OTA Antennas for TV that turn/adjust to the station you turn to

Posted by ABobby077@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 9 comments

Many people today are returning to over the air antennas and when setting them up we have to compromise to get the best overall signal for the available channels in your area. I know there are telescopes that can adjust to see stars or planets or other in space to view. Why not have the TVs work with the antennas and have them adjust to the best signal as an OTA channel is tuned to it? Seems this would be a duable thing.

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9 Comments

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UseDaSchwartz@reddit

These have existed for a looong time.

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malhotraspokane@reddit

I like it. Not even that crazy. Antenna rotators certainly exist. I have not seen one that is controlled by the TV tuner. I wouldn’t be surprised if this hasn’t been attempted in the pre-cable TV days but I certainly don’t see anything like this available today. On the other hand, people seem to be moving to streaming shows on demand. Many live TV channels can be streamed, so I don’t know if there would be a lot of demand.

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ABobby077@reddit (OP)

Seems you have a known gps location for their towers and a known location of your home.

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Outrageous_Reach_695@reddit

FCC even has a coverage map you can put a ZIP or address into: https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps Oddly, the one station I get is not the one that should have decent line-of-sight on my side of my building.

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malhotraspokane@reddit

True, if you input location information to your tv. A phone has GPS, a smart TV probably just has your IP address. So you’ll probably need to use a phone app for initial setup or input the address. Some people will not want to give location information for privacy reasons but a next door neighbor’s address would be close enough.

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schmeckendeugler@reddit

This definitely already existed bro :)

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dennisthemenace1963@reddit

Might be having a senior moment here but I seem to recall an RCA ad in the late 70s for a TV that could interface with a rotor control box (also RCA, that was a given) whereby you could have the giant aluminum fish skeleton on the roof automatically turn as needed when you changed channels. Probably didn't succeed due to expense and/or excessive wear on the rotor mechanism.

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billwood09@reddit

We had a huge antenna on the roof with a rotator on it, this was a thing

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kill-all-the-monkeys@reddit

Your idea is a solution in search of a problem that hardly exists. TV antenna are omni directional. If you are anywhere with a few dozen miles range of the broadcast tower, a standard antenna will work. At 70 miles, ceteris parabus, the curvature of the earth blocks the signals so even a highly directional antenna isn't going to help...unless you put it on a high tower. So your directional antenna might benefit Ota users in the roughly 50 - 70 miles range and maybe a few of those folks a little closer when heavy storms are present. It might also benefit someone trying to catch signal from two widely divergent distant cities, but a cheaper solution would be a larger omnidirectional antenna or even 2 cheapo small antenna. My work in the radio spectrum was not in TV freq bands, so a more informed TV guy might be able to tweak my miles estimates a bit better.