We are hearing from a lot of viewers lately who are having difficulties receiving WIVB or WNLO with their new DTV converter boxes. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Depending on your proximity to our transmitter towers, you may get away with an indoor antenna but in a lot of cases you’ll need to install an outdoor one. Obviously, if you live in the city or immediate suburbs, an indoor antenna will most likely suffice. The farther you get from our towers, however, the more likely you’ll need an outdoor antenna. An antenna professional can help with this.

I’ll pass along an interesting story. I had a viewer call recently where the caller had trouble receiving WIVB-DT with an indoor antenna in an area where reception should have been solid. I went down the list of likely remedies but nothing worked. I finally handed off the call to our transmitter engineer and he discovered that the caller lived in an aluminum sided house with a steel roof. There was no way the over-the-air signal could penetrate that kind of shield!

The moral here is to be aware of what you are trying to achieve. If you’re 30 miles or more away from the transmitter an indoor antenna may not work well enough.