Antenna Advice Needed (Zip 89032)

[chelitalop]

Hello! Need some OTA Antenna Expertise!!!

Have an OTA analog Dish Network (DN) satellite rooftop mounted antenna (Terk? Not sure, don't recall it's at least 6-7 years old). Need a digital HDTV replacement OTA antenna and need advice based on the following:

* DN satellite service is active on one analog TV w/receiver and analog TV(Dish 500 LNB about 9+ years old now)
* DN installer ran something called a loopback? wire from family room receiver to master bedroom (MB), to view family room receiver satellite channel and OTA antenna
* Analog OTA antenna worked pretty darn good prior to switch, but required DN receiver to be powered off for improved OTA antenna reception in both Master bedroom and family room TV (a bit annoying to power off receiver all the time, but it worked)
* After switch, Master Bedroom loopback stopped working all together for OTA antenna (just as in the family room OTA no longer working w/analog signal), as well as satellite reception of channel playing on receiver in family room
* After switch ordered DN local channel service for extra $5 monthly fee but am very unhappy. Reason: they are only broadcasting some local channels. I want them all. When hooking up rabbit ears to the new MB HDTV set, there are many more channels, example: PBS channel 10 DN broadcasts, but they are not giving me PBS 10.2 and 10.3. In fact does not appear DN is broadcasting most of the dot channels.

* I want an OTA digital HDTV antenna installed so I can tell DN to take a hike with their local channel offer. (DN requires $5 monthly but only ration the channels they want to broadcast.)

Preferences:
*Prefer the dish mount antenna, it's clean, maybe fewer wires needed (or no more additional wires required?) from dish to inside family room receiver
*Concern: need the OTA antenna signal to route to MB (can existing loopback wiring be used from family rm receiver?) and need a new wire ran to another room. (really want OTA to work on all 3 TV's in home; and I can live with DN only working in family rm if necessary; am not interested in adding more receivers to watch DN stations independently)
*Want to eliminate all rabbit ears and hide wires
*Will have a retired handyman do the labor and hard stuff. But I need to buy all hardware (antenna, connectors, etc) and explain what I need done in "guy-speak"! Am assuming he can pick up the wiring locally, but I need to get the speciality items beforehand and have shipped if necessary.
*Basic info is needed for how the new antenna install & setup is going to work
*Is the Terk TV-44 a good solution, I'm not clear if it really is a digitial/hdtv antenna? Need your advice on the best OTA hdtv antenna for this and whether or not receiver requires upgrading, and/or if a stand-alone OTA antenna is needed

Have visited several local stores, and have found it quite frustrating that although the young, inexperienced store staff are eager to sell me stuff, they cannot help me figure out specifically what is needed to solve the above.

Thank you very much for your expertise. Any assistance you can provide will be greatly appreciated!
--Shelly

[tigerbangs]

The description of your system leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how your OTA TV is actually distributed. In most normal situations that involve satellite dish installations, the OTA antenna signal is distributed using a diplexer that combines the satellite signal and OTA signal onto the same cable, then are broken out behind each TV set by using another diplexer that separates the signals out to the TV tuner and satellite receiver respectively. It is rather hard to know for certain how things are distributed in your home.

About the OTA antenna specifically: the Terk 44 is NOT a candidate for OTA reception for you. Las Vegas has a number of VHF digital channels available, including one that actually broadcasts on channel 2, and the Terk will be useless with most of your available channels. Secondly, you have a number of TV sets, and that will require special attention to signal stregth to be sure that you have enough OTA signal to power all of the available TV sets. If you could provide a diagram that might outline how your system is laid out, I can make recommendations about how to proceed. Choosing the wrong antenna and mis-distributing the OTA signals will cause oyu a lot of headaches.