Indoor Antenna Not Working

[chip19]

Right now I have this directional antenna. http://www.amazon.com/Philips-PHDTV1-Si ... 731&sr=8-3

I am in a college dorm in Hoboken, NJ, 2 miles from Manhattan. The problem is the window in my room faces away from New York, and if I face it toward New York there are like 5 walls in between. Plus there are probably a few trees and a 12-story building in the way. All I want are CBS, ABC, Fox, and NBC. They are all yellow as far as the AntennaWeb color coding.

Now the antenna is placed in the window, facing away from the city. I'm not expecting much since this is a directional antenna and I'm away from the tower. As it stands, I get Fox and NBC but the signal is very weak (on my Samsung HDTV I have a signal strength indicator and I only get 1-3 bars out of I think 8 max). There are almost constant artifacts and skipping.

My question is whether or not any indoor antenna would work (say, an omnidirectional one), or is the amount of things impeding the Line of Sight too much to overcome without an outdoor antenna? I feel like this should work since I am so close to the city, but with my existing antenna it's just not...

Thanks!

[hdtvlabs]

When the line-of-sight to the towers is blocked over such a wide angle as you describe the only thing you can hope is to pick up a weak reflection of the transmitted signal after it bounces off the surroundings. I guess that's what you receive, and it is not surprising that your signal is really weak.

An omni-directional antenna might be better than a directional antenna pointed away from the towers. The only way to know is to try, but do not expect much.