# LOCAL HD OVER THE AIR and DirectTV ?'s



## FLYONWALL9 (Nov 8, 2009)

I am wanting to run an antenna for local channel HD broadcast. I already have a Direct TV dish which I do not pay for HD service. My installer is wanting to use the same coax cable to share signal rather than run separate coax cable for my antenna. 

My question is, will this give me a good enough HD signal? I need some serious guidance, I know very little about this HD stuff and want to buy everything needed so I don't have to pay for several service calls. I am already having to buy several new TV's because most of them are better than 5 years old. The only one I will keep I am adding an HD tuner to it.

thanks,
Scott


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

I have DirecTV and just went through this.
If you get an HD receiver from DirecTV (and for me they had to upgrade my dish too) you get the regular channels in HD for free. You do NOT have to subscribe to HD programming to get the ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox stations in HD through your Directv HD receiver. We do not pay for HD programming and do not get it on any other stations.

My wife called Directv and after much discussion with several people they agreed to upgrade our regular DVR to an HD-DVR for free with free install.

Good luck, and I hope you can avoid changing source back and forth just to get HD programming that they will give you over Directv.

To hopefully answer your question, my neighbor has nothing other than a roofmount antenna and uses COAX with great picture quality. What you are proposing will work very well but hopefully if you can get DirecTV involved will be unnecessary.

The cable from our dish to the HD receiver is just regular coax. I am using an HDMI cable from our HD-DVR to our tv.


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## astrochex (Aug 7, 2009)

We get OTA HD using a crappy indoor antenna. Its a great picture.


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## FLYONWALL9 (Nov 8, 2009)

The issue is that I cannot pick up any local chan over the dish. The amount of trees in the direction the ant has to point. I've had a couple diff people out to try and aim the thing or get better local chan with NO luck. So, using a regular UHF/VHF ant is the only real solution. 

My question really is will I loose or give up signal quality if the same coax wire is used for both air and dish? dipole or bipole I think it is called?


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## astrochex (Aug 7, 2009)

That I do not know since my connection is direct. Try poking around these 2 sites for more info: HDTVexpert, AntennaWeb .


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

FLYONWALL9 said:


> The issue is that I cannot pick up any local chan over the dish. The amount of trees in the direction the ant has to point. I've had a couple diff people out to try and aim the thing or get better local chan with NO luck. So, using a regular UHF/VHF ant is the only real solution.
> 
> My question really is will I loose or give up signal quality if the same coax wire is used for both air and dish? dipole or bipole I think it is called?


I can't see how you would lose quality. I would try it versus regular indoor rabbit ears and see if you could see the difference then decide.


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