If you are like most Americans this February you will be watching the Super Bowl but will you be watching it in HD?
If you have cable or dish television many of these services say they provide HD television but most of these providers distribute dumb down version of HD quality television.
The Super Bowl will be broadcast on CBS television network which means if you are in a metropolitan area, suburbs or maybe even in rural area you can pick up this broadcast in full HD for free by antenna.
To find out if you can pick up CBS prior to the broadcast of the Super Bowl you’ll want to attach an antenna to your television and scan for signal. For most people you will find then you can easily pick up CBS and many other stations the basic antenna if you need something more then this is how you do it.
The first thing you want to do is see how many stations you get in your area with a regular television antenna if you have one. If you don’t have one the first thing you want to do is go to an antenna website and see you if you have good signal in your area. Don’t run out and buy an antenna before you check.
The best website that I found is www.TvFool.com . Because it allows you to look for television signal based on your home address or your GPS position and give the height of your antenna which is important if you have moderate signal in your area.
Input your GPS location in the provided search form and it will return all of the possible stations in your area that you can receive.
Now you need to select an antenna. I’m going to make this very easy without getting into technical information the easiest way to figure out if you have signal in your area that you can obtain is to look on the datasheet and find stations that have signal dB to your home above 30nm(db). There are antennas that can pick up stations with low signal but I’m simply going to give you a quick solution here. If you have available signal above 30 dB to your home and you have los or edge1 signal you can pick up the station with a normal antenna. You will need an amplified antenna if the signal is below 50 dB and a standard antenna without amplifier if the signal is above 50 dB.
If you have signal that is below 30 dB you can try and amplified antenna but if the station is broadcast on real station 13 or below you will need a VHF antenna. Do not confuse real station 13 with the station that you tune to on your television real station means that this is the signal frequency that this television station broadcast on. Oftentimes low number channels on your television are actually broadcast on UHF channel 14 and above. UHF broadcast are much easier to obtain than vhf.
That’s basically it if you have good signal in your area or if you can use an amplified antenna and the strength of the antenna plus the strength of the signal in the air is above 30 dB to your home and if it is good weather meaning is not raining or snowing then you should have an excellent chance watching Super Bowl in full HD.
Final note
It is important that you test out your antenna on a few days prior to the broadcast. If you have a really good signal 5 bars on your television then you should be good to go. If you have weak signal you will still have time to visit a store or order online a better antenna that will allow you to get good signal for the broadcast.
Is not necessary to install an antenna on your roof even if you must get a large antenna you can always place it in an empty room out of the way and run the shortest amount of your coax cable you can to the television. this is what I do in my home. Because my home is 50 miles from the broadcast towers I need a strong antenna and an amplifier however I only instalment my antenna for specific reasons. Eventually I will mount it in my attic but for now the Super Bowl will be seen in HD in my house over antenna instead of my low grade cable TV subscription. Good luck and I hope you have a fun night.