Just installed WineGuard SquareShooter - Question

[zubinh]

Gentleman:

I do not have an HDTV yet nor a HD receiver but will in a couple of months.

In anticipation of such, I recently switched to Directv and had the Wineguard Squareshooter 1000 installed.

I thought that in order to test it out, I could just hook up the coax from the wineguard to my standard TV and it will work. Well I did but all channels came in very snowy. The installer says that that is supposed to happen. He said "The Wineguard is an HD antenna and will only work when connected to a HDTV."

Is this true? How can the Wineguard only work with HDTV? I thought this was strange so hopefully you can shed some light on this. THANKS!

 

[beast37799]

what your seeing rite now is the analog channels .hdtv are digital channels when u get an hd stb plug the antenna line into it. if u can recieve ota digital channels youll see no snow or interference . well maybe pixelation from time to time but thats all .

 

[boba]

If the square shooter is correctly installed you should be able to watch your analog channels. They and digital channels use the same broadcast frequencies. If you are to far from the broadcast stations for the square shooter to pick up a usable signal on analog you will probably have trouble with the digital signals. Most digital stations are operating at a lower power than their analog signals.

 

[zubinh]

Thats what I thought too. I'm only 17 miles from the transmitters. Boba says I can see analog but Beast says I need the HD stb.

OK Confused again!

 

[JStanton]

Thats what I thought too. I'm only 17 miles from the transmitters. Boba says I can see analog but Beast says I need the HD stb.

OK Confused again!

There is no such thing as an HD-only antenna. Most (but not all) digital stations are broadcasting in the UHF band (that's analog channels above 13), so you can sometimes see antennas being advertised as HD antennas - this only means that they only pick up the UHF band.

The SquareShooter, on the other hand, is a VHF (analog channels 2-13) and UHF antenna. See Winegard's
press release for proof.

If you are seeing heavy snow on the analog channels, and the digital versions are broadcasting from the same towers, you're gonna have problems.

Some things to try:
1) Check the wiring (i.e. make sure the connectors are tight on the cable, the cable is of good quality and the run isn't too long) and check that your TV is set up for an antenna (as opposed to cable) connection. If you're only 17 miles, you should be getting _something_.

2) Go to Antennaweb.org and typing in your home address. Up will come a list of the broadcast stations around you, along with the compass orientation to point the antenna at.

If after this you still can't get a reasonable analog signal, you might have to either elevate the antenna over an obstruction between you and the towers, get an amplifier, or a higher-gain antenna.

Good luck,
Jim

 

[zubinh]

Jim - Thanks alot for your response. I also emailed my installer about my concerns and this was his response:

"The Winegard SS-1000 is a digital antenna tuned and optimized for the
450-470 Mhz UHF band (i.e. where HD programming is transmitted). It is not
intended to receive signals from the VHF band where most analog programming
is located. Moreover, it is a highly directional antenna with little to no
side lobes and is designed to avoid signal distortions deriving from
multipath interference (undesired spurious signals reflected off of
buildings, trees and so forth). Analog antennas tend to be far more diffuse
in their directional selectivity.We are most confident that you will be extremelypleased with the quality of your OTA digital signal and picture once all the pieces are in place."

 

[v120]

Square shooter

I have a square shooter installed I live 40 miles from the towers and receive
all the ota channels in my area with at least 75% singnal.I also do not receive any analog locals I just get snow.Hope this helps v120.