How To Watch Free HD TV Using Only A Paper Clip An Introduction To Digital Over The Air TV OTA

hello everyone today I'm gonna show you a neat little trick using a paperclip we're gonna use this paperclip as a high gain antenna on your HDTV to get over-the-air HD free programming all right so what is over-the-air OTA is broadcast television and in no in the United States all a broadcast television is digital so the caveat here is you're going to need a digital TV with a digital tuner so you need a flat panel of some type with a digital tuner in it now if you have an older TV without a digital tuner or don't know whether you have a digital tuner or not if it's been made in the last couple years more than likely it does have a digital tuner if it's older check your manufacturer see if there is a digital tuner in it and if not what you can do is you can buy a digital tuner on Amazon and at that point you know you can plug it into whatever kind of television that the digital tuner is compatible with so let me show you one here here's one and if we look at the back of it you'll see that there's RF NRF out well we're gonna be using the RF in or antenna in on the back of your television so if you already have cable you're gonna have to disconnect your cable to plug this little paperclip in okay so you know understand the limitations number one number two this video is really meant for people who have no TV at all they don't have cable they don't have an antenna and basically just sitting there looking at a blank screen so if that's what your situation is or if you want to just play around take this paper clip and do what I'm gonna tell you to do with it and see if you get any results with it now over-the-air means that it's you know broadcast TV so if you're in your mom's basement and you know you you're under you're basically underground yeah more than likely this is not gonna work if you're in a steel building again more than likely this is not gonna work try it but more than likely it's not gonna work unless you're near window or something because you know both those situations block RF signals so if you're on the ground floor you'll do will probably do okay and if you're on the top floor or second floor you probably do better now another caveat here is you know the location of your television alright so if your TV is mounted to the wall like my 55 inch TV is and it is mounted with using a great big metal bracket and that metal bracket stands in the way of this little paper clip well metal stops you know radio signals so again it does work on that TV but I only get three channels on that TV on the other television I have it doesn't have that kind of a bracket I get 12 channels with this little paper clip so I'm gonna show you how to do that here so what you need to do is take your paper clip and basically bend it out all right like so and you're gonna make it almost straight except for the last loop okay and there we go you see that the clip now the last loop what you're gonna do is do a 90 degree angle on it like that okay and what you're going to end up with is a pretty straight paper clip you don't do to be super straight but there there's a straight as I'm gonna get mine with a 90 degree Bend on the bottom okay so the the small part of the L or the 90 degree Bend here that's going to go into the actual antenna port on your television now that should go into the report quite easily you shouldn't have to jam it in there so now I'm gonna show you some pictures of what that antenna port should look like and as you can see here on the screen it could just say RF in you know or antenna and mine says ant in a and T in so it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer so next I'll show you those pictures okay here we have our antenna in this one is what mine looks like at the back of my television you see that it's got a little hole in the center and it's threaded on the outside now if you don't see that and you a cable coming from your cable box or something into your actual TV that's probably where it is and you can see on the bottom there it says it says aunt in now yours might say RF in or antenna in or something similar to that so let's take some further look here at this connector well there it is as you can see it's threaded do not stick this in anywhere else other than this port okay so I've stuck here is a picture of the actual paperclip it's installed inside the port very basic just push it in it should stop by itself when you get to a certain depth then you see here that I have it straight up at a ninety degree angle but you can experiment you might get a better reception at a different angle than that you could actually experiment with the shape of the actual antenna or a paperclip you know bend it in different ways you know turn it into different angles and here you see I got it at the three o'clock position they've got at the six o'clock position nine o'clock and of course the original was at the 12 o'clock position so up to you just make sure you're putting it into the right port and it should fit in quite easily if it doesn't fit in easily don't force it in there you might hurt or harm the port it should just slide in there snugly but not super tight especially with a number one paperclip now if you're using a bigger paperclip something larger then yeah you might have some problems with that so again avoid forcing it in there it should slide in quite easily and if you know if it's too fat to go in there find a smaller paperclip or you know sand down the tip but I strongly recommend using a number one this one basically a number one paperclip and there we go I had no problems with this at all it went into every television I plugged it into without any issue at all and actually worked as well as any paperclip I used so the number one from Akko excellent little paperclip for this job so next after we've got that set up we got to do what they call Audio tuning or sorry channel tuning we need to find out which channels are available to you in your local area so let's go to the webpage where that happens so minimize this and the one I like to use is called tableau tlb ello tv.com and I'll put a link to us in the video description and here you just put in your zip code and then it says street address optional I wouldn't put the street address and zip code there's more than good enough don't give them any information you don't need to give them and after you've done that I'm gonna show you what I found was mine here my channel results obviously I live in Temple Texas and it gives you the strength in the available channels that are there for you but that doesn't you know I said it's a rough guide remember we're using a paper clip as an antenna here so you might get a better result you might get a worse result more than likely a worse result I've got about 27 channels here that are available to me and when I did the scan I only got 12 or so at least on this television on my upstairs television I've got 22 channels so obviously being higher up in my building you know when I'm upstairs you know I get better reception either that or the tuner on the television upstairs is superior to the one downstairs could be a bit of both I'm suspecting more than than anything is that it's upstairs it's not on a wall-mounted metal bracket it's actually on the TV stand and it works great now my downstairs little TV where I'm going to show you this demonstration it's got a wall mounted you know bracket but it's it's a swivel bracket so you can pull it away from the wall and then you can turn it in different angles which helps me to get better signal so again if you have that option you may have to move it a little bit or bend the antenna but you know try everything right bend the antenna change its location move the TV you know different ways and see what your channel scan brings you basically the more channels you get the better reception you're your antennas getting so next I'm gonna show you how to do the channel scan and you know again make sure that you go to this tableau tv.com website and put your zip code in so that you know you can know exactly how many channels are available and again you're in a remote area you know it might just say hey there's nothing available to you but try it anyway you never know you might be able to coast one in from the top of the mountain from where you live who knows but you know it's it's it's RF it's actual TV radio signals coming to you through the air so you know the crazy things happen with RF so give it a shot see what you get so next we're gonna get the actual tuner page up and basically I'll show you what I needed to do with mine I just go to my menu on my remote and it has a menu button on it here right there and I just go to the menu and after I hit the menu I'll show you what I see on the TV okay again different remotes have this stuff in different places you might have a setup button a gear button I don't know but this one is this one says menu okay so that's my samsung tv we'll go from there as you can see if you don't have a antenna you don't have cable plugged into the coax connector on the back or antenna connector on the back of your television this is probably what you're going to see weak or no signal check the antenna connection and run auto program meant menu channel so basically you need to program the channels so I've got the paperclip antenna in the back and because it's never been programmed while I reset it and basically this is what I got so let's go to the menu scroll down to antenna and yours or probably be on cable that seems to be the default that I always found these things but again you know wherever your programming is for your antenna yours might have a satellite picture next to it it might have a setup it might just say antenna on it who knows it's different for every TV you come across but here when you get to the antenna menu change this from cable to air if it's not there already more than likely it won't be we're searching for over-the-air signal so we need to be programming the TV in the air mode so then we'll go down an auto program and hit OK on a dirt start now you've got three chants three choices air cable and auto now if you don't have air cable just hit the auto if you do if you're thinking you're gonna get cable over-the-air with just a little tiny paperclip well I doubt it and what what it means is that your cable scans gonna take longer but if you're not if you want to test it just use Auto I know it doesn't work for me so I'm just going to choose air here and click on start and then it'll start scanning all the channels here the channels I found after the tenth channel scan and you can see at the top right hand corner where it tells you the information about them the channel strength online and 720p is the actual resolution on the first channel second channel is the same 720p with sixteen by nine so a really nice resolution on the first two channels for adi on this on the third channel and 480i is the lowest resolution you're gonna get on any of these channels digital doesn't go any lower than for ati this one's 720p another 720p one here and I got these blurred out so I don't have any problems with YouTube and copyright issues there's a 488 for TDI another for adi and you can see that the resolutions are different here you know and here's a nice one 1080i so that's 1080 resolution HD for ATI and the next one is I believe for ATI as well now the last two I got blank screens they're just black and if I leave them on long enough they say mode not so not mode not support it so I'm not sure what that is I might do some further research into that but regardless even though it said I got 12 channels I can only see 10 so welcome to OTA so you know over the air broadcasting is you know it's cool but it is radio frequency and it is susceptible to certain foibles like you know time of day some day you know if you scan at night time you may get more channels than you do during the day it varies right so play with it experiment with it and that's my quick video on how to get HDTV using just a paper clip and really it's more of a primer on over-the-air television broadcasting or HD broadcasting it's digital TV here in the United States but this will work at in other parts of the planet where it's not all digital you'll also get analog as well which will give you even more channels so experiment and have fun I may do further videos on OTA like comparing antennas and performances so on and in the future depending on what kind of response I get on this video so here's a final angle and shape and and so on that I got on my paper clip antenna and obviously by the fact that it's plugged into the antenna port on the back of the TV you're limited to position angle and you know location in the room because you can only move your TV so much and so I said okay what's a simple solution to that well you can do this when you take a coax cable like this one this is a short one actually and it has two ends on it both are basically it's a coax patch cable and it's got a male side on this side and a female side on that side and basically it would connect to coax components to get it so what you do is take that patch cable if you have one and you put this which is a what's it called a cable extension adaptor okay and it looks like that and what it is is a coax connector that has two female inputs on it like that and like that and whether that allows you to do is plug the coax cable into the back here TV and then put this end on the other side right just screw it in like so and then once you've got that hooked up in that arrangement and the other side into your antenna port then you put your paperclip right into the back of that now you can put that cable anywhere you want you can change the shape any way you want you can move it closer to the window further away further away from the TV wherever you'd like hide it somewhere if you wish and you can use the longer cable this is like a two-foot cable here but you could use a 6-foot no problem I can't see why there'd be any limit on this on the length of the cable you use it's the antenna that matters so basically using that adapter and I'll put a link to all this stuff in description you can actually you know get a lot more latitude on where your antennas going to be in what you call it while your paperclip antennas gonna be in relation to your antenna port on the back of your TV that's it for my video thank you very much for watching do me a favor if you liked this video give me a thumbs up here on the bottom right hand corner and if you want to see further videos from me in the future click on this link right here to subscribe to my channel thank you once again for your time and thank you for watching

Channel: Richard Lloyd

Views: 2,581,058

Rating: 4.5517182 out of 5

Keywords: free tv, how to make antenna for tv, paper clip antenna, tv antennas for free television, how to make a tv antenna, paperclip antenna, free cable tv, tv antenna, how to make a antenna for tv, hd antenna for tv, tv antennas for digital tv, how to make an antenna for tv, paper clip tv antenna, free hd tv, antenna tv, homemade tv antenna, tv fox antenna, digital tv antenna, how to make tv antenna at home, how to make tv antenna, tv scout antenna, how to get free tv, Free TV

Id: LHtiPDgOR3k

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/alleycat2-14]

I test TVs in the store or at garage sales using a paperclip as an antenna. It's a very poor antenna and cheap antennas can be plugged in just as well that amplify the signal. It only works if the OTA signal is strong though.

[u/edlites413]

Free using a paper clip? HD TV just?