[ale] [OT] DTV reception

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Thu Apr 2 12:10:39 EDT 2009


My antenna is a 3.5' piece of pvc with a 12g bare copper wire wrapped
around it lengthwise, zip tied in place and a 75 ohm balun for coax
connection. it is very directional and cost a whopping $7 (for the
balun as I had all the rest).

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tom <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> wrote:
> 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.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III



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