Hello! Newbie from right outside of chicago help.

[Vasilithegreek]

So we ditched our insane directv bill after moving into our new home in the suburbs of Chicago. Now I'm just trying to figure out where to start and put all the info together, but it is really confusing on what type of antenna I should be getting,positioning, etc......So I'm looking for much need help especially before the football season starts.
Thanks!
Bill

 

[boba]

Most commonly referred site is www.tvfool.com

The other thing that might help is searching this forum for Chicago.

 

[Vasilithegreek]

Hey boba thanks for the link and the suggestion on the search

 

[Vasilithegreek]

Here is my tvfool report http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id=e1c697aff531f2

 

[Vasilithegreek]

Is there anything for an option to dvr shows?

 

[. Raine]

Welcome to SatGuys, Bill!

Wow, that TvFool report looks pretty darn good. All those channels that say LOS [line of sight] in the path column that are green should come in pretty easy, I'd think. They're close and all in the same direction, you probably could hook a piece of wire to your TV and receive stations!

There is some DVR options, I've seen people on here discussing OTA DVRs before. Myself, I use Windows Media Center to record OTA.

 

[osu1991]

ChannelMaster DVR+ and Tivo Roamio's are probably latest OTA dvr's for sale. There are others too

 

[Vasilithegreek]

Thanks for the welcome! I'm unsure of what I need then for a antenna. I bought a $20 antennas direct indoor antenna and honestly it's horrible. I don't get cbs or abc and fox comes in but you can't move or else it goes crazy. What sites do you guys use to buy your stuff from

 

[Mr Tony]

welcome

the good news is almost all your stations are broadcasting on UHF. WBBM (cbs) is the only one that is still in the vhf band (broadcasting on rf12) BUT they have a low powered translator on RF26 which while lower powered you should still be able to get it. note there is one station broadcasting on vhf low (wock on rf4). it has mundofox, a couple ethnic stations and soul of the south on it.

i personally would go with an outdoor antenna. something like the HBU33. Its the one i used when i was in minneapolis and was about 28 miles away from the towers. you can get it at radio shack or order from solid signal
http://www.solidsignal.com/search.asp?q=hbu33

 

[jayn_j]

I will also second using an outdoor antenna, even if you mount it in the garage or attic. We live up in milwaukee and are about 12 miles from the antenna. I find reception sometimes spotty with an indoor antenna, but solid with a suburban antenna in the garage attic.

We use a TIVO. It is a bit pricey, but there is no hassle and it does a good job of integrating online content with broadcast. There are a couple of things to consider. First, it always pays to buy the lifetime subscription. Payback is usually around 3 years. Used TIVOs with lifetime go for around $300. If you go that route, look toward the TIVO series 3 HD. It has the best tuner and the Premiere models aren't nearly as good. If you go with the premiere model, stay with the 2 tuner models. The 4 tuner ones are cable only. Same is true for the Roamio. Only the lowest price one has 4 OTA tuners. The others are cable only.

Don't worry too much about disc size. The larger ones are generally overpriced and increasing disc size is easy, especially on the Roamio. There it is pure plug and play.

 

[. Raine]

Are there any channels that you specifically would like to receive, or do you want to just try for the most that you can get? An antenna like Iceberg recommended pointed at around 125 to 128 degrees should pull in all those green LOS channels, looks like about twenty three channels that are only 23 - 24 miles away from you, and then they'll be sub channels of those too, so probably double, if not triple, that number, counting all the subs.

If the style antenna like the HBU33 is too big, then a DB4 pointed in the same direction should work and take up a lot less space, although it costs more, they use to be $50, now they're like $80:

Amazon product ASIN B000EHYG9K
Definitely like suggested in the posts above, an outdoor antenna would work best, even if not mounted outside. Iceberg I'm pretty sure has a post somewhere on here where he mounted an outdoor ant in a closet - here it is, fourth post down in this thread: http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/where-is-all-the-ota-antenna-pics.336726/#post-3443695
I myself once hung a huge outdoor ant from the ceiling of a spare room long long ago when I rented an apt and it worked good.
Amazon.com is where I've bought whatever antennas I've needed from.

 

[Mr Tony]

I know solid signal has their "extreme" antennas that look like what the db4 is (but they are probably some knockoff) but they do work pretty well. When I lived in my apartment I had the DB8X
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=HDB8X&ss=251619

and it worked for the Minneapolis stations fine (here in Duluth I have a HBU22 since I'm all of a couple miles away)

pics of said antenna
http://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/posts/3417756/

 

[T134]

Try this guy. Very easy to build, cheap to free and pretty strong even indoors without an amp. I have one I use myself that I modded a bit and used 10 gauge copper to build and threw a preamp on it.