The Fivestar FSA 5812 Antenna Assembly And Scan. The Studio Gets TV!
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- Опубликовано: 20 окт 2024
- I picked this up as an eBay open box item. The price was good and it appears that the Antenna is a solid performer!
Overall for the size it does a great job.
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When money was tight, I cut my cable tv and installed a similar antenna with a rotator. It worked great and saved a bunch of money.
I had cable once in 1996. I thought it was cool, and it was only $35.00 Our next house didn't have it as an option. Facto forward to 2014 and our farm house offered it, but it was $100 for the basic package! NOPE! We've stuck with Antenna's and free channels offered on the Roku for the past 10 years. No problems!
I haven't watched TV of any kind in well over a decade and my life is honestly so much better without that influence and conditioning.
Agreed, you are not missing much
So you actually allowed television programming to influence what "you" thought about something? I watch the news every single night and get much of my information from a myriad of sources. NONE of them "influence" what I think or how I vote. I digest the information, do additional research online if I feel I need to know more and then make my own decisions based on the cumulative information i've read/viewed. How do you get the information you would need to vote?
@@grampsradio Terry Gross from NPR fills me in on who is good or evil.
@@2148aaNPR? Ok, that's a problem. They couldn't be more biased and left leaning if they tried. Try a few other sources. Give some right leaning sources a listen.
@@2148aa NPR=🐑🧠🧼
I cut the cord maybe 15 years ago. I have the blessing of living approximately 10 miles from the bulk of TV transmitter sites in my area, and they are mostly in same direction from my house. I have never needed a rotator or an amp thankfully.... I planted a TV antenna I got on sale on my chimney and never looked back. 63 free channels lol.... Thing has been serving me great for 15 years now. Survived a lot of wind storms and has been a great antenna. I hope you get a lot of good use out of yours Eric! Thanks for taking the time to review some interesting products.
63! Dang!
I was thinking the same thing, I don't think I had 63 channels even when I had cable growing up
Thank you for making this vid. Timely!!
Glad it was helpful!
I try to stay away from TV for 20 years now. The odd classic show I still enjoy.
I decide what to watch and then turn on the TV if there is something worth the effort. There are about 3 shows a week I watch.
I wish that there were 3 that I was interested in. I find that I prefer the old TV shows from the 80s and 90s- Better value and content
@FarpointFarms that's what I watch. I hate the new garbage.
Good video as always. I have been using and installing both TV and amateur radio antennas virtually my entire life. I have been a continuously licensed amateur radio operator since 1976. I worked at a TV shop while I attended college, repairing TV'S and stereos back in the day.
For recieving antenna system (your case is VHF high band and UHF tv band. ) VHF lower band is no longer used for tv signal broadcast.
The antennas job is to capture the desired signal ( as conditions allow ).
A mast mounted signal booster / amplifiers job is to amplify the signal to a high enough level to overcome signal losses of your feedline (coax). Most preamps are rated in db gain; very few will say anything at all about how much noise they generate in amplifing a signal. Better grade amps line channel master generally have very low noise in the amplification process.
The RCA mast mount preamp booster with the voltage injector fitting powered be a small dc plug in wall wart unit is a very good value in that it generally has decent gain with very low noise generated . I have one and it worked out ok but I replaced it and the antenna because of low signal levels (tilling/ no signal) on extreme deep fringe area i live in. Im right at 100 miles away from my clsest tv transmitter. Anyway great video and hope the antenna serves you well. That inexpensive rca preamp booster is for most all they actually need to overcome coax signal losses. Antenna height is your friend, to get your antenna in a good strong signal path. 73 GOD bless Earnest K5EWM.👍.
That you for sharing all of that- I am sure people will find that information handy
Hey it sounds like you are the man to ask here, (if you don’t mind) I purchased this antenna and i am about 50-60 miles away from broadcasting and or the city but i live in piney woods . Trees are kind of directly around the area that it needs to point, will it generally cause me to get no signal at all? So far that is what i am receiving, i didnt know if my issue is the height or the trees, its mounted about 15 ft, the pine trees are roughly 60ft or greater. Any words of advice would be greatly appreciated. (Or maybe even user error or antenna not sufficient)?
@@kristopherbuchanan974 There are a number of variables with condensed answers to your questions.
1. Tv signal today has vacated vhf low band. Now it only operational on vhf high band and UHF band.
The old vhf low band (channels 2-6) like on the old rotary tuner analog TV's would probigate signal fairly well. Tv channels 7-13 would probigate so so, not nearly as well as vhf low band did, but since it was still analog, you might have some snow or sparkles in the picture quality. Now we come to UHF band. This is a line of sight type signal. When you're antenna drops below the horizon in reference to the TV transmitter's antenna on their broadcast tower you will have very low signal strength to signal not strong enough for your tv tuner to lock In on and you get the no signal message on screen.
2. The air wave space to carry the tv signals fluctuates with temperature and humidity levels. This has huge effects on tv signals probigating. (Get out).
3. Line of sight type signal is lost when a hill or mountain blocks tv signals from your tv antennas vantage point. You can attempt to overcome this with putting your tv antennas higher. This is achievable up to a point. Currently the tallest available telescoping tv mast is the Rohn H-50 push up pole. Fully extended will net 42 feet of elevation. Cost for all tv mast are much more expensive than the used to be. Generally the higher the elevation the better up to a point. If your having to put your antenna higher than that, your entering the world of communication towers. ($$$$$$$), they are costly and must be installed by someone experienced and knows what he is doing and is familiar with the engineering of the tower to be used. Typically, Rohn 25 is where you start off at. Rohn 20, is much weaker as the thickness of the tower legs are thin and not heavier guage galvanized steel that you need.
Potentially you can go up to 200 feet with Rohn 25; but it's a small fortune to go that far. Guy line required to meet standard at that elevation is expensive and you need a lot of room for all that. I'm using Rohn 45 as I aquired a few 10 foot sections used in excellent condition. Do Not Buy Rusty Tower. (If will fail).
Rohn 45 can be put up to 300 feet, but it's high dollar stuff all the way, and must be installed by professional who is bonded. You can put up tower without lights up to 199 feet in some locations. Check local laws and zoning regs. Home owners associations can be challenging in of themselves. All towers above 199 feet are required to be registered with the FCC and possibly FAA.
Hopefully you can get an antenna system in a good useable signal height below 50 feet.
4. Use of a preamplifier booster only has 1 basic job to do, and that is to amplify signal to overcome loss in the cable. The inexpensive RCA preamplifier booster does a decent job for the most part. You don't acquire more channels by adding more amplification once you have made up for the cables signal loss for it's length of run. Are there better preamp boosters than the RCA? Yes. Will they increase the number of tv channels you can get ? Probably not.
RCA preamplifier booster is a decent unit. Use a static discharge unit on the antenna input with a copper ground wire to a dedicated ground rod, so it doesn't attract lightning.
5. Use quality rg-6 75 ohm impedance cable or better. Most people can get good results with a swept tested satellite dish grade rg-6 coax feedline cable. It works for me and I use it without problems. The version I use has a flooding agent Inside the dielectric foam insulalator to midigate moisture from entering the coax. (Good stuff). I use plain old crimp type connectors for rg-6 coax cable and I have yet to have a problem. I also tape the connector with scotch 33 electric tape to reduce water entering the coax connector as part of the install. I use scotch 33 electric tape as it will stick properly and not go to hades from the sun baking it (uv light damage). It's just a good product. Don't buy that harbor freight garbage electric tape as it doesn't have uv light protection as all and it doesn't stick very well either. You find it unwrapped and falling off in no time especially if you live in an area that gets much cold winter weather. Save yourself problems and buy decent tape to do the job.
6. Once you enter your dwelling, if your going to make coax cable runs to other rooms, you will need an amplified splitter, again to overcome cable loss and loss from division of your signal to other TV's.
Hopefully I have given enough useful useable information to benefit others in the attempt to be successful in receiving off air tv channels. 73 GOD bless Earnest k5ewm.
Funny that this was todays video topic I just ordered a digital tv antenna yesterday off Amazon it came with a amp rotator pole and 59 feet of coax for it I will get it installed when it gets here Monday
You should get any analog stations with that too. I don't know how antennas discriminate between analog and digital. Happy for ya.
@@barneymm2204 according to the discrimination of it it picks up both but time will tell on that. My understanding of it is a digital antenna will receive both but a analog antenna will only receive analog signal
@@barneymm2204 Antennas done even know about analog an digital. They are just a bit of metal you put up in the air to catch radio waves as they go by. All the smarts is inside the TV. The just plaster "HD" and "digital" all over the product to make you think it is something special. I am old enough to remember when color TV was first a thing. Back then, they slapped "color" on the labels of the antennas. It is the same thing just with different words.
Thanks for all this info
That a good working antenna. where i am in Boston NY . all my DTV channels are UHF . and i get a lot and from different directions. I have a pre amp as well. has a FM trap if needed. switch on or off. The only VHF I get is FM broadcast. that is mixed in with VHF TV stations. good 75 ohm coax is needed for long runs. the pre amp at antenna helps with that line loss. RG6U is pretty good. I switched to RG 11/U type 75 ohm that has all coper foil and shield. made in Italy buy M & P . big improvement on long run. I get over 40 stations in different directions now. so much great over the air digital TV for FREE. CATV is quite costly now. and you need a special box that draws power all the time. bad for off grid users. I shut my internet modem/router off when not home or not using it. save on power. it takes a few minutes to boot up that way. I switch power off to my pre amp when not watching TV, save solar/wind power. micro wave goes off when not in use. clock is all ways wrong but works fine. same on stove. I miss the Radio shack antenna's . i installed a lot of them years back. they had all the stuff you need . I have a local with the Radio shack blue cross bow CB antenna. works great ! only needed new coax after 20+ years. a very few Radio shacks still open. too far to drive for me.
That is a great idea to power them off, the little that it draws would add up quick off grid
Great video as always! I am not sure what kind of network setup you have if you ended up with a mesh network up on the hill connected to your home BUT something that I dived into was investing in the HDHomeRun. I am able to run everything off of one coax feed (from 2 antennas that are balanced and preamped) into the HDHomeRun Box that plugs into my router. Every smart device, my fire sticks, our laptops, and our smartphones have live TV over WiFi from that single feed. That means in the house or in the shop I get live TV without any coax to run. The HomeRun box I got has 4 streams max and has the capability to have an external hard drive attached for DVR capability. There is no cost to use the hardware/software UNLESS you want premium features it’s like 25$ a year. Other than that it’s pretty nice being able to watch TV on any WiFi connected device and even has an integrated TV Guide. Just wanted to share what we have going on down our way! Looking forward to the next video. Your homestead is inspiring for sure.
I will have to look into that- the concept is pretty cool.
Two MeTV's! WooHoo! Twice the Svengoolie! Surprised the PBS channel didn't come in. Historically, for me, those have always been reliably strong regardless of where I've lived.
That is right, that is our Saturday night TV for years. The local PBS is blocked by the mountain so it hardly ever comes in.
Svengoolie! The Woofman with Lon Chaney Jr. was on last night. Love the puns from Rich Koz.
I just bought this antenna and installed it yesterday! Lol, i have the same TV too, geesh.
I've been very happy with mine!
For deep fringe uhf i would recommend the antennas direct 91xg, the RCA pre amp is pretty good for the price.
There's the antenna man on here that reviews antenna's to check out if you're looking for an antenna.
Cool thanks for sharing
Personally I have mine mounted right under my a99 works perfectly. Like how u had the fire update on maui where I'm at on your tv 😂 good videos keep it coming aloha 73s
A blast from the past!
I think PBS was showing "The Life and Times Of Helen Keller: As Seen Through Her Eyes". 🙂
I'll get your coat.
I hear you.
@@barneymm2204 straightjackets are colorblind
Wow, you guys are pretty bad
@@FarpointFarms Oh come on. That was comedic gold right there. 🙂
Great video. Give me MeTv and Cozi and I would be set. One thing I miss about analog, is you could watch stations that don’t have the best reception but if a station is not coming in clear on digital, I find it hard to watch.
I agree, I can deal with static, but the cutting in and out bothers me
I purchased one similar to this about 5 years ago. I pick up 57 channel some 135 away to Lexington KY from Ohio save Big $$$ on the bill in the pass I have cable also Direct TV went the bill went up I cancel about 14 years the best thinks I did no more bill. more money to pay for gasoline to go to work at $3.75 gallon bye bye bye cable & Direct TV
Wow, I am jealous for 57 channels. You were smart to cut the cable long ago
I been thinking about cutting the cable for a few years now, I only watch about 4 channels, but they wanna charge ya for 150...Thanks for the info..
Get a set of $10 rabbit ears at the thrift store and see if you get some stations. You may find you are done with getting your over the air working at that point.
That is the real problem, the cost and the fact that the 100+ channels are garbage and not worth it
Very nice! I'm curious about the pre-amp. Good luck!
thanks
Im 55 years old and never paid a dime for cable TV .... and never will
Smart-very smart
Watched this video twice now. Do you think you will put a ground on it. I live about 65 miles east of Cincinnati but 40 years ago everyone had an antenna on the roof of their house so Im sure I will be able to cut the cable when I get mine hooked up.
I did ground it, we can have some wicked lightning storms and have had damage before.
I used to get over 20 stations. I currently get about 4 stations.
At first I thought the stations must have lowered their transmission power but it's more likely my signal has been effected by all the new wind generators built between me and the station transmission towers which are about 40 miles away.
More height may get my channels back but that's a guess at this point.
More height generally works, but the wind farms definitely affect OTA reception. Check the freq range of the antenna, after the repacs, a mess of stations went VHF Lo from UHF/VHF Hi. Have you tried a rescan on the TV? Also, I have one of those junky antennas you can get at the mart that has surprisingly lasted over a year, but the amp is built in with no way to bypass it when it fails (hey, it was cheap. I got what I paid for.). I'm holding out for a Channelmaster with a non-integral preamp. Good luck to ya.
@barneymm2204- you have some good ideas, I was wondering if maybe a lighting strike near by that smoked it a bit-
@@FarpointFarms Possible. Lightning does freaky things. We had lightning hit a tree about fifteen feet behind the window the TV was in front of and all it did to the TV was take out one of the colors (green or blue) on two of the inputs (composite and something else). TV still works fine but anything input into those two specific inputs shows up as only pink and white. Weird. I would think a nearby lightning strike would ignore an antenna unless it had an integral circuit on a card like a preamp but my experience is the damage takes place downstream of the antenna.
We had a lightning storm take out some things in just my home office, the next room over everything was fine. It was the weirdest thing (and expensive to replace what broke)
@@FarpointFarms Oof! My same strike backfed through the water pipe ground on the far corner of the house and took out the DSL modem, the computer power supply and the motherboard via the network interface card, on yet another corner of the house. Cost me $160 in parts and I replaced the PS and motherboard myself. Two weeks after moving to our new location there was another nearby hit that did the same thing to the same components on the same computer for the same cost ("That droid and I have been through alot. You okay, R2? Good.").
I'm curious if you recorded this on a Sunday morning. The Flintstones comes on during that time for me on MeTV.
I installed a classic antenna on my roof 4 years ago, signal so good that maybe a third of those channels are the same, but in higher quality.
Not sure if there's something I could do with the image pausing, then speeding up to catch up.
I am not sure what day I filmed it, all the days seem to run together now.
I heard Johnson City, We're almost neighbors. I'm in Gray, tn
Almost
I have this antenna. I'm interested in if the pre amp makes a difference.
It does make a huge difference on what we get.
@@FarpointFarmswhat type of preamp did you use?
Is that a Timex/Sinclair computer above your right shoulder? My Dad and I spent a lot of time one one of those in the early eighties. I would like to see a vid on that
It is one, good eyes
@@FarpointFarms My Dad got it as a kit. we spent a lot of long nights typing basic programs. Then I went to the commodore vic20.
I am ditching Cable. Good to know
I just retired 3 weeks ago . Cable is so expensive and they remove channels from your package while raising prices
The cost of cable is insane, the will give these great deals and when the time period is over, they jack up the price
Do you have to ground the antenna like you have to with a CB antenna?
Yes. Just like a CB antenna, these can get hit by lighting or collect static electricity.
Farpoint farms i hope you ground your outdoor tv antenna my friend
I did that after I made the video. We can have some crazy lightning storms here and I don't want to fry anything
Bet if you put that thing up another 10 20 ft and angle it a little to the right or left you can get those other channels
What i did not show was the other direction there is a huge mountain that I can't get over. I would have to raise it up about 100' any maybe then.
I need one to cut cable
You should, cable is such a huge waste of money
@FarpointFarms Cable internet and home phone and home security all from my Cable provider is 338.00
Per month
Oh... That is too much to spend on it
@@FarpointFarms Especially considering I retired in April
PBS is far too liberal for my taste. (although I do enjoy some of their documentaries from time to time) Do you do any ham radio? I'm wanting to install a motor mounted antenna on my roof that tracks the International Space Station as it flies over my location so I can attempt contact with an Astronaut aboard the ISS.
Now that sounds like an awesome idea- That would be a contact worth filming
Your title is wrong. It is "FiveStar" not "Fivestart".
A few points about getting the best signal:
-- They lied about the range. No TV antenna will get you a station that is over 80 miles away. You can use that as a limit
-- Many TVs or converter boxes have a signal meter function. Turning that on an aiming to maximize is a good idea.
-- Higher placement would be better because it can get over the trees and bushes better.
-- Do your first aiming before you add the amplifier because amplifiers can make the numbers bigger without making the signal better.
-- Ground your antenna feed line and also the mast.
-- Scan again in a few months because there are some new stations it seems are starting up.
Sorry for the type-o, it happens-
We live in a fish bowl so there really was only 1 direction to aim it. The other directions hit a very tall mountain and did not receive signals
Technically old style analog antennas are no difference to todays its like taking AM cb antennas and using them on FCC certified cbs no failure or ncrease either way being a cb operator a catv tech for 20+ years and built antennas as hobby for years the fact an antenna has metal conducters in it means they will work distant mileages require tuning yes and pure size translates to good pix
thanks for sharing
Thumbnail , the antenna you show , needs an antenna rotation device , because signals come from every direction , if you want over the air reception .
A rotor is nice. I can get channels from five directions, but only one direction is opposite. There is a way to point multiple fixed antennas in different directions and combine the signal but certain things have to be done to prevent signals cancelling in the mix and the returns on investment diminish the more there is in the mix. If some of the directions are close together, you might be able to put up an antenna with less direction sensitivity and pull them in. But, if I had five antennas and five TV's, I wouldn't have the problem.
@@barneymm2204 um , I’m sure there is from where you are , but who wants to spend on multiple antennas ?
Now if you have multiple receivers you want to hear , multiple antennas will work for you .
@@jamesbeemer7855 If by receivers you mean TV transmitting towers, you speak the truth.
There is no rotor on this one because, behind where I have it is a very tall mountain that I could not get a signal even if I wanted to. I did not film it, but not I think I should have shown it
@@barneymm2204 no , I mean your TVs at home . They are receivers . They should not transmit ( but TVs have changed since 1996 ) so I don’t know for sure anymore .
But if you can imagine that your house is in a ring of towers , which way are you going to pay attention to more ?
Over the air is poor in so california some used car station
Ok
There are only a couple of television stations in Southern California that still transmits analog signals and unfortunately they are Korean.🙄
You can get a digital converter box for about $40. This only does the ATSC-1.0 digital. The boxes for ATSC-3.0 are about $200.
That is a pricey converter box. I remember when they first did the boxes and I think they were free back in the day or cost less than $20
@@FarpointFarms Ah yes but back then a new dinosaur was only $12.
Besides the $40 box also does DVR functions if you connect a USB drive.
I didn’t realize there were that many free channels left out there.
I get 127 channels off an antenna. Of them maybe 10 have something I might watch. I live sort of mid way between two bunches of TV transmitter towers in two cities.
Holy Moly, that is a lot of channels. I was happy with 20
Cable is a waste of money!
agreed
@@FarpointFarms Long live C.B. radio!
Thank you Barack Obama for locking in Digital TV Broadcast, with all those cool sub channels. 👍🏁
It was a trend that was coming for a great many years. Sadly ATSC-1.0 is being replaced with ATSC-3.0 with encryption and DRM and a bunch of nonsense.
I do like the sub channels for sure, you can find all kinds of stuff there
And if you like your channels you can keep your channels......and your cable bill will drop by $2,000 😐
As soon as I heard pre-amp I knew to just stop the video and this product is of no true long term value. See Antenna man's reviews on these repackaged junk pre-amplified antennas.
for the money I paid, it is perfect. Not everyone has a ton of money to spend on this kind of thing
No one needs to see anyone else and their reviews of preamplifier antennas. It worked for him, so all is well.
We stopped paying and watching tv in feb 2014. Its beyond gross the mind control. Great video tho. Thanks ✌️🇺🇸🙏
Thanks-