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Essential Guide to Choosing the Right HDTV Antenna
Author : Kenny Hemphill
Aside from choosing your HDTV set itself, choosing the right
HDTV antenna is the most important decision you're going to make
in relation to watching HDTV. Even if you watch most of your
HDTV on cable or satellite, you should still invest in a good
antenna. Why? Well, there are two key reasons.
1. Cable and satellite operators don't distribute all the
available free-to-air HDTV channels. In particular, many local
free HDTV channels aren't carried on cable or satellite. So to
watch these, you'll need an HDTV antenna.
2. Even where cable and satellite channels do carry free-to-air
HDTV channels, they are often highly compressed and this can
have a noticeably detrimental effect on picture quality. In most
cases, the picture quality of an off-air HDTV signal will be
better than a cable or satellite equivalent.
So, now that you know why you should get an HDTV antenna, the
next, obvious, question is which one should you get? There are
two types of antenna - indoor and outdoor - just like
conventional TV. As with conventional TV, you should always, if
possible, opt for an outdoor HDTV antenna. They are simply much
better at picking up signals. However, in cases where this isn't
possible, for example, if you live in an apartment block or have
a landlord who won't let you stick anything on the roof, an
indoor antenna will do a reasonable job.
HDTV signals are different from analog TV signals in that,
because they're digital, you either get them or you don't.
There's no middle-ground of ghosting pictures or snowy screens.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to install an antenna on
your roof, you then need to decide which one. Unfortunately,
there's no hard and fast rule or quick answer to that one. It
depends on where you live, the distance you are from the nearest
transmitter and the frequency of the channels you want to
receive.
Help is at hand however, in the form of the Consumer Electronics
Association and its Antennaweb.org website. Its
mapping system allows you to plug in your address and details of
your property, such as the number of storeys, and whether there
are any likely obstructions like electricity pylons nearby, and
based on that gives you details of which HDTV antenna best suits
your needs.
With that information at hand, all that's left is to buy the
antenna in question, install it and start enjoying all those
HDTV stations you never knew existed.
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