[ale] [OT] DTV reception

[Chris Kleeschulte]

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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