quote:

Originally posted by Glynn863:
OP here.

Thanks for the comments so far, and for the explanation regarding splitting the antenna signal between TVs. 2 of my 4 TVs have coax connections (from the old DirectTV system) available, and would be the prime candidates for this planned upgrade. These TVs are in the den and in the basement "man cave", where we do most of our watching. There are also coax connections in the living room and master bedroom, but I don't plan on putting a TV in either location. The other TVs are in the other 2 bedrooms, but neither have coax connections, although they could probably be added later from the basement.

Fortunately I live on top of a ridge, and most of the stations are within 15 miles on top of a mountain. So "line of sight" seems to be good. I have thought about putting an antenna in my attic, but I would have to do a little "finagling" to get a coax down below. Right now, I could probably drop it alongside the exhaust flue for the hot water heater and furnace, which are in the basement. The round exhaust flue is in a square chase up through the wall, so there should be some space. I don't know if this would be better than an outside antenna.

the fact that you live line of sight to the towers is promising.

As far as the splitters and running coax all over the place, there is another alternative that I did at my house which isn't perfect, but I'll toss it out there.

There is a device called a Tablo (check amazon) and another called HD-HomeRun which takes the signal from your antenna and converts it to Ethernet (or wifi). Then you use the Tablo (or HDhomeRun) app to get OTA TV on a firestick, LG TV, Android, Iphone or Roku.

I got the Tablo because I have two TV's where it was not practical to run coax from the antenna with all the required splitters etc. One of the TV's gets cat-5e to a roku and and the other uses wifi to a firestick.

Had I not used the Tablo, one of my coax runs would have been about 100 feet after the splitter and the loss would have been too high to get the TV signal. Long coax runs are notoriously lossy on UHF, even with good coax.

Also, I've never been fond of antenna amplifiers for several reasons that I won't go into.

It's not perfect since the Tablo software has a few minor bugs, but the Tablo does allow me to do things like record TV shows and pause live TV, which is kind of cool. I use it every day.