It might have been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon... but an insane month at our stations.  After jumping through all manner of hoops in preparation to shut down all of our analog transmitters last month, the government ran us through a succession of back-and-forth rulings that ran right down to the wire before finally settling down to June 12th.  I don't know how many people will actually benefit from all of this... but it sure has confused folks, and angered a number of our sister stations' viewers, who have been waiting for those stations to fire up their full-power digital signals.  But enough of that until June 12th -- maybe.

We get a lot of calls from viewers who hook up their converter boxes, press the button, and get nothing.  Most of the time the problem turns out to be an inadequate antenna -- especially indoor antennas.  Unfortunately, it's hard to walk into a store and come away with an antenna that works really well; all too often, the companies slapping this stuff together spend more design effort on the cardboard box than on the antenna itself.  And some of the stuff out there is just plain rubbish, with claims ranging from merely fantastic to blatantly deceptive.

If you're looking for an indoor antenna, keep some things in mind:

• There is nothing about an antenna that would make it uniquely suited for HDTV or digital, compared to analog.  This is the same hooey that some companies tried back in the early days of color.  Principles of good antenna design apply, regardless of whether the signal is analog or digital.
• Rod antennas (bunny ears, as some folks call them) are mainly intended for VHF channels (2-13).  Since all of Syracuse's digital channels are actually UHF (14 and up), don't expect good results from this.  Most UHF antennas are loops or some variation of a bow-tie shape.
• Adding an amplifier to a bad antenna design doesn't make the antenna any better -- it just adds more noise to the signal.  Very few amplified indoor antennas actually work well -- the Winegard SS-3000 is a rare exception, and the Terk HDTVa is passible (though inconveniently top-heavy).
• All too many established American brand names have become mere fronts for no-name Asian export mills.  GE, Zenith, Magnavox... the list goes on.  You can't necessarily assume that because your vintage Zenith Chromacolor TV lasted forever, that something with the Zenith badge today is built to the same quality:  it isn't really the same company.
• Yes, I harp on this, but it is true:  if you can install an outdoor antenna, it will greatly outperform even the best indoor model.  Getting the thing up higher and away from obstructions makes a huge difference.  Also, it takes a certain amount of size to make an antenna with good directionality and gain.

Here's a case study in how easy it is to get led down the path.  Several months ago I needed a small antenna for a demonstration, so I went to a home improvement store nearby and bought an amplified set-top model for about $30.  Good thing I tested it:  the amplifier was dead right out of the box, so the thing was deafer than Beethoven wearing earplugs.  No signal coming out whatsoever.  Took it back to the store and exchanged it for a plain $20 rabbit-ears / UHF loop combo, the GE TV24734:

After all, the box says that it's DIGITAL HTDV READY!  Receives The Highest Quality HDTV Signal!  With all those capital letters, it must be something special, right?

Well, no.  It sufficed to pick up the local DTV channels some of the time... and gave me a very good opportunity to demonstrate how a poor signal breaks up before going away altogether.  From Liverpool, the highest signal quality reading was roughly 50%, which is about borderline.  Finished up the demonstration, boxed everything up, and it's been sitting in my office ever since.

Last week my travels took me to a Radio Shack, where I noticed an old-style UHF bowtie antenna on the wall, model 15-234... just like the antenna I used to have for watching channel 24.  At a whopping $4.19, I figured it was worth a try... but its flat twin-lead wire needs a matching transformer (15-1253, $5.49) to plug it into the coaxial jack on the converter box.  Again, no big deal... we're still under ten bucks.

After attaching the flat lead wires onto the transformer terminals and plugging it onto the back of the converter box, we got better than 90% signal quality on every Syracuse channel.  Pretty strange, I thought... so I dragged out some test equipment and set up on the picnic table outside the studio building (hooray for temperatures breaking 50°... shirtsleeve weather!).  In side-by-side tests, the cheap bowtie rig pulls in a much stronger UHF signal than the GE, anywhere from 10 to 20 dB hotter.  In fact, for less than $10, the bowtie would probably have outperformed even the original amplfied model if it had worked as advertised.

Why such a big difference -- and in the "wrong" direction?  An educated guess: the GE loses much of the signal by trying to combine the VHF rod antennas with the UHF loop.  By actual testing, the GE's cheap miniature coaxial cable manages to reduce the signal by some 4dB at channel 17.  The bowtie / transformer combination beats the GE because it's optimized for the signal I'm actually trying to receive, and uses the most efficient (and minimum length) cable.

I'm not going to make a blanket statement and claim that this is the ideal choice for everyone... but it is inexpensive, and sometimes the simplest solution does work acceptably.  For the price, it might be worth a try.

-- Jeff