I think I've tried everything and i still cant get OTA on HDtivo

[DaveNinja]

I've been working on and off on this for months now. situation: HDtivo hooked up to an old roof antenna that doesnt get a couple of HD locals, added a big UHF winguard antenna which gets strong signals for all the locals on the tv tuner but not on the HDTivo (even cases of not getting in one channel but getting another channel broadcast from the same tower).
-The wineguard is directly wired to the HDtivo
-attenuator did nothing but weaken all the signals the HDTivo saw
-Fm Trap did nothing

basically i cant get the local Fox and Pbs using the old roof antenna so i bought a new antenna. The new antenna hooked to the HDtivo sees the Fox station but not Pbs for some reason (they share a tower). It also looses other locals that the old antenna got in strongly. The wineguard hooked to my tv gets all the locals in strongly.

is there anything else i should try? could the OTA tuner in my box just be screwed? should i try combining the 2 antennas?

please help.
-dave
ps. all refernce to "HDTivo" is referring to the directv hd tivo (incase a non-directv one came out)

[JimSpence]

How far are you from the towers? It could be that you have too strong a signal. And don't take this wrong, but you do know that the frequencies used for analog are different from the digital ones used by your stations? Multipath is a problem that causes diogital stations to not lock on. Multipath is to digital as ghosting is to analog. At least with ghosting you can see some picture, with multipath you get nothing or bad pixelation at best.

[DaveNinja]

i'm 20 miles from all the towers (they're all located in the same area). I thought the 'too strong' problem would be fixed with the attenuator, but i didnt see any change when messing with it. I got the digital station number fromthe antennaweb site (i should have mentioned this since it would have been a bad error on my part)

Originally Posted by JimSpence

How far are you from the towers? It could be that you have too strong a signal. And don't take this wrong, but you do know that the frequencies used for analog are different from the digital ones used by your stations? Multipath is a problem that causes diogital stations to not lock on. Multipath is to digital as ghosting is to analog. At least with ghosting you can see some picture, with multipath you get nothing or bad pixelation at best.

[TyroneShoes]

Combining antennas is very tricky, and success is hard to come by unless certain requirements are met. Without meeting them, combining antennas usually results in worse reception. You should probably look into a Channel Master 4228 or a DB8, as they are the best antennas out there for most applications. An amplifier may also be needed. Begin at antennaweb.org. to figure out exactly what and where the channels you desire are.

[DaveNinja]

Originally Posted by TyroneShoes

Combining antennas is very tricky, and success is hard to come by unless certain requirements are met. Without meeting them, combining antennas usually results in worse reception. You should probably look into a Channel Master 4228 or a DB8, as they are the best antennas out there for most applications. An amplifier may also be needed. Begin at antennaweb.org. to figure out exactly what and where the channels you desire are.

the wineguard antenna i have up is supposed to be almost the same as the 4228 and DB8.

[GTO40]

What is the antenna signal level the HDTivo signal meter shows with the winegard hooked up?

And is the level stable or changing from high to low?