# Terk TV44 with ViP622?



## samchecker (Jan 17, 2007)

I know from doing some searching around that a lot of you folks really hate Terk antennas, but I'll ask anyway...I've been having a devil of a time getting OTA HD channels here in Columbus, OH. According to antennaweb.org, I'm less than 20 miles from any of the transmitters I want to get and can get away with the yellow-coded antenna, yet an indoor antenna with the 622 has been giving me a devil of a time...some days I lock onto all the local digitals, and other days it's no go.

So, I'm guessing I just need to get my antenna outside. Since I don't need a huge antenna, wouldn't the TV44 suit my needs? I love that it doesn't require snaking another cable from outside. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I have a Dish 1000 dish.

Anyway, thanks for your help!

Mark W.


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## rictorg (Feb 2, 2007)

I have the TV44, but haven't been overly impressed with it. I figured that I would be able to get more OTA with the TV44 installed on the dish on my roof, but I get no more channels or better reception then with a small indoor antenna in my basement.

I suspect that it has a lot to do with my geography, and your mileage may vary significantly, but in my experience, the TV44 didn't really solve any problems for me.

At risk of hijacking the thread, what is the best antenna setup to pick up channels with an antenna type of red, blue, or violet on the antenna web application?


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

WEll I use one at my house and have for over 3 or 4 years now and I get the following strengths on my locals:

Abc - 75-78 - not broadcasting in full power yet
Cbs - 100 - broadcasting in full power
Nbc - 80-85 - not broadcasting in full power yet. 
Fox - NONE - no digital channel yet.

I also get my analog channels but the antenna has to be placed in a different place on the dish to get them vs the digital channels. My locals are in three different places from 10 miles out to 25 miles out. I had to work to get that sweet spot that gave me all three without breakups consistently. I can get Abc and NBc at better signal strengths but I would lose on CBS if I did so. 

My mom and dad use the terk 42 and they get strengths of the following:

Abc - 74 
Cbs - 82
Nbc - 75 
Fox - NONE no digital signal yet. 

The terk 42 is not an amplified and the terk 44 is and I guess that is why the cbs station comes in better in strength on my terk 44 vs my Mom & dad's terk 42. Both have to be aimed or moved to get that sweet spot. 

My mom and dad's house in between 2 double story houses on the roof and my dish is on the ground on a pole , in the back of a mobile home park and no double story houses, trees or obstructions. 

IF you are patient and take the time to move it to get the best signal it will work for you. You are within 20 miles so there should be no problems but then again do you live by tall structures, towers, powerlines overhead? All can interfer with reception. Give it a try and it might work for you too. 

As always your mileage may vary.


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

I live about 14 miles from stations and the Terk44 was pretty awful. Worse than a couple indoor antennas I used. I had the same issue you had - not wanting to fool around with additional cabling. Eventually I figured out that you can use any antenna and with the proper components just send the antenna signals down the same coaxial cable that the satellite is being sent down. Basically its easy to recreate the hardware that is in the Terk44 and just use a better antenna. You can even do this if you have a TV2 that is being driven by the 622. It's not terribly complicated. If you are interested I can post a wiring diagram.


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## beaucop (May 11, 2006)

I recommended this site once before and was slammed by people who say there is no such thing as an HD Antenna. Go to antennasdirect.com I live less than 10 miles from my local transmissions and always had problems with a TERK and Radio Shack. I got an outdoor antenna from this site and it has been giving me at least 95% on all channels, as scattered as they are in different directions. I agree there may be no such thing as an HD antenna, but this company, based in St. Louis, does a hell of a job making them in a way that picks up signals from multiple directions.


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## lpmiller (Mar 8, 2007)

I picked up the Phillips Mant940 from walmart for 39 bucks, and it got a better signal inside my house then any terk has ever gotten outside my house, and I'm about 15 miles away from the broadcast towers. Outside, I get 90-100 percent signal on all locals. It's not a very big antenna at all, and works a lot better than I had expected.


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## TNGTony (Mar 23, 2002)

The problem in the OP's situation is probably the same as I had. It is probably a matter of multi-phasing (ghosting) that is causing all the problems with reception rather than lack of signal. On windy days I have a heck of a time keeping clean signal. I ended up getting better reception on my RCA powered rabbit ears by putting the VHF elements all the way down.

I need to go with an outdoor roof antenna so I can get all the Dayton channels too, but since I found the "sweet spot" for my rabbit ears, I get all the locals and a couple of dayton stations no problem now.

See ya
Tony


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## samchecker (Jan 17, 2007)

brantlew said:


> I live about 14 miles from stations and the Terk44 was pretty awful. Worse than a couple indoor antennas I used. I had the same issue you had - not wanting to fool around with additional cabling. Eventually I figured out that you can use any antenna and with the proper components just send the antenna signals down the same coaxial cable that the satellite is being sent down. Basically its easy to recreate the hardware that is in the Terk44 and just use a better antenna. You can even do this if you have a TV2 that is being driven by the 622. It's not terribly complicated. If you are interested I can post a wiring diagram.


That'd be great! I've got a Dish 1000, if that makes any difference...


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

samchecker said:


> That'd be great! I've got a Dish 1000, if that makes any difference...


I also have a Dish 1000 so it seems we pretty much have the same setup. Here is the diagram in a Word doc. The blue lines indicate satellite frequencies above 900Mhz. The red lines are low frequency UHF signals. And of course the purple lines show the combined signals. The hardware on the side of the house is located where all of my cable lines feed into my home and it all fits inside a plastic weatherproof box (which I will refer to as my cable box). You will probably need to do some experimentation to determine which incoming lines feed which rooms in your home.

A lot of people like to run a separate antenna line down from the roof directly to the cable box. There are good reasons to do this because it reduces the amount of hardware you need and all of this inline hardware is going to reduce your signal somewhat, but I have found that if you buy quality hardware and live in a strong signal area the signal loss is not enough to black out your channels. For comparison, I ran a straight 70 foot line directly from my antenna to the 622 to see what the maximum signals could be. I got about a 90% signal on the weakest channels. Adding in all the splitters and diplexers reduced this signal down to about 73% - thankfully not enough to drop out the channel. If you live in a low signal level area you may have to consider reducing the amount of hardware or doing some line amplification. Luckily I didn't have to mess with that.

So assuming your signal can withstand the loss, you can get away with not running a separate coax from your antenna to the cable box. You first need to get a satellite diplexer to combine the two signals together. I originally bought a dual-diplexer so that both lines coming from the satellite are diplexed with the antenna but realized that this is not really necessary. You really only need to choose one line coming from the satellite and diplex it.

Now if you are NOT transmitting a TV2 signal then this diagram is much simpler. Just leave out the diplexers and splitter and leave the line intact all the way down to the 622. Then you just need to de-diplex the signal. In fact if you are not using a TV2, the the wiring is so simple you won't even have to worry about signal loss.

If however you are running a TV2 signal, you will have to add in all of the diplexers and splitters. The main trick which I haven't seen on any other wiring diagrams out there is the separation of the signal out at the cable box. Again most people just run a straight line from the antenna to the box so they don't have to mess with this. As I said earlier - that does reduce signal degradation and compexity but my goal here is primarily to AVOID running any additional cable lines - thus all the hardware.

Of course there are several variations on this. For one I am not really sending a strong antenna signal to TV2 so I can't really tune into the OTA broadcasts on TV2. It only receives its signal from the 622 which is ok with me because TV2 is not an HD television. The most obvious improvement would be to send a more direct antenna signal to TV2 if it an HDTV so it could make use of the OTA HD broadcasts. That is probably a future project for me but it will require more splitters and undoubtedly some amplification.

Again - remember to choose quality hardware to reduce signal loss - not the junk you find at Radio Shack. You are going to have to spend about $10 per component. You want to look for splitters with a 3.5dB insertion loss and diplexers with 1 - 1.5dB insertion loss. I am using Monster SS2RF splitters and Terk diplexers (although I may switch out the diplexers for ones with lower loss).

Also one last note. You do not want to pass DC current onto the UHF lines (the red lines) so get components that block DC current or for more flexibility get DC pass components and separate inline DC filters. (Terk equipment conveniently includes a separate DC filter)

Hope this helps.


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

Oh one last thing - I am using a DB2 antenna from antennasdirect which I have found to be excellent - orders of magnitude better than the Terk44. It is also so small that I was able to just clamp it onto a PVC exhaust pipe sticking up out of my roof so I didn't even have to install a mounting pole. In fact I really think that you could just clamp it to your satellite dish mounting pole making installation that much easier.


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

I just realized I didn't talk about the low-pass RF filter. This is an optional component and it performs 2 function

1. It blocks any antenna reception above a certain frequency (and above a certain channel) so that you can be assured that you will have a clear channel onto which to broadcast your TV2 signal. Since you are combining UHF from TV2 and the antenna you may have signal collisions. I bought a 750Mhz filter that block any channels above CATV 118. That way I can broadcast TV2 on channel 120 and be sure that there will be no interference.

2. It blocks your TV2 output from being broadcast out though your antenna. Since my TV2 is being sent through channel 120 my 750Mhz filter blocks this outgoing signal. Otherwise my neighbor might be able to tune into channel 120 and watch my DVR! Also, it is against FCC regulations to broadcast in this fashion.

In the end I decided that the filter was providing some signal resistance so I removed it, but if you concerned about FCC regulations you can include it.


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

Here is a pic of my antenna setup. I am using a DB2 which is so small that I just clamped it to an exhaust pipe sticking out of my roof. You can see the coax traveling back to my satellite dish in the background where it gets diplexed with the sat signal. To you newbies out there - don't be intimidated. There is a small learning curve but its not that hard to do, its cheap, and your signal levels will be incredible and you'll never have to experience interference and drop outs again.


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## quasi888 (Jan 15, 2008)

brantlew, would you be so kind as to post up a revised diagram (with additional splitters and/or diplexers, and amplifiers) showing the same configuration, but with a HDTV as TV2, connected to a non-DVR HD receiver (e.g. ViP211)? And with the OTA signal distributed to both TV1 and TV2. Thanks!


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

quasi888 said:


> brantlew, would you be so kind as to post up a revised diagram (with additional splitters and/or diplexers, and amplifiers) showing the same configuration, but with a HDTV as TV2, connected to a non-DVR HD receiver (e.g. ViP211)? And with the OTA signal distributed to both TV1 and TV2. Thanks!


OK, this is quite a bit more complicated but this reflects what I actually have going on in my house. The numbers in the boxes are my estimate of the signal loss at each component and the total signal loss at each receiver/TV. The biggest departure from my original wiring diagram is the addition of the amplifier. The VIP 622 has enough juice (+17dB ) to push to a second TV, but if you want to distribute the signal further then you will need some amplification. Same goes for the antenna signal. To make it available to the entire house I need the amp. The CVT PIAII (available through HomeTech) is a great little amp because it has low isolation between the output posts which allows the TV2 distribution signal to leak over to the rest of the house. Power for the amp is supplied via a plug outlet next to TV4 and pushed up to the amp through the coax. If you are only supporting 2 TVs you can probably leave out the external amp.

So the end result of all this is that I get HD satellite in my living room and master bed room. I get strong antenna signals in the rest of the house plus I get the TV2 out signal from my downstairs 622 in every room as well. I just have to carry my second remote around but I can watch the satellite from any room (including my bed room) with the HDTV. Of course the caveat - anything recorded in HD downstairs is only broadcast in analog standard def to the rest of the house.

I just noticed that there is one thing missing from the diagram. I had to add a little +10 amp to the TV2 out signal coming out of the VIP622 because the +17 was just not enough juice to push a clear signal through all of this hardware. Results may vary in other homes with shorter or longer wire runs.

Hope this helps.


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## brantlew (Mar 19, 2007)

quasi888 said:


> brantlew, would you be so kind as to post up a revised diagram (with additional splitters and/or diplexers, and amplifiers) showing the same configuration, but with a HDTV as TV2, connected to a non-DVR HD receiver (e.g. ViP211)? And with the OTA signal distributed to both TV1 and TV2. Thanks!


One last thing, if you want to skip home distribution and just push a second tv, then you can just substitute a regular splitter instead of the distribution amp and it should work.


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## quasi888 (Jan 15, 2008)

Thanks! This will be extremely useful to me as I plan my system!


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## bharath (Dec 29, 2008)

Thanks for this extremely useful post ! It worked great for me as I had only one cable drop down to each room from the attic. The towers are less than 15 miles from my place, so, placing a rabbit-ear instead of an OTA in the attic brings me the local HD channels crystal clear !

Question :- I want to mirror TV1 output to another room which may or may not have a HDTV. (Yes, TV2 output is also mirrored on TV1 with the set up you have given  as I have setup the receiver to distribute TV2 output on channel 60). Can I achieve what I want by replacing the 3 node "Splitter/Combiner" with a 4 node "Splitter/Combiner" ? I will be setting the TV1 output to an unused channel (for eg., 61). I'm attaching the modified word document. Please let me know if it will work.

Thanks again,
Bharath



brantlew said:


> I also have a Dish 1000 so it seems we pretty much have the same setup. Here is the diagram in a Word doc. The blue lines indicate satellite frequencies above 900Mhz. The red lines are low frequency UHF signals. And of course the purple lines show the combined signals. The hardware on the side of the house is located where all of my cable lines feed into my home and it all fits inside a plastic weatherproof box (which I will refer to as my cable box). You will probably need to do some experimentation to determine which incoming lines feed which rooms in your home.
> 
> A lot of people like to run a separate antenna line down from the roof directly to the cable box. There are good reasons..........


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