The Best TV Antenna

How to Find the Right TV Antenna

The transition from cable or satellite user to TV antenna master always begins at the same spot: identifying what signals you want to (and can) receive at your location. Most people report having to try two or three antennas before finding the one that works best for them, especially if they’re using an indoor antenna.

We talked to Will Ross, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, to get some insight into finding the right antenna. He told us that topography (the lay of the land around you, including mountains, valleys, forests, and buildings) is really important and the issues related to it are “critical in determining what TV channels a user can receive, and what type of antenna a user needs to receive them.”

Step One: Your Personalized TV Signal Analysis Report

Your first step is to locate where the broadcast towers are in relation to your home. This will help 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 preferred using TV Fool.

Enter your exact address. If you aren’t sure what height you plan on hanging your antenna at, 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 will give you a personalized radial graph (left) 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.

Step Two: Find Your Favorite Channels

Next, you’ll need to have a list of the channels you want to watch so you can figure out what frequencies your antenna needs to pick up. Depending on your home and the strength and direction of TV signals, you might need to choose which channels are the most important to you.

Taking your list of favorite channels, find each channel on your chart by comparing your list to the Network and/or Callsign columns. 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 out which network is affiliated to 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 their 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).

Step Three: Do You Need an Indoor or Outdoor Antenna?

Outdoor TV antennas will always have better reception than indoor TV antennas, but can be cumbersome to install. Indoor TV antennas are easy to set-up, but 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)” — which 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 be able to receive them.

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.

Step 4: Do You Need a Directional or Multi-Directional Antenna?

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, picking up more signals from more directions, 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 being in the south-east and south-west 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.

Step Five: Do You Need Very High Frequencies, Ultra High Frequencies, or Both?

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 Very High Frequencies (VHF) and Ultra High Frequencies (UHF) depends on which frequencies your preferred channels are broadcast at. 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.