HD Antennas

If you have made the jump to buy an HDTV and want to try Over the Air (antenna) HD first before investing lots of money on cable or satellite, here are your options. That's what I did; I am getting all of my HD programming over the air for free and it works great.

While you will get far fewer channels (only the channels your antenna can pick up locally) it will give you time to figure out HD in terms of what programming is available and what is right for you going forward keeping in mind your budget and what you are willing to pay. You will pay a significant premium for HD through your cable or satellite provider.

If you are lucky enough to have certain types of even the older style rabbit ear antenna, you may have no additional investment investment beyond the TV. Hook up the antenna to your HDTV and see if you are able to receive HD programming with that antenna.

HD programming may be found, and usually is found, on a higher UHF channel than the original TV Channel. The FCC assigned each broadcaster a separate UHF channel for the digital broadcast while the transition to digital is going on. This is the part that needs to be completed by 2/17/09 after which time all broadcasts will be digital. Note: Digital and HD are two separate things. You need a digital broadcaster (all of your local affiliates are now, pretty much) in order for that broadcaster to also provide HD programming. Not all programming on a digital channel is in HD.

For example my local ABC affiliate is channel 8 but in my area the digital broadcast (and therefore the HD programming when available) will come over the 46.1 UHF channel.
If your current “old-style” antenna picks up the digital/HD broadcasts, you’re all set. Be sure you can pick up the digital sub-channels because each UHF digital channel has the capability to broadcast up to 4 shows simultaneously. For example Channel 8 could broadcast their digital/HD programming on 46.1, 46.2, 46.3 and 46.4. Most broadcasters really only use the “point one” and “point 2″ channels because the primary channel is used for HD and uses up most of the bandwidth available to them.

If your current antenna doesn’t work for you then you will need to buy an antenna that will pick up UHF and VHF. These are relatively inexpensive and it is a one time cost of about $40 -$60 depending on the brand and quality. If you have an older one you can give it a try first to see if you get all of the channels.

By the way, please feel free to search the Internet for any different opinions on this. This is not a dictatorship.