The Best TV Antenna

Guide to TV Antennas

How to find the right TV antenna for you

Determine your home’s signal strength

Your first step is to locate where broadcast towers are in relation to your home. This will help you identify what kind of reception you can expect to receive and what type of antenna will best suit your needs. While there are several websites which try to help you determine the broadcast towers closest to you, we found TV Fool easiest to use.

Enter your exact address. If you aren’t sure at what height you plan on hanging your antenna, you can either leave it blank, put “4” for an approximation of an indoor antenna’s height, or estimate the height of your roof.

After entering your exact address, TV Fool gives you a personalized radial graph as well as a chart to help you determine signal strength and location relative to your home:

If it looks intimidating, don’t worry; we’ll guide you through each section, highlighting the parts you’ll need to use to determine your TV antenna type.

Make a list of favorite channels

Depending on your home and the strength and direction of TV signals, you might need to decide which channels are the most important to you. Every channel available in your area will correspond to a callsign, the unique series of letters the FCC uses to identify broadcasters. These vary from region to region, and one network will have different callsigns depending on where it’s broadcasting. Where available, TV Fool has also decoded which network is affiliated with each callsign. If you don’t know the callsigns for your preferred channels and they aren’t listed by network, it’s easy to search either “[Callsign]” or “[Channel Name]” and “[City]” to find your missing stations.

For San Francisco, KPIX-TV is the local CBS station, and KRON-TV is the (Virtual) Channel 4 local news even though it broadcasts on Real Channel 38.

You’ll want to either print out a copy of your analysis report and mark which channels you want to keep track of or jot down two important pieces of information on your list of favorite channels: Real Channel and NM (dB).

Choose between indoor and outdoor

Outdoor TV antennas will always have better reception than indoor TV antennas, but they can be cumbersome to install. Indoor TV antennas are easy to set up, but they don’t always match the decor of the living room and can only be used in areas with strong TV signals. If you live in an area with strong reception, you get to choose whether to go indoor or outdoor, depending on your installation and aesthetic preferences.

To find out if you live in an area with strong signal reception, take a look at TV Fool’s column labeled “NM (dB)” — this stands for “Noise Margin,” a figure measured in decibels (dB). It reflects the amount of interference each signal will experience as it travels between the broadcast tower and your home. The higher the number, the stronger the signal.

Generally speaking, having all of your channels listed in TV Fool’s green zone means that your home has the right conditions to potentially have strong reception, and you can freely choose whether to have an indoor or outdoor antenna. If you have any channels coded yellow, you’ll need to purchase an outdoor antenna or risk not receiving those channels through your TV antenna. Red channels have so weak a signal at your location that they are difficult to pick up — it’s unlikely that any antenna will do the job.

If you've tried a TV antenna without success, you might need to do a few more calculations to determine the true NM value of each channel, taking into account additional sources of interference. We dive into these (and what calculations to take) down below.

Choose directional or multi-directional

If we imagine your home at the center of a circle, with TV signals coming in from all sides, a directional TV antenna will only receive signals coming in from a narrow band about 50 to 60 degrees wide (about 1/6th of the total circle). A multi-directional antenna will pick up signals from a larger swath of the circle, typically a total range of 100 to 200 degrees in opposing arcs (if you aim your antenna north-south, for example, you’d pick up some signals in each direction).

Our sample radar plot shows most channels in the southeast and southwest quadrants. But since directional antennas only pick up between 50 and 60 degrees, a directional antenna won’t be able to pick up both channel 29 and channel 36 unless we are willing to rotate the antenna depending on what channel we want to watch.

For this step, you’ll need to locate the Real Channel numbers of your chosen stations on your radial signal map. If your desired channels are all broadcast from same general direction (within 60 degrees), a directional antenna will give you better reception. If you have channels coming in from multiple directions, we recommend starting off with a multi-directional antenna. There are omni-directional antennas (with 360-degree range), but these tend to have poor signal quality.

However, if you’ve tried multi-directional antennas without success, you might need to switch to a directional antenna and either sacrifice some channels or rotate the antenna. Antennas improve in performance the more specific they are, so directional antennas tend to have better signal quality than multi-directional antennas.

Determine which frequencies you need

Most TV networks used to broadcast on Very High Frequencies (VHF), but more and more are making the switch to Ultra High Frequencies (UHF), since UHF signals carry better through obstacles like houses or trees.

The choice between VHF and UHF depends on the frequencies at which your preferred channels are broadcast. Networks with a Real Channel between 2 and 6 are classified as VHF Lo; those with a Real Channel between 7 and 13 are classified as VHF Hi; and those with a Real Channel between 14 and 83 are classified as UHF.

You can also look at TV Fool’s frequency chart to figure out whether networks are broadcasting on VHF or UHF.

Frequency Chart: TV Fool sorts the channels by their Real Channel number and also lists them by callsign, so you can see which channels are VHF Lo, VHF Hi, and UHF.

If your preferred channels list contains both VHF (either Lo or Hi) and UHF networks, you have two options. While manufacturers make TV antennas advertised to receive both UHF and VHF signals, these antennas typically only receive one type of signal well. They are worth trying — you might be located in a reception sweet spot — but you might also need to buy two antennas, one for each frequency.

Check the return policy before purchasing

Unless you’re one of the lucky few who finds their antenna on the first try, you’ll want to return the first one, two, or three you buy. Consider spending a few extra dollars to purchase from an authorized retailer with a good return policy, just to cover your bases.

Adjust for common sources of interference

TV Fool gives you the base predicted Noise Margin (NM) value for each station at your location in their TV Signal Analysis Report. That said, there are a lot of factors that affect your reception, and many of them are unavoidable. If you’re struggling to get a certain channel that’s on the edge of your reception capability, here are a few common problems that can decrease your Noise Margin and make it more difficult to receive a signal:

• Coaxial Cable: The longer the coaxial cable that connects the antenna to your TV, the more signal loss you’ll experience. Channel Master estimates typical loss values between 1.5 dB to 5.6 dB per 100 feet of cable.
• TV Splitter: If you’re watching channels on multiple TVs, you’ll need a splitter to send the signal to multiple destinations. For each splitter used, estimate a NM loss of about 3.5 dB.
• Walls: If you’re using an indoor TV antenna, Grounded Reason recommends placing it on or near the exterior wall closest to the tower. Doing so means you’ll only see a NM loss of about 14 dB. If you can’t place your TV antenna on that wall, expect about a 34 dB loss instead, to account for the amount of walls and objects between your antenna and the tower.
• Other Houses: If there are additional houses blocking your antenna’s “view” of the tower, you’ll need to subtract about 20 dB from your base NM value.
• Trees: If you have heavy or dense foliage that “casts a shadow” or stands between your antenna and the broadcast tower, subtract 10 dBs from your base NM value.
• Amplifiers: Active antennas have built-in amplifiers that improve signal quality. You can also buy an amplifier separately. Amplifiers reduce the amount of noise that builds up over the coaxial cable, TV tuner, and any splitters as the signal travels between the antenna and your TV. However, amplifiers also add their own noise, so it’s important to choose an amplifier that introduces less noise than it improves on. If your amplifier doesn’t indicate how much noise it adds, assume between 6 and 10 dB.