Sunday, February 12, 2017

How to Set Up an Indoor TV Antenna in 3 steps

In most urban areas it should be possible to receive free-to-air television. The best option for strong TV signal reception is always a roof mounted antenna. However, a poorly maintained TV antenna (common in rental accommodation) is the most likely cause of poor TV reception. With the latest development in TV antenna technology in many cases it may be possible to use a high-performance indoor TV antenna to improve your digital TV reception.

How to find out if a hi-gain indoor antenna is suitable? In this post we will use Sydney Australia as an example.

Step 1: To find digital TV coverage at your location visit the Australian Federal Government web-site 'mySwitch' and enter your full address.

Digital TV coverage is colour coded. If you see green this represents "Good Coverage" so it's likely a hi-gain indoor antenna will work well at this location. Make a note of the direction towards the nearest transmitter, in this case it is approximately south (199.3 °). Just to double check a hi-gain indoor antenna is suitable click the "Antenna setup guide" link in the top left hand box.

On the "Antenna setup guide" page, if the instructions for antenna setup for your location are as shown below i.e. Gain: Low, Type: Wideband UHF antenna, Height: Roof height then it's looking good for a high performance UHF indoor antenna like HD-QUAD.

Step 2: Setting up an indoor TV antenna like HD-QUAD and connecting it to you TV is pretty easy but there are some details to pay attention to.

  • 1) Best results are achieved with HD-QUAD mounted on a window facing in the general direction of the transmitter (in this example: South)
  • 2) If the window is aluminium framed it is best to place HD-QUAD in the middle of the window equal distance from the window frame. Aluminium is electrically conductive and may interfere with the optimal antenna performance.
  • Once you've mounted the HD-QUAD indoor antenna, connect it to the TV antenna socket with a male-to-male 75 ohm coaxial extension lead. TIP: The thicker the coaxial cable the lower the signal loss along it's length.

    Step 3: Channels available from the selected transmitter are listed on the "Antenna setup guide" page. To tune your TV find “Channel Setup” (found by pressing “Menu” on your remote) and run a channel scan on your TV; note that running a channel scan is NOT the same as pressing channel UP/DOWN on your remote.

    Having followed all the instructions above you should be receiving crystal clear digital 1080p HDTV pictures, and in the process might have saved yourself $$$ on professional roof-top TV antenna installation.

    Source: HD-QUAD.com