[ale] [OT] DTV reception

Fri Apr 3 09:05:03 EDT 2009

Calvin:

It is heart-warming to know there are others like me out there. I  
spent a lot of time tweaking the system to get it to work well. I am  
sure you take pride in yourself setup too. I have been a mythtv user  
since the beginning (april 2002), but I was always sort of  
dissatisfied with the quality of the output from the analog cards, so  
I would only use it to watch tv on the computer, but not at the  
entertainment center. Now, the quality is dynamite, so all my tv is on  
mythtv.

I also noticed the shananigans with certain streams and even at  
different times of day, but I noticed from the output of ffmpeg when  
converting to iphone format.

Anyway, if you need anyone to bounce ideas/questions off, you now have  
a peer in this area.

Chris Kleeschulte

On Apr 2, 2009, at 5:08 PM, Calvin Harrigan wrote:

> 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?
>
>
>
>
> <snip>
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