[Qwackertoo]

Here is a FANTASTIC site I’ve been using for 4-5 years on all my HDTV technical advice needs. Great boards by brand, type of installation. Great wealth of advice and information.

http://www.hdtvoice.com/voice/index.php

Deana

[reagan_fanatic]

Best place to get OTA antennas (shameless plug :)

[chickadee]

I got my converter boxes last May and have really been enjoying the expanded channels and the clarity of the picture. I have one for the VCR and one for the TV. My son and his family have decided to give up cable as a cost saving measure and are very happy with the converter box. It’s amazing how many channels there are that I didn’t know about. I got the Zenith model and it is wonderful.

I threw cable out of the house years ago and never looked back.

[UCANSEE2]

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[Yo-Yo]

Here is another good one, the AVS Forums. They have forums for just about every market in the country, as well as advice on equipment and television reviews.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=6/

[HamiltonJay]

I’ve been down to just the most basic cable option ($12/month) for well over 6 years now, because frankly its overpriced and delivers complete crap into my home.

I mainly kept the base package simply because of reception issues being I lived in a valley for over the air TV. (The cable I have is effectively broadcast TV, a few CSPANS and TBS and WGN.

Two years ago I moved out of the valley and onto the top of a hill, and got much better reception but have kept cable. Now with digital, and being on top of the hill, I am seriously considering just having an old arial antenna put up and dumping cable completely.

I’ll miss “My Boys” on TBS when its on (But I can watch that over the internet), but other than that, can’t think of a single reason to keep it. I watch more TV shows from DVD through NETFLIX when I am actually home than I do broadcast TV or the cable channels.

[Tarpon]

There is no such thing as a HDTV antenna. Any good VHF-UHF antenna will work fine for HD reception. I built one out of coat hangers to test reception in my area. What I found was the picture was better OTA than it was on cable.

Here is a video of howto do it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQhlmJTMzw

If you want to buy, a good UHF antenna, the DB4 works for most people and is not expensive. http://www.amazon.com/Antennas-Direct-DB4-Directional-Antenna/dp/B000EHYG9K

The distressing thing was how much better the picture looked off the antenna compared to the cable.

[Alex Murphy]

Ping to read later

[petro45acp]

Until a movie, broadcast OTA, can be shown without breaking for commercial every 12-15 minutes, cable has nothing to fear. Of course the model used by Fox in presenting ‘Fringe,’ with limited commercial interruption is not a bad way to go for episodic television.

[blackie]

We have DirecTV HD with four flat panel LCD TV’s and two recorders.

We have Comcast basic for two Internet accounts and for the telephone. Which costs less than Qwest with two phone lines and it’s way faster.

[mowowie]

From what i gather over the air HD has a higher bitrate and a far superior picture than what cable has to offer, only you just get the local stations.
Now that i can play streaming movies and tv shows (old and new) from Netflix, Hulu, etc.. on my tv through my Blu-ray playing PS3 i am really considering dropping my outrageously expensive comcast.

[Doc Savage]

Just a tech question. I have a TIVO HD DVR Receiver. Love it. I can’t get just a HD LINE from Verizon (FIOS) or Comcast because they demand I use their DVR and remote. Frankly, compared to TIVO, they BLOW! If I got a FIOS HD line and allowed them to install the DVR, could I simply remove the digital line and run it through my TIVO. Would it work? Would they know?

[smokingfrog]

I made my own HDTV antenna and it works great.

It's easy to do. Mine is sort-of like this, but I used baking cooling racks as a reflector. It doesn't look fancy, but it's up in the attic, so who cares. You just gotta know which direction to aim it.

[Army Air Corps]

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[Army Air Corps]

I just wish I could get my hands on a handheld/mini digital TV.

[seemoAR]

I live in a fringe area and was getting 7 channels with a good vhf/uhf rooftop antenna. Most of the channels had snow but I could see them. I installed a converter and added a booster on the top of the antenna. I now get 2 stations all the time and 4 others that have a picture some of the time. I am not very happy about that. ;o(

[Clinging Bitterly]

To address the “cable network deathwatch” aspect of the title, I'd have to say that depends. Certainly the DTV spectrum offers the potential for number of programming channels to rival cable, and if I had to guess I'd say the cost of deployment (in terms of real plant cost including installation and maintenance) for current digital broadcast technology vs. cable would be better for broadcast.

BUT - the whole method of regulating broadcast and cable TV will have to be rebuilt from the ground up for that to become a reality. Right now the regulatory scheme from the FCC on down to local bureaucracies is almost impossible to describe, and has an inertia about it that is very much in favor of the status quo. Any major changes now are going to cost some members of a very powerful lobby a huge amount in lost equity. The friends and foes in past failed attempts to fix this situation would be a big surprise to many FReepers.

In a more consumer friendly market, broadcast TV supplemented with DBS (satellite) would have made cable TV obsolete years ago.

[Las Vegas Dave]

Pinging the 360 member HDTV ping list..
(This thread is a few weeks old but worthy of a HDTV ping!) HDTV pings!

[webschooner]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LVD.

Cable providers used to have a good product — coax signal splitters or a multicoupler were all that was needed to put cable in every room and device — but the price has gone up continually. Years ago I took that “save by paying for the year in advance” plan, and the dirty [characterization deleted]s waited a couple of months then told me my balance would run out before the end of the entire year, because they’d raised their monthly rates.

Crooks.

They are crooks.

They are thieving crooks.

I dumped cable (partly for financial reasons) in 1999 or so, and haven’t looked back. Or at least, not fondly. I’m pretty sure the proliferation of full-season TV show DVD titles is an indication that I’m not the only one. Having a lot of channels hasn’t translated into having more to watch, and — despite having to pay every month — there are more ads (and they are more stupid than ever) on the feed. It’s insulting as well as ludicrous.

The old satellite TV (big dish) was like having glorified rabbit ears to me, always saw subscribers fiddling with dials and switches, scruit. Small dish required additional receiver units (and $) to hook up to multiple sets; taping while watching something else meant more money; taping while away from home required programming an infrafred emitter to turn on the record function on the VCR, a sort of stand-in for the remote control. None of the user interfaces were anything but crap. Weather here in Michigan tended to interfere with reception on every setup I’ve seen. Scruit. Friends who had it for years dumped it this past summer to save money and get the kids off their keisters.

The digital signal adapter boxes I’ve set up and used don’t have very good interfaces, and I don’t like having to fiddle with a lot of extra garbage and adding a pretty limited remote (it doesn’t have anything but TV on-off programmability) to the pile thereof. Clearly that will drive new TV sales, and was perhaps in mind when the boxes were designed.