Thin-Air ATSC (And NTSC): Encouraging (Albeit Erratic) Early Results

Although at the beginning of the year I professed my non-interest in pursuing over-the-air television service at my surrounded-by-mountains residence, less than one week later I was reconsidering my decision. That’s because at CES I connected with Antennas Direct, who promised me evaluation hardware once the company’s ClearStream products were in production.

To wit, last week I received review units of the ClearStream 1 (rated for a 30-mile reception range, per the product packaging’s promotional tagline, with 8 dBi gain) and ClearStream 2 (50-mile range, 10 dBi gain). Although Reno’s various broadcast antennas are only 30 miles (or less, depending on the station) away from me ‘as the crow flies’, the intermediary signal-attenuating mountain ranges between there and here convinced me to go with the beefier albeit slightly more expensive ClearStream2 model.

Speaking of mountains, in order to get the ‘lay of the land’ before proceeding with this review, hit up Google Maps for my residence address. Select ‘Terrain’ view, then zoom around so that you can find Reno to the west at a compass heading of ~45°, Mt. Rose to the southwest of Reno at ~85°, and Prosser Hill (along with Boca Hill right behind it) just a few miles to the east of me at ~75°. Also look for the Verdi Range between Reno and me, as well as the Bald Mountain Range to the northwest of it. All are key landmarks in the discussion that follows.

Here’s the local broadcaster report (which, as you’ll soon see, is incomplete) provided by AntennaWeb for my location:

Note: The above listing is a conservative prediction of stations received. Depending on the specifics of your installation, you may be able to receive stations that do not appear in this list.

The color-coded antenna types in the above table reference the following descriptions:

• Red: medium directional
• Blue: medium directional with pre-amp
• Violet: large directional with pre-amp

The ClearStream 2 packaging doesn’t contain the requisite CEA/NAB color code stamp, and when I asked company founder and president Richard Schneider for classification data, here’s what I got back:

We do not participate in the CEA color labeling program, but if you were going to try and draw an analogy I would call:

• The Clearstream 1 small
• The Clearstream 2 medium, and
• The Clearstream 4 large.

But this designation is more relative to each other than to other manufactures. (They are electrically smaller, but significantly more efficient than our older designs)

Note, too, that I’m not (currently, at least) using a pre-amp signal booster in conjunction with the antenna. Keep that fact in mind as you interpret my results.

As a reminder, here’s what my place looks like from the outside (pre-antenna installation):

My front door points straight at Mt. Rose’s peak, therefore at a ~85° compass heading. And here’s a close-up of the antenna installation:

The top of the antenna is ~2.5 feet above the horizontal beam it’s mounted to, with the power line feed from the street ~3 feet above the antenna’s upper edge. The antenna’s compass orientation is ~60°, with the intention of ’splitting the difference’ between the locations of the various Reno-area broadcast towers I’m attempting to tune in, as shown in the above table.

My home had existing coax wiring running from above the front door to the living room, and from there via an intermediary splitter to the upstairs bedroom. The front door-to-living room coax cable run is less than 50 feet long. In the living room, I disconnected the splitter and instead wired up an additional 10 feet of coax cable running to my NTSC- and ATSC-tuner-inclusive Syntax Olevia 237T 37" LCD TV. And at the front door, I disconnected the not-in-service cable television feed coming from the street and instead wired up the ClearStream 2 via a 5′ coax cable feet. Full disclosure: the cable connection going into the house is a bit ‘flakey’; resultant frequency-specific attenuation may explain some of the reception inconsistency I’m experiencing.

Continue reading with Part 2, ‘Thin-Air ATSC (And NTSC): Correlating Compass, Distance And Frequency‘…