Installing OTA digital antennas should not be difficult. When the cable company used coaxial cable, I ran coaxial cable throughout the house. I had wires running through cold-air vents to the bedrooms upstairs for cable, telephone and Internet. After we purchased laptops and cell phones, and the cable company switched to wireless receivers these wires were not needed. I still have some of these wires, but they have been disconnected. So, I knew I had extra coaxial cables in the basement, that I cut and removed. I still had some connectors and the tool to install the connectors.
I got out my long ½” drill bit I had for the very purpose of drilling holes to run wires through the floor. I hated putting holes in our new wood flooring in the living room. In the past when we had carpeting, the carpeting hid the holes, and the furniture would be in front of the wires. We have an electric fireplace with shelving to keep all our electronic equipment and the TV. The number of wires behind the TV is ridiculous, but necessary. I do not like to move the fireplace away from the wall because the wires need to be put back in a way so I can push the fireplace closer to the wall. Now I was going to add another wire for the antenna. Yikes!
I pulled the baseboard away from the wall and stuck my drill bit behind it and the wall and started drilling. In no time I was through the floor. I did the same for the wall behind the cabinet with the antenna. Done. Now I needed to string the coaxial cable through the holes. Time to go to the basement.
One advantage of not having a finished basement is I do not need to remove ceiling tiles to get to the floor above. However, as I got up on a chair to string the wire, I could not find the holes. So upstairs I went to put the cable through the hole behind the TV and stick the drill bit in the hole behind the cabinet. I pushed the wire down the hole and gave myself plenty of slack. With my hand I pounded the baseboard back into the wall. (The wire prevented me from getting the baseboard tight against the wall, but the fireplace would hide it.)
I went back downstairs to find the other hole to run the cable up to the antenna. Once I found it, I needed to go back upstairs and remove the drill bit. (Doing projects in my house gets me the steps I need for exercise.) Back downstairs, I pushed the wire through the hole until the cable was close to the bottom of the floor joist. Back upstairs I went again to attach the coaxial cable to the antenna and the TV. I pushed the furniture back against the wall. And one more time, I went back downstairs to install cable clips to the wire. I just pulled them off other joists that had some old wire removed and used them for this wire. I was done with the wiring. Time to set up the TV for OTA digital channels.
Once the antenna was installed, I grabbed the remote for the TV. I pressed “source” and selected TV. I went to set up and started scanning channels. Nothing unusual here. I waited as the TV went through the scanning process and found about 50 channels. Once it was done, I selected the Guide. We now have most of our local channels and these channels were combined with Samsung TV Plus channels. Well, Samsung TV Plus has hundreds of channels that would be impossible for anyone to watch. Additionally, we did not have our local PBS channels. Well, that was not good. I got up and moved the rabbit ears to a different location. I rescanned the channels and now…I lost one of the local channels and still no PBS. I rearranged the rabbit ears again and rescanned to get back the one local channel. I knew we could get the PBS app, so I stopped futzing around.
I waited for Efiwym, my wife, to come home to show her how the OTA digital antenna was working. As I was flipping through the channels, she asked where some of the local channels were. I went to the guide, and some of the local channels were no longer there. What the… I started the re-scanning process again without success. What happened? I started to play around with the antenna again and I thought maybe the power adapter quit working. Well, it did, because it fell out of the outlet. Apparently, I did not have it in the outlet tightly. I plugged it back in, rescanned and like magic, the channels reappeared with PBS.
