[ale] [OT] DTV reception

[tom]

I'm liking the sounds of this. Will follow up your leads.

Thanks.

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Chris Kleeschulte wrote:

> I had the EXACT same issue about a year ago when I learned that my
> charter bill was $175 for cable tv, phone, and internet.
>
> Let me lay out what I did, because now my setup is ultra sweet. My
> cable bill is down to $55 per month b/c I am just using the internet
> service. I cancelled the land line and HD DVR service that they offered.
>
>
> Now I use a myth tv setup with over the air HD and SD. I live very
> near here (this is not my house, but in the same subdivision):
>
>
> http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=5733+Riverside+Walk+Dr.+Sugar+Hill,+GA+30518&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=HcDUSeWMEM-Ltgehhd3iDw&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1
>
>
> as you can see, I am about 35-40 miles from the transmitters, most of
> which are on Stone Mountain.
>
> As a result, rabbit ears will not cut it. I needed a beefy antenna
> with an amplifier. Seems like a hassle, but it was worth the effort.
> Here is the antenna that works great for me:
>
> http://www.crutchfield.com/p_6594228HD/Channel-Master-4228HD.html?search=hd+antennas
>
>
> the amp (very necessary):
>
> http://www.crutchfield.com/p_6597777/Channel-Master-7777.html?search=Channel+Master+VENDORID659&searchdisplay=Channel+Master
>
>
> Now, what is important is that I mounted this in my attic and not on
> the roof! And it works GREAT.  If you are interested, I can take
> pictures and show you. The HD is MUCH better than Charter's signal
> from the coax. I am the biggest sour puss when it comes to video
> quality and even I was shocked at the difference. So that worked
> EXCELLENT. The antenna was a monster and my wife thought I was the
> biggest nerd when I was messing with it (like I was one of those ham
> radio guys), but it worked. The antenna is omnidirectional so you can
> just sort of point it toward Stone Mountain and all should be well. I
> do not get channel 8 (PBS) very well, but another city's PBS works
> fine, so I do not complain.
>
>
> For the myth tv setup, I bought a HDhomerun, which takes the over the
> air mpeg2ts signal and just dumps it on to my ethernet lan. So now I
> have the tv signal on the lan and any device that can read mpeg2
> transport stream (mythtv), just decodes it, no need to have a coax
> terminal where the backend is.
>
>
> If you should like to see the output (the video files that I am
> getting over the air) OR the pictures of the antenna in the attic, let
> me know where to send them.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Chris Kleeschulte
>
> On Apr 2, 2009, at 9:01 AM, tom wrote:
>
>>
>> The thread on Comcast reminded me that I wanted to ask you bright,
>> electronic oriented people something. Should individuals be less than
>> interested, I hope that they will forgive my use of bandwidth.
>>
>> With the shift to DTV finally fully underway (should be over), I
>> getting
>> irritated with the quality of DTV reception here at the house when
>> using
>> rabbit ears. As such, I guess I have two options: pay for wired TV/
>> cable
>> which will play havoc with my income, or obtain and install an outside
>> antenna. One time expense vs ongoing expense - hmmmm...
>>
>> Ok. For the real question. I'm pretty sure that I can put an antenna
>> in
>> the attic myself without major complications, but it it likely that
>> the
>> improvement in signal/noise would be good enough, or should I just
>> bite
>> the bullet and have someone put an antenna on the chimney as the best
>> possible solution?
>>
>> Also, for some reason, I have the impression that DTV signals over
>> the air
>> and through an antenna have a limited propagation through the antenna
>> cable, so to split the signal I need to arrainge for some
>> amplification.
>> If so, how does that impact the chminey antenna idea?
>>
>> Thanks to the whole list for the use and abuse of their bandwidth.
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>
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