Antennas and Satellite dishes

[Barry]

A young neighbour asked me about the two antennas that I have on my roof. If you see the picture there in the upper left.

I told him they’ve been here for over 25 years. One is a broadcast TV antenna that I got when I got DIRECTV. Originally satellite television was not allowed to give you your local stations so we put up our TV antenna. Cable was so bad in my neighbourhood many of us got satellite. The other antenna is for FM radio. It’s surprised me he knew little about FM because today’s generation apparently streams everything.

For exercise I normally bicycle around the neighbourhood as much as I can. But the last few days I have been looking for antennas and satellite dishes. When I moved out here 30 years ago at least half the houses had antennas or dishes. Now None have them. The big surprise with it was absolutely no satellite dishes are all, none. I guess cable has gotten better, I have it. My people gave up on their dishes, but also on broadcast TV and FM.

[SRW1000]

Some of them may have their antennas in the attic.  That's what I did.  There's no external indication of an antenna, and reception is great.  And free.

[AVSJeff]

Barry, I've been in the AV industry since 1985 and remember 6-8' satellite dishes.  10-15 years ago I was telling anyone who would listen to me to put an ethernet cable behind every TV and at every AV equipment location. It's only a matter of time before all media will come into the home via the internet. We've already seen it happening with some of the major TV networks (CBS, Paramount +, etc.). If it hasn't happened already, all of the satellite providers will be at the mercy of Internet Service Providers (ISP's) and a 'pay-to-play' business model. That's just my observation.......

[David Vaughn]

I actually recently took down my antenna preparing for the house to be painted. I hadn't used it in years. I originally put it up when HDTV launched in order to get a HD signal (cable didn't offer it). I believe my local Comcast started offering HD around 2003 or so and I had the cable DVR until the Tivo Series 3 launched. I reviewed it for Ultimate AV and ended up purchasing the review unit. I've used Tivo's ever since and with the Edge you have to choose between antenna or cable and I just pay the $150 fee per month to have a consistent signal. OTA had a better picture, but wasn't 100% on every local channel (unfortunately). For a time I used the antenna for FM radio, but all the local stations can be had via IHeart Radio, so there's no point in keeping it up on the house now. Granted, if the Internet goes out I'm screwed, but that's a very rare occurrence. 

[Paul Heroy]

The house I bought in 1998 had a rooftop antenna which I ended up using for OTA HDTV, and recorded a few sporting events with a PC tuner card that I wanted to preserve. I also had Dish and then DirecTV satellite dishes which had to be mounted on poles to get over trees to see the satellites. 

Virtually nobody wants to have those on or in front of their house any more as many consider them ugly. With the advent of internet streaming most things are easily available in some way without the antennas and dishes. 

I also ran Ethernet as AVSJeff mentioned, basically drops to every room in the house. Did the same when I bought my current house in 2013. Even though I still have a DirecTV dish for now, its days are clearly numbered and it's come very close to getting consigned to the dustbin of history. Once my current cycle is up I think that's it.

[tripplej]

In my neighborhood, like Barry, you would see more than half with dish back in 2000 on rooftops but now no house has it. Everybody streams or they have a small OTA in their attic. But, I suspect, it is just about 100% streaming now...

[bmoney]

Dishes are def a dying breed

[TRainH2O]

We still have DirecTV but I am trying to convince my wife to cancel our service. They continue to raise our rate but we watch a tiny fraction of the channels we receive.

We have had an antenna in our attic since the early days of 1080i broadcasts as this was the only way to receive an HD signal. It is in our attic not to hide it but apparently, there is a "sweet spot" for our OTA signal there. Moving the antenna to the roof causes us to lose the signal. We are in a valley between two mountain ranges with the broadcast towers on the other side of those ranges. So, our signal isn't 100% reliable. If not for that, I would have ditched DTV years ago.

[bmoney]

i got directTV way back in 2002 i think it was only to get the newly launched YES network to watch the yankees

[Barry]

I am a big Yankee fan too!

[Barry]

We still have DirecTV but I am trying to convince my wife to cancel our service. They continue to raise our rate but we watch a tiny fraction of the channels we receive.

We have had an antenna in our attic since the early days of 1080i broadcasts as this was the only way to receive an HD signal. It is in our attic not to hide it but apparently, there is a "sweet spot" for our OTA signal there. Moving the antenna to the roof causes us to lose the signal. We are in a valley between two mountain ranges with the broadcast towers on the other side of those ranges. So, our signal isn't 100% reliable. If not for that, I would have ditched DTV years ago.

I got no signal with the antenna in our attic. On teh roof we get a strong signal for not just NYC but Connecticut. 

[bmoney]

I am a big Yankee fan too!

im enjoying every second the first 60 games has brought so far...cause anything can happen

we go spoiled in the 90's....the 80's were terrible lol