Today we talk a bit about HDMI. In particular there was an interview with Steve Venuti, Director of Marketing for HDMI Licensing LLC at
ElectronicHouse.com on the basics of HDMI. We also have a review of the
Lacrosse UHF antenna.
The Lacrosse
There
are three ways to receive HD programming: Satellite, Cable, and Over
the Air (OTA). With cable and satellite you need to spend money to buy
a HD package which may or may not be worth it to you. Over the Air is
free! And many people will find that there is a lot of free HD
programming, at least here in the United States.
OK, so what's the drawback. Well you'll need an antenna and an
ATSC tuner to pull in the signals. These antennas can be large and an
eye sore. Well the people at Terrestrial Digital have designed an
antenna that is no more obtrusive than a DBS Dish. The antenna is
called the Lacrosse and is 14 inches high by 20 inches wide. It comes
with mounting brackets and small poll which can mount anywhere a
satellite dish can be mounted. There are two versions a non-amplified
version that has 10.8 dB of gain and and amplified version with 17dB of
gain. We tested the amplified version. We are not RF engineers so we'll
just say for antenna gain the more the better. For reference, Ara has a
Wingard HD9095P that has a 8 foot boom that has a rating of 16dB
without amplification. This is a UHF antenna so it only picks up
channels 14 through 69. But that's where the HD channels are anyway.
We tested the antenna in three locations, South Orange County
CA (60 miles to the transmitters) , the San Fernando Valley CA(30 miles
to the transmitters) and Fresno CA (about 20 miles to the
transmitters). We had success everywhere we stayed within the stated
range of 40 miles. It was as simple as aiming the antenna towards the
transmitters. In all our tests the transmitters were located in the
same general area. The Terrestrial Digital website states that the
antenna does well in areas where the antennas are in multiple
directions. We did not have an official test for this but we'll a bit
more about our test in South County which may validate this statement.
We used two different ATSC tuners and found that one locked onto a
weaker signal better than the other so if you are on the fringe your
mileage will vary. Like all antennas, the Lacrosse did better when we
raised it. When we added an additional 20 feet to the antenna the
signal strength increased significantly. But the design of this antenna
is such that it will typically be mounted a few feet over the roof line
so if you live outside the range this may not work for you.
Our test in South County was beyond the stated 40 miles but
that didn't stop us from trying. What we found was that the antenna did
pretty well for being 20 miles outside the stated range. We locked onto
about 10 digital channels. We could see from our equipment that the
signal for the remaining LA channels was about 10 percent too weak.
Even with the signal amplifier. Without the amplifier we could only
lock onto 6 digital channels. So the booster was able to take a solid
signal that was under our tuners ability to lock and raise it to a
point where the tuner could lock onto it.
But the most interesting thing that happened was that we were
able to lock onto three San Diego channels which were 80 miles in the
opposite direction. To be honest we don't know if the antenna was able
to see the transmitters behind it or if it was picking up a bounce off
a nearby hill. Either way we were watching local news from San Diego
using the antenna.
Conclusion
If you want to watch OTA HD broadcasts and
you don't want to put up an large old fashion looking antenna the
Lacrosse HD antenna will combine form and function. As long as you stay
within the 40 mile range. In some cases it can work from farther away
but only with strong signals.
