TV Antenna Station Scanning 101

[Electronic M]

If one side is better is something that depends on what is in the box. Some antennas are only good from one direction (ones with reflectors particularly) some are close to ideal omnidirectional. 'Black box' tells us nothing.

Dipoles are common antennas (think rabbit ears/UHF bowtie). Assuming it is a dipole neither broad flat side will be better but both will be equally optimal and 2 of the narrow sides will be terrible the rest will be the better side of in-between. Different stations from different directions will be best received with re-aimed antennas. Many indoor ants especially the cheap and or gimmicky ones categorically suck.

The signals will vary a LOT over the next few years. ATSC 3.0(incompatible with the ATSC we've had since '09) recently passed. Stations are trying to adopt 3.0 and lots of things are changing behind the scenes...When it is all over your current ATSC tuner(s) will probably be doorstops like analog tuners have become.

A professionally installed roof or attic antenna will outperform all indoor types. If you want to get fringe stations from opposite/perpendicular directions two or more antennas aimed at the TV sites then combined to a single ant lead for your TV may be optimum.

One thing that may help is to find a TV or tuner with a signal strength gauge in the menus. I Keep some Zenith DTT901 boxes around because the menu has manual tuning of the carrier channels with such a guage...I can see the effect of turning the ant and of different ants on reception. It speeds up experimentation exponentially.