Two weeks ago I installed an antenna in my attic (GE 33692) in order to receive stations that are approximately 45 miles away. Things worked fine in clear weather, light rain and moderate snowfall but one morning there was dense fog and signal levels were lower across the board. Most stations still locked in but several didn't. The interesting thing was that all stations intermittently dropping out or pixelating were Hi-VHF channels.
I am wondering what the right fix for this is. Will a mast mounted pre-amp help or will a different type of antenna be the correct choice (perhaps a high gain Yagi?)? Unfortunately an outside antenna is out of the question for me.
Best Answer
An amp will probably make things worse, not better. Modern TV signals are digital, meaning they are compressed. But their new compressed nature also makes them highly susceptible to interference (such as your fog).
In older analog TV signals, the problem was often a weak signal. An amp could help reduce that loss between the antenna and the TV. But digital signals are often made worse by amps, because they introduce a small amount of interference. As such, you lose information and, thus the signal entirely (digital cannot make use of partial information like analog could).
I had to set one up for my mother and found that the amped antenna performed worse than an un-amped antenna. The only time you generally want an amp on your line is if you need to make a very long run of wire (if you're considering it, I'd just buy a separate un-amped antenna for the additional TVs).
Something else to consider might be an external TV tuner. TV manufacturers often skimp on the ones they install. I've even seen some that work with your wifi so you can get a solid signal in one location and then broadcast it over your house to streaming devices.