Hands on with the HD-BLADE, part 7: Behind the TV

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Yes, I admit it. I’ve done some very unlikely things to the HD-BLADE. But it keeps passing every test! For today’s testing I thought I’d do something you might actually do at home: mount the antenna behind the TV.

In order to do this test, I needed to change my testing a little bit. So far, I’ve been testing with a 20″ TV. The TV is actually about the same size as the antenna, and it’s wall-mounted. So, it wasn’t a good choice for testing because I just couldn’t fit the antenna back there.

I went to one of my other TVs instead. in order to make sure that the testing was fair, I left the HD-BLADE to the same spot on the desk where it got 83 channels last week. I connected the HD-BLADE with a long piece of RG6 cable (I wanted minimal signal loss and did a channel scan on the other TV.

First problem: This TV doesn’t give you a running total of the channels it finds. I had to flip through them manually and count them. That’s why I don’t have a nice photo to show you.

On the other hand, the HD-BLADE got the same 83 channels from the same position. So I have “apples to apples” there. I brought the HD-BLADE into the room with the TV and put it up on the wall. I wanted to know how many channels it would get when mounted vertically in the same room.The Answer: 72 channels. I got a few more channels because that TV has a nice, big window that affords a view of the towers. I think that makes the difference.

So, next step: I took some of my old trusty painter’s tape and stuck the antenna to the back of the TV. (There’s a mirror behind the TV so it made it easy to take a picture of it.)

The results of the channel scan: 38 channels. Still not terrible but it does seem like I lost about half my channels. Remember I’m a long distance away from the towers and you might do better mounting it behind the TV… but for me it seems like a lot of power was lost by mounting the antenna back there.

Of course, that’s no surprise. There’s a metal film that lets the backlight shine forward through the LCD panel, and the backlight itself probably gives off a bit of interference. What’s surprising is that it worked at all!

I will find a way to completely cut off all reception to this antenna. I just don’t know how yet!

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.