[ale] [OT] DTV reception

[Calvin Harrigan]

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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Dude that's just creepy, that's almost my exact setup!!!  From the 
antenna, the antenna in the attic, to the hdhr, to mythtv!!! It works 
great for me as well, I get all sorts of channels, at least 20+ 
including the analog/digital duplicates.  When I bought the antenna it 
was much cheaper though, but I guess with it's rise in popularity it's 
being milked, I think I payed 59.95 for it about 3 years back.  I have 
preamp and a four way distribution amp from channel master for 
connecting the two inputs on the hdhr, one to the tv, and one to audio 
receiver.  I have to agree the ota HD is much better than what is on 
cable, but with that said I've found lately that the bitrates on some 
networks namely nbc and abc continue to go down, I use the file sizes as 
reference.  CBS/CW seems to be broadcasting full spec bitrate.  One 
thing that ticks me off with CBS is that goofy mixed 
interlaced/progressive stream they use, it does all kinds of weird 
things in mythtv especially now that I'm using vpdau...  But given the 
amount of TV I DON'T watch this was a cost effective one time payout 
solution.  It was just over $100 when all said and done, that's what 2 
months worth of cable?




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