HDTV transmitter/antenna information

I second the outdoor antenna from radio shack. I purchased one from them for about $25 several years ago plus 10 bucks for a 5 foot mast, and hardware to attach it and put it up on my roof. Pulls in all the stations there are and they are about 60 miles away. Looks great on my 106" diagonal screen. As already mentioned if the broadcast antennas are in the same place, you might not need the motor.

Philjoet, definitely get an antenna and put a preamp on it and a roter so you can rotate to fine tune it, I watch almost all my HD OTA, its free and has tons more to offer than satellite or cable.

A standard UHF antenna is all you need for High Def broadcast.
I have a $15 Rat-Shack one that does fine.
The expensive "made for High Def antennas are a marketing rip-off. Way overpriced for the same UHF directional antenna of old, in a fancy plastic box for 10 times the price.
There is some website that actually can tell you the exact direction for all receivable stations from your zip code. I can't remember the site, but it was some sort os antenna site. You get names of stations, direction from your location, and distance. Both in print and a map. Fabulous.
Anyway, just use any good quality UHF directional antenna and you are good to go.
I watch ONLY via over the air on my Sony 42" plasma with HD tuner.

Yes, I have 2 of the cheap, but well regarded Rat Shack double bow-tie antennas. They haven't made them for a few years now and the guy at the local store didn't even know he had them. The in-line stock search pulled them up so off to the store I went. He was more than happy to sell both to me fo $5. I cut off the ribbon wire and soldered a 75 ohm adapter. They work very well, but the wife wanted them out of sight. So I went to channel master in the attic.

I have a cute story regarding my HD antenna, which I have related on another thread. I have a terk 35 antenna that points towards the main major area transmitter and it gets really good reception from my location which is about 15 miles from the transmitter. I got it from a fellow living quite close to me who for all intent and purposes has the same exposure and angle of reception as I, but he could not get any qualaity reception what-so-ever on his system. My picture is fine.

Still, I wanted to watch the Olympics in HD and the only station broadcasting them is located about 40 miles from me and there is a hill just behing my house that is in the way.l I went to Circuit City and bought another HD antenna that is square-looking(I don't remember the model...) which advertised that it could be used in an urban setting with inferior signals. I used a Radioshack inverse splitter(it allows me to combine to feeds into one cable) and I have the Terk antenna pointed at my main antenna and I tried to get the Circuit City antenna to bring in the remote feed, using the combined signal.

I logged into antennaweb and got the precise compass settings and I pointed the new antenna in the right direction, with a modification to compensate for the hill. Nothing.

I laid the antenna on my pitched roof and went inside to get a beer, having decided this was useless. When I got inside, the picture was perfect! It seems that the pitch of my roof matches just what I needed to get the picture, with almost no room for error.

The point(!) being that there is little room for error but luck and a beer helps.

One more observation, I tied my FM tuner into this system and it now gets great reception.