Tuesday, August 19, 2008

HDTV resources

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/index.php

http://www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/index.html

Build your own antenna

Going to try to build these in the near future:

http://members.shaw.ca/hdtvantenna/

http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/

Outdoor setup

One day I would like to buy all this for an outdoor setup to get all the glorious HD channels:
Channel Master 3274 Ground Block
$0.99 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock
Condition: new

Sold By: Channel Master Store

Channel Master 3078 Roof or Attic Mount
$2.50 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock
Condition: new

Sold By: Channel Master Store

Channel Master Antenna Rotator with Remote Control
$79.99 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock
Condition: new

Sold By: Channel Master Store

Channel Master 3092 Tripod Mount
$22.99 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock
Condition: new

Sold By: Channel Master Store

Channel Master 4228 Multi-Bay HDTV UHF Antenna
$74.99 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock
Condition: new

Sold By: Channel Master Store
Items: $181.46
Shipping & Handling:$22.99

Total Before Tax:$204.45
Estimated Tax:*$0.00
Order Total: $204.45

Free and Legal OTA HDTV

One of the great things about living in Toronto/Markham is receiving free and legal over-the-air (OTA) HDTV. Here's my current setup:

Required:
Indoor Antenna that receives UHF signals. Mine is a Zenith silver sensor (Repaired) (~$45) [Ebay]
Viewsonic N4285P HDTV with ATSC tuner (~$999.99 + tax) [Dell]

Optional (Recording OTA)
IBM Netvista P4 2.0 Ghz running Mythbuntu ($99) [Friend's old computer]
Hauppauge PVR-150 ($50) [redflagdeals.com]
500 GB Hard drive ($99.99) [CTY computers ]
Zenith DTT901 ATSC tuner (~$60) [Circuit City in the states] {Couldn't find it in Canada}

Note: It's all about the ATSC tuner. If you can get your hands on a Zenith DTT901 (I had to go to the states to get it) you can hook it up to your old TV to get the digital signals and downconvert them to analog to use on your TV's that only have NTSC tuners or computers with analog PVR cards.

I used to be able to get 6 or 7 digital channels in the North East corner of Markham when my antenna was in tip top shape. It recently broke and I had to repair it and now i'm only getting 3 digital channels and about 11 analog channels.

Analog channels (I'll update this later):
5 CBC
9 CTV
19
25
41 Global (Great signal)
57 City
69 CFMT

Digital channels:
5-1 CBC 1080i HD
9-1 CTV 1080i HD
44-1 OMNI2 1080i HD

Unwatchable channels (need to repoint the antenna):
25-1 CBC French
57-1 City TV