HDTV Antennas: do they exist?
I love checking the e-mails we get, because this is a great community that is quickly building. Better yet: we enjoy helping folks out so that they can become as passionate about HDTV as we tend to be! I just noticed this question from HD Beat reader, Nick:
"Just purchased a Samsung 42" DLP HDTV. We don't subscribe to Dish or cable, just our aerial antenna. Are there any advantages to getting an antenna that rates itself as an HDTV antenna?"
First off Nick, congrats on your purchase and welcome to our wonderful world! You don't need satellite or cable to provide you an HD signal IF you can receive an over-the-air digital signal from your local broadcasters. We recommended a site to help folks determine the OTA possibilities based on their location, so start there. Now...about that so-called "HDTV Antenna".....
The fact is that there really isn't such a thing as an "HDTV Antenna" for a very simple reason: local digital and high-def television signals are actually in the UHF band of channels. Let's go back a few decades, as this might surprise a few folks. Before HDTV and DTV, before satellite, even before cable (it's true, we didn't always have cable. Think about years like this: B.C. equals "Before Cable")...oh, I digressed again. Sorry. Before all of those we had plain ol' analog television over the air via radio waves.
Channels 2 through 13 were in the VHF or Very High Frequency range, while the higher numbered channels, up to 69, were in the UHF, or Ultra High Frequency. Think of all of these channels like radio stations; the different frequencies were tuned in by a knob (really!) and your antenna.
Turns out that when we decided to make this move to DTV (of which HDTV is a subset of), we really didn't have much spectrum to use. Oh, wait a second! "Yes, we do!" someone said. "We have plenty of availability in the UHF range because nobody is really using it!" In a comical nutshell, that's how we got our DTV signals in the UHF range. So now let's get back to the "HDTV Antenna" bit.
If DTV and HDTV signals are in the same UHF radio range that we've been using for years, what would an HDTV antenna be? It would be an antenna that does what antennas have done for decades: it pulls in, and in some cases, strengthens a UHF radio frequency. The only difference in today's signal is that the information the antenna pulls down is in a digital format.
Therefore, in a long-winded explanation, the short answer to the post title is: "No." A standard set of rabbit ears or even a bent coat-hanger could potentially pull in a DTV or HDTV signal. In fact, I seem to recall a post where I mentioned the "antenna" my next-door neighbor uses. His HDTV tuner is in the basement, so we attached some coax to the antenna input and ran the coax wire to the basement ceiling. When we touched the copper core of the coax to his copper piping, he was able to tune in every possible DTV channel from Philadelphia, which is 25 miles away!
Nick, we hope this helps dispel the myth of HDTV Antennas. Try the sites we recommended and let us know how things work out!
