Robb Report Home Entertainment & Design Editor Brent Butterworth swore up and down that digital television (DTV) didn’t work. He could barely receive terrestrial digital signals from his home in Los Angeles, let alone from our distant offices in Malibu. Admittedly, DTV is anything but plug ’n’ play, but I have no problems receiving digital signals from my house and I don’t live far from Brent. So what was Brent doing wrong? Why was this electronics expert (and thousands of non-experts experiencing the same thing) having such problems getting DTV?

Figure 1: Channel Master’s model 3017 is a combination VHF/UHF Yagi type antenna. The front portion (to the rightof the mast) receives UHF channels 13 through 69. The back section receives VHF channels 2 through 13.

The problem was his antenna, which is far more critical for DTV than it has ever been for old-style analog TV. Fortunately, you don’t have to understand the inane acronyms or complex logarithmic-equation differences between VHF and UHF antennas to know which type you need to receive DTV. All you have to do is go to www.antennaweb.org and look at the channel numbers of the stations you want. If you want channels 2 through 13, for example, then you need a VHF antenna (see Figure 1, back section). If, as in most areas, your DTV channels are between channels 14 and 69, then you can use a significantly smaller UHF antenna (see Figures 2 and 3). If your digital stations are spread between channel 2 and 69, go with the combo VHF/UHF antenna (Figure 1). Figures 1 and 3 are considered Yagi type antennas, while Figure 2 is called a bow tie (or a stacked bow tie) antenna. You don’t really need to know that, but these terms get mentioned a lot. Aesthetics aside, there’s no substantial difference between a UHF Yagi and a bow tie antenna.