Odd antenna reception behavior

[jabber]

I've got a mystery on my hands and I was wondering if anyone on this forum could help me understand the results I've been seeing with my new antenna and digital converter box.

About 6 months ago, I got a Viore portable USB HDTV tuner. This is a nifty little gadget that plugs into the USB port of your laptop and picks up over-the-air DTV signals and plays them on your computer, in HD if available. It comes with this tiny little 6 inch portable antenna. Despite the unimpressiveness of the antenna, I was pleasantly suprised at being able to pick up a few stations and watch them in HD on my laptop. The station that came in the best was the local NBC affiliate, KNTV (channel 11.1/frequency assignment 12).

So I recently decided to improve things and get a decent indoor antenna as well as a converter box so I could pick up more channels and also watch them on my TV. After a little research, I decided to go with the Winegard SS-3000 and the Philco converter box. So I set up and installed everything tonight, but the reception results I'm seeing are just bizarre.

First of all, the Winegard antenna did improve things slightly when just viewing thru the USB HDTV tuner on my laptop. I picked up a few of the other network affiliates, but their signal strengths were on the weak side so the picture was a little jerky. The big surprise was that the Winegard actually did *worse* on the KNTV channel that came in so strong with the little 6 inch portable antenna. I could still watch it, but I'd have to adjust the direction just right.

Things got really confusing when I installed the Philco box. That box, with the Winegard antenna attached, picked up quite a few channels that were not coming through on my USB HDTV tuner. However, it reported no signal whatsoever for KNTV. Also, the fox affiliate KTVU (channel 2.1/frequency assignment 56) doesn't come through the Philco while it is viewable with the USB HDTV tuner. Unfortunately, these are my two favorite channels so I'm quite disappointed that they are not coming through on the Philco.

So the same antenna gives different channels on my television using the Philco converter box versus on my laptop using the USB tuner. How can that be? I could understand if one system simply gave more channels than the other, but how could the set of viewable channels be different in the two cases? Also, how could that little 6 inch antenna do so much better than the fancy Winegard antenna for that KNTV channel? Very strange.

Anyway, any insight that you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated.

[tvreception]

Any indoor antenna is going to have very mixed results. If you want any type of reliable reception, you need an outdoor (or attic) mounted antenna. Also different tuners can have very different results. I was playing with a super cheap Magnavox converter box for Walmart ($40), and with an attic antenna I was able to get my local digital channel 2 very well. The signal quality would vary wildly at times, due to strong electrical interference (channel 2 is about the worst of the bunch for this problem), but it was able to hold a solid picture. I was experimenting with a more expensive Channel Master box, and the signal was off more than it was on. My guess is that if you had an outdoor antenna, you would see much better results.


Steve
http://tvreception.net