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Right now I'm a FiOS TV & Internet subscriber. I know I can get my local stations by hooking my tv right into the cable jack and not using a cable box. However, I want to cancel my TV service and keep internet. Will I still be able to get the local stations this way, or will I need an antenna?
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Those stations are coming clear-QAM across the FiOS cable. You cancel TV service and those will disappear as well. You will need to either connect an antenna to the TV for OTA reception or downgrade your FiOS TV service to their "Local Channel Package" which runs around $13/month.
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If you cancel your FIOS TV and opt out of the basic, you're going to need a digital antenna if you don't already have one. If you don't have an HDTV or SDTV, you'll also need a digital to analog converter box in order to view OTA.
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@pl626 wrote:If you cancel your FIOS TV and opt out of the basic, you're going to need a digital antenna if you don't already have one. If you don't have an HDTV or SDTV, you'll also need a digital to analog converter box in order to view OTA.
Please, there is no such thing as a "DIGITAL ANTENNA"!!!!! While the signal encoding is digital, the RF itself is still VHF or UHF ANALOG. The labeling of an antenna as "digital" is pure B-S marketing crap.
Also, if the OP has a QAM tuner in their TV they also most likely have an ATSC tuner for OTA so don't require any converter box.
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Keyhoards is right ... if the TV presently is able to get the QAM channels across the coax from FiOS, I would be highly surprised if it didn't have an ATSC tuner which would be good for receiving the digital channels. The key piece here being that if your drop FiOS TV altogether, you will need to get them over the air -- there won't be anything coming in on the coax.
As for the digital antenna thing ... the only real difference that really plays into it, in my opinion, is the directional nature of some antennas which can help focus the reception capability of the antenna which improves the ability to deal with the nature of digital signal encoding vs a traditional omni-directional antenna. There are a number of EE's on the boards here, so maybe one of them happens to be an antenna engineer (hopefully, not one who designed the Apple iPhone 4 antenna however) who can explain what's really important.
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Not an antenna EE but....I used to sell and install em. KB and lasagna are right.. no such thing as "digital" antennas. RF is RF is RF... and that is all analog. The signal frequency is all the antenna cares about. One thing to be careful of is picking the right type, UHF or VHF or both. Most wedge-shaped multi-element ones are both. For the most part, after the switch to digital, the stations have kept their former frequencies, but many have changed. So your old antenna, if you have one, may not be optimized for the channels you have now. Typically each element (aluminum cross-rod) is tuned to a particular channel (or a compromise of several) in your area, so it's usually best to buy an antenna made specifically for your area. But even if your antenna isnt "local" or especially recent it may be close enough to work. There are several good over-the-air digital tv web sites that can help you find out where the local channels are (UHF or VHF), what direction, and what strength.
Most tv antennas are not omni-directional, they are very directional. Ideally the elements should be orientated at right angle to a line to the transmitting station. So if you have tv stations in your area that are in very different directions, you may need to modify the antenna setup beyond just a basic one. That can be accomplished by using multiple antennas pointed in the different directions needed and coupled by a 2-way splitter/combiner; or by using a rotor at the top of the mast to turn the antenna via a dial on a box next to your tv. People who are "surrounded" by several stations frequently pick the rotor method.
As for the digital part, that only comes into play in the TV demodulator section, not even in the tuner.
PS.. I have a 15 year old antenna on my house that works just fine with all the "new" digital stations in the Tampa Bay area.