-DT).

- Other stations, like WWSI, W45CP, and WQAV are also nearby and strong. However, since they come from different directions, the directional antennas might not get them while being pointed at Philadelphia. You have the option of adding an antenna rotator to get these channels or alternatively combine multiple antennas to get the channels simultaneously. You'll have to decide if these additional channels are worth the added complexity of the antenna setup.



Trees can block some of the signal and cause multipath interference, at times. However, I believe the CM 4228 or AD XG91 have enough gain and directionality to give you a pretty good signal-to-noise margin to cope with those effects.

If you add a rotator, you should be able to get all the Philadelphia and local broadcasts pretty easily, but not all at the same time. This might pose a problem if you want to do unattended DVR/VCR/PC recordings.

If you install multiple antennas and combine their outputs, you'll be able to get all the channels simultaneously (good for recordings and general convenience), but these are usually more complicated to set up correctly and you'll be more vulnerable to interference sources (mostly multipath).



My suggestion is to start with the simplest/cheapest thing first and see if you like the results. Antenna reception takes quite a bit of trial-and-error, so be prepared to return products to the store if you don't like the results.



I hope this helps!



Best regards,
Andy

Looks like NJ people are more ready to pay the cable guys/dish people.. this thread is not as active as the NY OTA one..

You're not alone, i only receive HD OTA, all the NYC channels. I do not subscribe to digital cable.

Bob
Somerset, NJ (aka Franklin Township)

Ocean County, NJ

so, D*tv said they cant get reception here
I hate comcast, so i dont want to pay them a dollar more than i have to.

Right now i have the $15 basic cable (2-23)

In HD, I get ABC, NBC, PBS, FOX, CW11, The Tube, a bunch of News and weather

For $60 a month, they will come and take the filter off the pole to give me 2-98.

MY QUESTION: Will I get anymore HD channels? Or do you think I got what I will get?

I receive only OTA HD, that is I did, until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden, my accurian tuner stopped receiving anything-all the channels had next to no signal strength. Thinking my distribution amp in the attic died, I took it out and hooked up a two way splitter. Some analog signals are better, some are worse. I'm trying to figure out if the accurian died or get another amp. BTW, my antenna is in the attic, a large UHF/VHF/FM bought from Lafayette Radio in Lawrenceville in 1992. I only use Cablevision for internet access.

Somerset, NJ

I'm probably going to go with Dish Network in the next few days.

I'm a Rangers fan and Patriot doesn't offer MSG in HD, and with Direct TV I'd have to buy the whole Center Ice package to get MSG in HD.

Question is, should I spend the money on an antenna to get my FREE local channels (am I even close enough to get NYC channels?)
And also deal with the hassel of installing it myself, not to mention having a dish and an antenna on a small balcany in an apartment.
Or is it more worth it just to pay the extra $5/month to ad local to my dish package?

With an indoor Silver Sensor in Somerset near Easton Ave, I can get all of the NYC HD channels *except* for NBC. I used to be able to get NBC with a weaker signal strength than all the others, but now I don't get it at all.

any idea why?
Are others in this area getting NBC-HD OTA?

Amy

Well it turns out Dish Network doesn't offer MSG in HD either...probably not until 1st quarter of 08.

To think I almost ordered the installation after the first guy I talked with over there earlier in the week told me I would get MSG in HD if I got the HD package.

Anyway, problem solved Direct TV is my only option, and they include local in all their packages.

comcast bought patriot so MSG might get added shortly if htat's your only reason for moving to DIrectv.

Although I am little closer to NYC (I think by 3-4 miles).. then Easton Ave, Somerset, I get NBC HD and all its subchannels. I don't get the 13.x (Thirteen HD/PBS NYC from Newark) now a days. I use the amplified version of the silver sensor (Terk HDTVa)
Hope this helps.

It will be at least a few months, possibly up to a year before Comcast completely takes over. Preseason starts in just a little over a week. Yeah hockey is my only sport and I'm a Rangers fan, so no MSG HD = deal breaker.

Does Comcast have Versus in HD too?

Okay, Southeastern-ish monmouth county, but I'm kinda in a "rut" as in a small valley that encompasses part of my town. Everyone around me has cable/sattelite, so I can't reference them for antenna suggestions.

Currently, I have a VHF-only (Now, at least. The end of the UHF part wouldn't fit in the attic, and has been cut off.) antenna pointed at NYC. It's in an attic, but there is a big metal air-conditioner (and the rest of the house) between the antenna and north. That receives NY analog okay. There's also a UHF-only antenna pointed at Philly. (I'm about 40 from NY and 60 from philly). I get decent UHF Philly reception. I can 100% of the time get WNJT-DT, and then the others poke in occaisionally (nights, mornings).

So, through the incoherency of my post, I need an antenna suggestion. I'm in just about the suckiest spot in town, but I know that I should be able to defy antennaweb and go for more DT's. I've been looking at the 91XG, but since I just discovered that plans the FCC's making to re-remap a bunch of our stations, it may appear that a 4228 may come in more handy?

More constraints: I would prefer it not be on the roof ('cuz that thing is STEEP!!!), and also because I'll need two of whatever I get (and if it's the 4228, I hear that thing's a big sail). I do have some (big) trees around me, and a small airport somewhat nearby (tho I hear it might be closing). I am able to use a different attic space. A bit cramped, but with enough room to put a few antennas, maybe. I'll be using a 7775 (or two) and combining the signal using a regular splitter (right?).

What do you guys suggest?

poly-p man

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, or anything like that. Also, sorry if it's a bit incoherent... I'm tired An elevation profile from here to ESB is attached, as well as my Antenna web, and that of two other houses across town (not too far away).

 

here.txt 1.4091796875k . file

 

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I'd get the 4228 with an amp and keep your fingers crossed.

I have that in my attic and I'm about 40 from philly and 50 from NY (give or take).

Philly i can get great, NY is so so.

height really seems to matter a lot- just moveing the antenaa a foot or 2 up or down seems to make a big difference where I am.

Has anyone from the Woodbridge / Port Reading area gotten any Philly signals? Just curious.

My understanding is that WNBC-DT was formerly being broadcast off of the GE building in Rock Center until sometime in late 2004 (and that the signal was very "iffY"). I've heard that now NBC is broadcasting its signal from the Empire State Building on some sort of "shared" antenna with the other networks (and that the signal can still have some problems). That said, I moved my Silver Sensor up into the attic above my garage, and I get NBC fine now (along with the other networks) without any dropouts. If possible, try moving your antenna to a higher location (it worked for me).