If you have a roof-mounted antenna, and the broadcasts coming to your home are from different directions, what can you do to change the direction of the antenna when you change channels?
The only choice used to be a device that rotated the antenna. Now there's something new: a "Smart" antenna.
Smart Antennas
“Smart” antennas (CEA-909) are able to decide the direction of the broadcast signal, and a program in your converter box can tell it what direction to ‘point’ (electronically, not physically) in order to get the best signal for each individual television channel.
Our Chief Engineer, Bill Hayes, has seen smart antennas made by GE and RCA, but not all manufacturers currently have them. And remember, the converter box needs to be compatible (CEA-909) with the antenna, or it won’t work.
An example of a Smart antenna is the DX brand DTA-5000, which sells for about $100.
There is an older antenna called “SMARTenna” that is NOT one of these sorts of antennas. It was developed before the current smart antenna was built. It is an omni-directional antenna built for the top of RVs.
