HDTV Indoor Antenna

Get cable, or satellite.

Basically bunny ears for your TV, right? If so, all you have to do is screw it in to the coax nub on the back of your set. From what I've heard, the antenna doesn't have to say "HD" or "digital" on it to make a difference. Just another marketing ploy to jack up the price a few bucks. I picked up a powered antenna (plugs in the wall to boost reception) for $15 and the HD broadcasts from PBS still looked stunning on my 1080p set.

The only real problem I noticed was that if I got a slightly poor digital signal, the picture would either pause/get really pixelated or just go blank altogether. There's no free-but-fuzzy picture compromise with digital signals off the air like I was use to with an analog signal.

ETA: To that end, Cap is kinda right. For $14 a month I got the gutter-level cable package. There's even a few local stations that will broadcast in HD as well.

If you actually get decent HD reception in your area the picture quality on over the air (OTA) broadcasts is generally better than what you'll get over satellite or cable. This is mostly because in order to take up less space on their system cable and satellite providers will recompress the feeds. This process can introduce new artifacting/macroblocking into the feed and hurt the quality of the picture.

And while an antenna is an antenna, I seem to recall reading somewhere that there are some benefits to an HDTV specific one. I think basically the argument was that since HDTV broadcasts on a different frequency a different shape antenna (not rabbit ears) can help receive the image better. I don't have one since I pay for HDTV service from my cable company (and use it with an HD TiVo) but my parents used to have a receiver box and it worked great and the picture was stunning)

If you want a quick test, you can just plug a random coax cable into your TV's RF cable spot and have it do a channel scan. Digital channels will show up as subchannel like 5-1 or 5.1 (if it were channel 5). Basically whatever the channel was in analog with a variable number of sub-channels (I've seen some stations that have up to 9 sub-channels). If you get any digital channels with just the coax, it may be worth picking up an antenna at a nearby store and seeing if it works any better.

If you do already subscribe to cable and have that plugged directly into your TV (not going through a cable box) you may find that you already get broadcast channels available in HD. They'll most likely be on some random channel (in the 100's or a subchannel of channel 1 or something) but it's worth looking for since many cable companies do at least carry the broadcast stations unencrypted (so no cable card or cable box is required).

I bought a HD antenna and I found it to be worth the expense for a few reasons.

First, when my Directv is sucking, I can always switch over to the antenna for my local HD channels.

Second, since I have the antenna plugged into my Directv HD DVR, I can now record two programs at the same time while watching a third.

And Third, there are all kinds of local over the air only digital channels you can pickup with the antenna. For a while in LA there was a 24-hour anime channel that you could only get with the antenna. All the local major networks also have extra digital channel (most run at least on 24/7 news & weather channel).

It's pretty nifty.

Everybody's pretty much covered what I was going to say, but I might add that you don't need an antenna that's specifically marketed as HD. When I bought my HDTV I bought a special HD antenna and I only got one HD channel over the air. I plugged in my old powered antenna (granted it's a pretty nice one, sorry I can't remember the brand) and got all the local HD channels. Now this my be specific to my area and the brands of antennae I used, but it doesn't have to be specifically HD if that makes any sense. The signal goes out sometimes when the weather's bad or if a helicopter goes by (which unfortunately for me is quite often as I live in downtown DC) but if you get good reception in your area you should be fine.

If you have a house with an attic or you don’t care what you stick on the outside of your place then build one of these:

http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/

I did and it works great. It is also super cheap. You can’t go wrong with aluminum foil, cardboard and coat hangers. I stashed ours in the attic and ran the coax down the cold air return duct to the TV.

Also, with HD you will have better luck with any antenna if you aim it toward the broadcast tower. The link for that is below (you don’t have to give them all your personal info if you don’t want to)

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/Address.aspx

Reviving this from the dead because we're two years down the road and I'm curious if things have changed.

We're looking to cut out our $100/month cable bill, and I'm looking for a good, not-too-expensive indoor HD antenna. The only caveat is that we're in an apartment and the TV is pretty far away from any windows. I've got a cheap one I bought for about ten bucks when I first got my set, but it's just not doing the job.

Any recommendations/thoughts?

Give the tools at TV Fool or AntennaWeb a shot. While they're intended for people installing outdoor antennas, the info they provide is still useful for making an informed guess as to what sort of indoor antenna is best for you (directional? non-directional? amplified?) The AV Science Forum is also a good source of ATSC DTV reception information and general home theater wisdom - the Orlando over-the-air DTV forum is here.

If you're willing to spend between $50 and $100, you can buy an excellent HDTV antenna from Terk. I cancelled my digital HD cable almost three years ago and purchased two Terk antennas ($50 each at Best Buy), and have never regretted my choice.

The picture is consistently solid (and typically better than what I used to see with cable).

In regards to you being in an apartment, the Terk antennas should bring in the signal just fine as long as you have the antenna placed in an elevated position. If you're in a low part of the city, or in a valley, you're going to have a difficult time getting decent reception no matter what antenna you use.

Here's some links for the Terk models I would recommend (the actual two antennas I owned aren't on amazon/best buy for some reason, but you could still possibly locate them if you go to a Best Buy store):

Cheaper $35 model (that's still pretty solid)

More expensive $75 model that has more power and picks up a better signal

Go for DIY like f86sabre posted. You can do a search on Google and Youtube, there's a few examples. A friend of mine has been using the one he built for almost two years now and it works fine.

That is if your TV has a built in tuner.

Who is your local cable company? From what I hear Time Warner served areas are S.O.L. when it comes to antennas. They have scrambled everything.

That shouldn't be the case, as the whole point of the digital switchover a while back was that all you needed an digital tuner on your TV, and just an OTA antenna. TW can't scramble a TV station's signal if you're not using a TW box.

Nothing has changed from the days where you just turned on the TV, pulled up the antenna, and then started changing channels to find a station that comes in. The only difference now is that you have to have a digital tuner.