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!