Using my Comet GP-3 to pick up digital tv

[BonziBuddy]

I have a Comet GP-3 mounted on the roof of my house. I just got a new Sony 47" HDTV, and it has a DTV tuner built in.

Because DTV frequencies are UHF or VHF... shouldn't I be able to use my 2m/70cm antenna to pick up these channels?

I attached everything together and did a scan. It didn't pick up any signals. Would I NEED a Yagi antenna to make this work?

 

[fineshot1]

The GP-3 is optimized for within the ham bands(144-148 & 430-450) and
DTV's like to see tons of signal strength in order to decode properly so I
really doubt this will work well for you.

Also - The GP-3 is a vertical and most TV stations broadcast in the horizontal
plane so there goes about half of your signal strength with that.

 

[mrweather]

It might work but not very well.

In addition to what's been said, antennas like the GP-3 are omnidirectional and televisions hate multipath interference.

The 8VSB modulation scheme used for the ATSC standard doesn't deal with multipath very well. At its worst a digital signal will seem to disappear altogether because the tuner can't handle signals coming from more than one direction.