OTA Reception Nightmares!

[jdag]

I am having a real tough time getting consistent reception with an off-air antenna. I suffer frequent pixelation and freezing, particularly on my CBS affiliate. I've tried different cables, cable lengths, with/without filters, and antennas (both in-house and outdoor). Currently I have both of these models:

http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=AD-DB2
http://www.solidsignal.com/prod_display.asp?PROD=AD-DB4 (mounted on roof, about 100' of cable)

Today I fiddled with the DB2 model, using a 10' coax cable and just trying different positions and locations in my living room.

Using the meter on my DirecTV TiVo receiver, I found that the best location was about 4' from my television, pointing toward my back window. I simply set the antenna on a chair. In the best case my reading was about 70, but at least it was stable and gave me a stable picture. Normally on this particular channel my readings jump between 0 and 70.

But, move the antenna closer to the windows and the signal meter dropped substantially, generally down to 10-20. If I used a longer cable and tried going upstairs, outside, etc. the signal dropped.

Any thoughts? I am really pulling my hair out!

Thanks, John

[edtyct]

This is a tough situation. Maybe you've already found some help. But from your note, you don't seem to have done any serious outdoor mounting. You may be one of those unfortunate people whose antenna needs to be high in the air to avoid interference and multipath problems. I hate to get you way up on your roof to do a permanent installation with one of your current models, or with another more elaborate one from Winegard or Terk, but eventually you may need to. If you go to the Terk site, you'll be able to access a page that specifies what strength antenna you'll need for the various stations in your area. Many people with difficulty grabbing stations have most success with an antenna mounted high enough to avoid obstacles and attached to a rotor that allows it to be turned inside the house for best response on separate channels. When you find each channel's best position, you mark it on the rotor for easy reference.

[jdag]

It is just incredibly frustrating. The best and most consistent receoption is when the smaller of the 2 antennas is sitting in my living room at about 2' off the ground! Makes NO SENSE to me!