Dish antenna for trailer - Toyota Tundra Forums : Tundra Solutions Forum

droolingmess · #1 (**permalink**) 05-08-2009, 11:41 AM

With the digital transition coming the venerable old air antenna is going to be useless unless near a transmitter so I have been kicking around the idea of getting a dish antenna for my trailer. Problem is I know nothing about them. Any advice on equipment, service providers, pitfalls and the such would be helpful.

SE2000 · #2 (**permalink**) 05-08-2009, 12:03 PM

Antenna are not digital or analog. They just capture signals and pass them to the receiver which will need to be digital. So you put a converter box into your trailer and you are good to go.
If all your old channels were vhf and the new ones are uhf, a different antenna might work better but you need to try first

droolingmess · #3 (**permalink**) 05-08-2009, 12:36 PM

Thanks for the reply but the solution is not a converter box or new air antenna. My TV is HD ready. The problem is the digital signal transmitted uses a much more narrow bandwidth and much less signal strength than the old analog signal. The result is very slight changes in antenna direction cause signal loss and unless near a reasonable size city bad or no signal strength. This is not something limited to a specific area. I have used my antenna form California to Maryland. And it is not a problem with my antenna as other trailer owners have the same problem. Some stations are still transmitting analog and digital side by side and the HD definatly looks nicer unfortunatly the digital signal is unreliable over any distance. This is nothing new though. The ads for the digital conversion have warned about these problems. I am looking for info on satalite systems for RVs.

SE2000 · #4 (**permalink**) 05-08-2009, 01:24 PM

What you mean by narrower is the vhf/uhf thing I mentioned. The higher the frequency,uhf, the more line of sight you must be. For your area, the digital channels must have switched. If the stations transmit both, the digital is usually powered reduced to cut down on interference. A poor antenna was not such a big deal with analog if you could put up with poor picture, digital is far less accomadating.
I would suggest you invest in a quality antenna, there are omnidirctional ones that will allow traveling if you are close enough to the signal. directional antenna for further distance but you will have trouble keeping it aimed while moving.
With the dtv transistion, there are tons of websites about this. AntennaWeb is a good source.