How to get TV on your Television (Patreon)

Or television on your TV!?
It's me brandon sheffield.

I forgot I had made a bunch of notes about my television learnings as I got back into the hobby. I meant to share it on the podcast but didn't, so here it is as a PATRON EXCLUSIVE, for how to USE TELEVISION lol.

- first of all, the big outdoor antennas you may remember from your youth aren't necessary unless you are far from an urban area with lots of towers. Mostly what I'm talking about is the little panel ones that you can get for 12 bucks. If you need a big boy antenna you get into a whole other zone where you want to point the antenna toward the area where the towers are. Once you know where the towers are you can figure out their bearing with a compass app and point it that way. But yeah these need to be like mounted on a roof and it's a whole thing, and also note that old/original antennas from before DTV are all tuned for VHF, and basically everything uses UHF now so you won't get many channels off an old antenna and you'd need to buy a new one anyway. To be clear, I did not buy a roof mounted antenna, but I did try the one that was already there, and that's why/how I learned all this.

- to find out where the TV towers are near you, you can use this guide. For what DTV channels you should be able to get, try this official map from the FCC. that FCC map also shows the you the physical location for the towers, so that might be even better. The first link to channel master also lets you put in your zip code to see how many TOTAL channels you should be able to get, which is likely way more than what the FCC says.

- I got a Mohu Leaf which is sort of the name brand for these, but I also got a cheaper one just to test it out and the results were basically the same. So I really think you can get almost anything you find. They are just a wire that attaches to your TV, with a big flat panel on the end that acts as an antenna. This is the part you need to be careful positioning.

- put the antenna as high up as you can. Seriously 1 foot higher or lower makes a big difference for reception. Putting it by a window also helps. But we have one TV by a window and one that's in the middle of a room and the difference between their reception is like 10 channels.

- Many of these will advertise a booster as a big exciting add-on. But if you live in a well-populated area with many tv towers (any big city) you actually don't want to use an amplifier/booster as it amplifies all signals at once and they will start to bleed together. only use a booster if you live somewhere remote and are far from TV towers and they're not all around you. Even then I'm not convinced of the cheap ones that come with these flat antennas (I tried one at my mom's place in a rural area and it didn't help particularly).

- Just re-emphasizing that if you find you're not getting too many channels, move the antenna higher/closer to a window and re-scan. You won't get new channels unless you re-scan, no matter what. I couldn't get the dang cartoon channel and then I moved the antenna 18 inches higher and now it's clear as day. Wild. So experiment with placement, rescan, experiment, rescan.

- Oh JUST in case this is unclear to anyone, scanning is something you do on your TV. All tvs should have an "auto-scan" option to look for channels, in a menu somewhere or other. I like to take note of how many channels it finds before repositioning to try another area, then scan again.

- sun flares, clouds, wind, etc, can all affect your signal! So try scanning or re-scanning on a clear day.

THAT'S IT. Check out NHK World Japan, it rules. I sat down and watched a show about sustainable fashion and a guy trying to figure out how to make fabric out of pulped down discarded clothing, the way you can re-press pulped paper, which he did alongside Epson, the printer company (wild), and then I watched a happy french man bike across some islands and learn to make somen by hand and fish with some youngsters, then I saw the evening news and learned 10 objective pieces of information which nobody was screaming at me about or getting opinions for or anything. with no commercials! And then a cartoon came on about some japanese conversational nuances. And I was like... is this allowed!? Am I allowed to have a good time like this? It was confusing. So! Please enjoy!

(note: all this is information about the US - outside the US I have no idea what goes on! )