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#16
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Is this any good?
In article , VanguardLH
wrote: Despite what the ads show about all those wonderful mega-count of channels that you'll get for free using an antenna tuned to the OTA stations in the UHF range, the reality is the station count is dismal, especially after grouping the side channels for one station into a count of just one station. again, that's *not* true at all. |
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#17
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Is this any good?
On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 09:47:17 -0500, nospam
wrote: In article , VanguardLH wrote: Despite what the ads show about all those wonderful mega-count of channels that you'll get for free using an antenna tuned to the OTA stations in the UHF range, the reality is the station count is dismal, especially after grouping the side channels for one station into a count of just one station. again, that's *not* true at all. I live on the outskirts of a large metro area and it's definitely not true here. The various OTA antenna sites all show 46 channels as being available here, and when I scan I see nearly all of them, I think 43 the last time I counted. Secondly, my local cable company carries 16 or 18 (I forget) of them. |
#18
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Is this any good?
In article , Char Jackson
wrote: Despite what the ads show about all those wonderful mega-count of channels that you'll get for free using an antenna tuned to the OTA stations in the UHF range, the reality is the station count is dismal, especially after grouping the side channels for one station into a count of just one station. again, that's *not* true at all. I live on the outskirts of a large metro area and it's definitely not true here. The various OTA antenna sites all show 46 channels as being available here, and when I scan I see nearly all of them, I think 43 the last time I counted. Secondly, my local cable company carries 16 or 18 (I forget) of them. i can receive about 35 digital channels over the air, which is *well* above the 6-7 old school analog channels, and that's using a cheap antenna in a non-ideal location. some of those can be streamed online, which is another option. |
#19
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Is this any good?
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 09:47:17 -0500, nospam wrote: In article , VanguardLH wrote: Despite what the ads show about all those wonderful mega-count of channels that you'll get for free using an antenna tuned to the OTA stations in the UHF range, the reality is the station count is dismal, especially after grouping the side channels for one station into a count of just one station. again, that's *not* true at all. I live on the outskirts of a large metro area and it's definitely not true here. The various OTA antenna sites all show 46 channels as being available here, and when I scan I see nearly all of them, I think 43 the last time I counted. Secondly, my local cable company carries 16 or 18 (I forget) of them. The cheapest you can get in on this, is if you have some sort of device with digital reception capability. If you want to play around, you need at least one station near enough for rabbit ears, to test out your setup and prove it's all working. It would be pretty hard to get the damn software to work, if all the stations were fringe, and they were popping in and out at random. These are some of the ways of accessing OTA content. 1) New digital TV set (some sets more sensitive for OTA than others...) 2) Set Top Box intended for driving old TV set on Channel 3 3) USB dongle for computer, ATSC or DVB-T etc 4) PCI Express tuner card as in (3) 5) SiliconDust Ethernet-connected tuner/recorder The USB dongles, some of them run hot, due to using older generations of silicon tuners. PCI Express cards are big enough, they can use traditional tin-can front ends. In this example, you can see tin cans on the left. As well as "missing" ICs where silicon tuners might be fitted for a tincan free version. A silicon tuner can run hot enough, to take advantage of a "thermal slug" on the bottom, to pump some of the chip heat into the PCB. http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pics/hvr2...cket_large.jpg The ATI Theater cards were some of the first to use a silicon tuner, but the silicon tuner ran burning-hot on those. The tuner industry seemed to go through a "collapse" a few years ago, due to lack of sales. As far as I know, Hauppauge is still in business. Hauppauge (WinTV era) was around at first, when nobody else was interested. Then when digital TV came along, there were like, a hundred different STBs offered for sale, and the DTV launch was the hey-day of the stuff. But within only two years, a number of chipsets went out of production. KWorld went out of business, and they sold a lot of the "$39.95" materials. I think the KWorld name still exists today, and somebody bought the name and perhaps still makes a few things. If you wanted to dabble in OTA TV, a KWorld product was one of the cheaper ways of doing it. Hauppauge usually charge more for their stuff. It's been pretty well uniform over time, that the software quality that comes in the box can be poor. Quite a few novelty computer-type stuff deserves that title, of being a slave to bad software. And when all is said and done, you really want to construct a "server device" for yourself, something autonomous, so your TV recordings will not be disrupted by you "re-booting" your desktop or whatever. For "live" operation on the other hand, that's not important. I could, for example, open a window right now and input a signal from my STB and watch live (that setup doesn't do recordings at all). But I no longer have the software set up for that, and only the "recording" tuner is set up, and only on the Windows 7 boot drive. I would have to put the "better quality" tuner card into a separate PC, to have decent uninterrupted TV recording. Paul |
#20
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Is this any good?
On 1/14/19 8:00 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , VanguardLH wrote: Remember back when you had an analog TV antenna (probably just a couple of rabbit ears on the TV) and the few local channels you had back then? Well, that's what you'll get today with a digital antenna capturing the OTA broadcast stations. actually, there's a lot more than that in most places, certainly in major cities. I'm not in a big city, but still get 3 separate channels plus their subchannels, for a total of 10. -- Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ "I don't believe in God, because I don't believe in Mother Goose." -- Clarence Darrow |
#21
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Is this any good?
HW wrote:
Do you know if this gadget works indoors? I don't have an external aerial so I need an indoor one to receive FreeView without any extensive cables. https://www.freeseetv.com/tvfix/en/ As Paul mentioned, this is a Dutch (The Netherlands) company. When I - in The Netherlands - go to their website, it says: "THESE NETWORKS ARE BROADCASTING FREE TV NOW IN Dutch_flag abc CBD CBC CTC Global" I.e. a load of ********, because these networks do of course *not* broadcast in The Netherlands. More ********: "supports 1080p HDTV" Yup, it supports dust as well. "Boost your range up to 50 miles with an amplifier" But it doesn't include one. 'Manual' https://www.freeseetv.com/pub-assets/images/manual/hdtv-antenna-instruction.d9e5156123ea03a7.pdf?language_id=1 Judge for yourself. Bottom line: Don't walk, but run to get one of these and while you're at it add a 300-metre steel tower in Paris at the bargain price of $99.99 (shipping not included). |
#22
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Is this any good?
Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 1/14/19 8:00 PM, nospam wrote: In article , VanguardLH wrote: Remember back when you had an analog TV antenna (probably just a couple of rabbit ears on the TV) and the few local channels you had back then? Well, that's what you'll get today with a digital antenna capturing the OTA broadcast stations. actually, there's a lot more than that in most places, certainly in major cities. I'm not in a big city, but still get 3 separate channels plus their subchannels, for a total of 10. Country people don't get quite as many choices. The circle on the left, is for the location of my sister. The circle on the right, for a hypothetical person in Toronto. https://i.postimg.cc/FKgRDjFY/fun-with-tvfool-com.gif Paul |
#23
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Is this any good?
Frank Slootweg wrote:
HW wrote: Do you know if this gadget works indoors? I don't have an external aerial so I need an indoor one to receive FreeView without any extensive cables. https://www.freeseetv.com/tvfix/en/ As Paul mentioned, this is a Dutch (The Netherlands) company. When I - in The Netherlands - go to their website, it says: "THESE NETWORKS ARE BROADCASTING FREE TV NOW IN Dutch_flag abc CBD CBC CTC Global" I.e. a load of ********, because these networks do of course *not* broadcast in The Netherlands. More ********: "supports 1080p HDTV" Yup, it supports dust as well. "Boost your range up to 50 miles with an amplifier" But it doesn't include one. 'Manual' https://www.freeseetv.com/pub-assets/images/manual/hdtv-antenna-instruction.d9e5156123ea03a7.pdf?language_id=1 Judge for yourself. Bottom line: Don't walk, but run to get one of these and while you're at it add a 300-metre steel tower in Paris at the bargain price of $99.99 (shipping not included). If they're selling "Internet TV" and not "OTA TV", I hope that's clear before you actually buy something. The device has no power source that I can see. And they seem to want to connect it coaxially to a TV RF input. It would cost about $5 in materials to build one of those. In case anyone was wondering why they would be "excited" to sell it. ******* Paul in Houston says it's a fractal antenna, and that's a high probability given the dimensions and planar form factor. As a kind of joke, this is an example. This is like a Gray-Hoverman that's been "chopped up a bit". The balun does impedance matching. And this example would be a UHF antenna, and not likely to attempt to receive VHF frequencies. https://cdn.instructables.com/FD0/HB...M7XM.LARGE.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna The best fun you can have, is to study an antenna you plan on buying, in 4NEC2 beforehand. For example, a $100 antenna at RadioShack has a defect you can see in 4NEC2, where the lobe for Channel 9 points backwards, and thus the antenna cannot pick up Channel 9 in the VHF band. By knowing this, you check your channel table for channels 8,9,10 and see if there's a remote possibility the antenna won't work with those. The antenna I built here, someone wrote an "optimizer" that adjusted antenna elements and evaluated performance each time. The computation ran for about a week, before the developer decided that was enough computations. And it doesn't have a problem with channel 9. The only problem with that antenna, is it has gain at channel 65 where you no longer need gain, as digital TV no longer goes all the way up to UHF 83. The top end of the band has been trimmed, and when you design an antenna, the gain wasted on higher channels is better spent on lower channels. So when I see my antenna has excellent gain on 65, that means the gain is wasted because no TV is up there now. I finished the antenna two days before analog TV was cut off, and that's how I was able to test channel 65. And it came in excellent, implying the theory didn't predict the gain properly. My antenna now sits in a crate, in pieces (ready to be reassembled). It's a fringe antenna for the country. When tested in the city, it's pretty directional and needs to be rotated while you use it. The country installation location has all the stations on one vector, and the antenna is perfect for such an application (as the antenna no longer needs to be rotated). Paul |
#24
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Is this any good?
On 1/15/19 3:21 PM, Paul wrote:
TheÂ*antennaÂ*IÂ*builtÂ*here,Â*someoneÂ*wroteÂ*an *"optimizer"Â*that adjustedÂ*antennaÂ*elementsÂ*andÂ*evaluatedÂ*perfo rmanceÂ*eachÂ*time OT. But what the hell do you do for a living? Not complaining as your replies are very chocked full of info. PCs, now antennas and more I've seen. Al |
#25
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Is this any good?
On 1/15/19 3:51 PM, Big Al wrote:
On 1/15/19 3:21 PM, Paul wrote: TheÂ*antennaÂ*IÂ*builtÂ*here,Â*someoneÂ*wroteÂ*an *"optimizer"Â*that adjustedÂ*antennaÂ*elementsÂ*andÂ*evaluatedÂ*perfo rmanceÂ*eachÂ*time OT.Â* But what the hell do you do for a living?Â*Â* Not complaining as your replies are very chocked full of info.Â*Â*Â* PCs, now antennas and more I've seen. Al That is if you don't mind telling. |
#26
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Big Al wrote:
On 1/15/19 3:21 PM, Paul wrote: The antenna I built here, someone wrote an "optimizer" that adjusted antenna elements and evaluated performance each time OT. But what the hell do you do for a living? Not complaining as your replies are very chocked full of info. PCs, now antennas and more I've seen. Al I'm a retired EE. But with a bit of a science background. Paul |
#27
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On 15/01/2019 22:56, Paul wrote:
Big Al wrote: On 1/15/19 3:21 PM, Paul wrote: The antenna I built here, someone wrote an "optimizer" that adjusted antenna elements and evaluated performance each time OT.Â* But what the hell do you do for a living?Â*Â* Not complaining as your replies are very chocked full of info.Â*Â*Â* PCs, now antennas and more I've seen. Al I'm a retired EE. But with a bit of a science background. Â*Â* Paul ??? https://ee.co.uk ??? -- David B. |
#28
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Is this any good?
HW wrote:
https://www.freeseetv.com/tvfix/en/ It should work but it's a bit pricy. Over the air TV depends on where you are some areas any old rabbit ears work well, other areas require a VERY good antenna. I'm in Phoenix, Arizona and I use this: https://www.amazon.com/RCA-Multi-Dir...igital-Indoor- Antenna/dp/B0027FZQ1E/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1547596238&sr=8- 18&keywords=rca+tv+antenna+indoor OR https://tinyurl.com/ybret529 This allows me to get all the local OTA channels but I got only about 4 or 5 before I moved so who knows? I'd find an old rabbit ears and see what channels you can get, good luck! -- XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups The Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/ |
#29
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Is this any good?
David B. wrote:
On 15/01/2019 22:56, Paul wrote: Big Al wrote: On 1/15/19 3:21 PM, Paul wrote: The antenna I built here, someone wrote an "optimizer" that adjusted antenna elements and evaluated performance each time OT. But what the hell do you do for a living? Not complaining as your replies are very chocked full of info. PCs, now antennas and more I've seen. Al I'm a retired EE. But with a bit of a science background. Paul ??? https://ee.co.uk ??? Just keep scrolling until you find it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EE Electrical Engineering. I was designing electronics before I got the parchment. I made a profession out of a hobby, but not right away. Paul |
#30
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Is this any good?
In article , David B.
wrote: I'm a retired EE. But with a bit of a science background. ??? https://ee.co.uk ??? of all the stupid things you've said (and there have been many), that one ranks close to the top, if not the top. |
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