the switch thingie died I think

[Larobpra]

I made and used one of these for 2-3 months before I got my CM 4228, it worked really well.....and was FREE!

YouTube - Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna!

Most of my locals were either hi-VHF and UHF so that helped, I don't think these do very well on the lo-VHF channels.

I am using one of these and it works GREAT on everything from channel 7 on up. I have it on a rotor in my attic with an Antennacraft pre-amp. I get all local digital signals and several analog signals as well as digital from Canada - I'm about 20 miles from the border. I used 12ga. copper instead of coat hangers as that's what I had available.

 

[Mr Tony]

As for antennas if you go that route, here are 2 cheaper ones. I dont know how the 1st one works but the 2nd one is what I use (something like it)
Walmart.com: Philips Indoor/Outdoor UHF Digital/Analog TV Antenna: TVs
Walmart.com: RCA Outdoor 60 Mile Antenna With Mast - UHF, VHF and HDTV: TVs

 

[zamar23]

Ice,

I think she wants to get both bands: VHF & UHF. Some analog channels won't show up well on designed mostly for UHF reception antennas like CM. Not sure, how its relevant to her area though. Walmart might not be the best place for good value OTA Antennas. It would help her to learn more about OTA first.

 

[Mr Tony]

The only analog channel in her market is 22 which is a My Network affiliate
The rest are digital and she is getting them right now

 

[Mr Tony]

Also I wondered how she was getting Lake Charles Fox but according to the FCC maps she is within the range
http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/maps_current/Lake_Charles_LA.pdf

last page

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh wow guys! Thank you for all the helpful info! :

I have so much new stuff to digest now. I guess I should charge up and dust off the old laptop so I can do some reading in bed.

And I too was wondering how I was getting Lake Charles on my Ghettotenna. LOL..

Well, I looked at the tv guide on titantv and there's a channel listed as KEBQ-LP and on KUMY-LP that seems to carry the same content as RTV. Interesting. But I can't pick it up just yet.

I'm not too worried about them just yet but it would be nice to get them just in case, as a backup in case the 83 satellite goes bye bye, like so many of them do.

I could have sworn I saw a channel here locally that carried this tv content.
I thought I saw a local tv guide online somewhere that showed Patty Duke, Mr. Ed and Outer Limits playing on the air here in my area. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was dreaming. It sure would be nice though, I really miss that channel. A lot.

Anyway.. So I wonder if it would be a waste of time to look at places like Home Depot, Lowes and the likes for an antenna? There are a bunch of those type stores all in a row over in Port Arthur. I should do my home work first though so I don't go buy the wrong thing or get slickered by some fast talking hustler salesman into buying some crummy dud.



Oh gosh, I almost forgot my little garden! I'm losing it!

 

[Anole]

- some people listen, some don't:

Your little loop of an antenna probably works far better up on the roof in the clear, than any indoor antenna ever would.

I have a buddy who put an OTA antenna into his attic 20 years ago, and has bitched about his reception all these years.
When we went digital this summer, the antenna worked better, but not spectacular.
I've given up arguing with him, that he needs to put it OUTside where he can aim it and get it away from the house.!.
You're already miles ahead of Lorenzo! -

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh yes, I almost forgot.

Anyone know why there is absolutely zero information showing up about anything that is playing? Like in the guide button, the nasa channel shows what is playing now and I can look ahead for a few days at everything that is coming up in the future to play.

My boyfriend's brand new HD tv is antenna only and it does that too, there's a box that shows what is playing, who stars in it, what year, etc. Very useful info as I like to know those things. I usually look up every single thing I watch in wiki because I like to know about who acted or even the subject matter. I have an inquiring mind ya know!

Also, my friend in Houston has HD tv and there is a 24 hour weather channel there, she only gets antenna tv too. I like how you can tune to the weather channel and see everything and they play some pretty cool music a lot of times.

Does not Beaumont have one? I thought that was like a law that they had to put the weather all the time on one of those fancy schmancy digital channels.

So far, I'm very much unimpressed with digital tv. I can't wait to see how well it DOESN'T work when it rains a little bit. And the real fun will begin when we get a hurricane. Oh boy!

Anyway.. Gosh, I'm pooped, it's been a long stressful day. I need some yogurt and about 12 hours of sleep.

Nite nite guys.. :sleeo

 

[Mr Tony]

And I too was wondering how I was getting Lake Charles on my Ghettotenna. LOL..

hey those ghettotennas work good as long as the station is reachable

Well, I looked at the tv guide on titantv and there's a channel listed as KEBQ-LP and on KUMY-LP that seems to carry the same content as RTV. Interesting. But I can't pick it up just yet.

I'm not too worried about them just yet but it would be nice to get them just in case, as a backup in case the 83 satellite goes bye bye, like so many of them do.

it looks like (according to wiki) that KUMY is the My Network station (prime time) and RTV outside of prime time. Its analog. Looks like they broadcast just south of Beaumont. Tower isnt very tall so it may be one of those Beaumont proper stations unless you got a big antenna.

Anyway.. So I wonder if it would be a waste of time to look at places like Home Depot, Lowes and the likes for an antenna? There are a bunch of those type stores all in a row over in Port Arthur. I should do my home work first though so I don't go buy the wrong thing or get slickered by some fast talking hustler salesman into buying some crummy dud.

do you know on the tv tuner card is there a way to see the signal strength? As long as its stable enough most of the time then you may not need to upgrade anything

 

[Dee_Ann]

Your little loop of an antenna probably works far better up on the roof in the clear, than any indoor antenna ever would.

I have a buddy who put an OTA antenna into his attic 20 years ago, and has bitched about his reception all these years.
When we went digital this summer, the antenna worked better, but not spectacular.
I've given up arguing with him, that he needs to put it OUTside where he can aim it and get it away from the house.!.
You're already miles ahead of Lorenzo! -

LOL!! :haha I had no clue on earth what I was doing. Not one.

All I know is that y'all said that the V type rabbit ears won't work.
I remember having an old B&W tv that had a wire loop antenna on the back for the UHF channels.

So I thought I would make something to resemble that.
I didn't measure anything, I just stripped the wire until my hands hurt and that was that. I twisted it and put it up and it worked!

Oh yes, and it was shocking me pretty bad touching the wire.
I had to go get my dishwashing gloves to connect it up because I couldn't take the shocks it was giving me. I do not like that stuff at all.
Thank you Rubbermaid!

ok, nite nite again!

 

[Mr Tony]

My boyfriend's brand new HD tv is antenna only and it does that too, there's a box that shows what is playing, who stars in it, what year, etc. Very useful info as I like to know those things. I usually look up every single thing I watch in wiki because I like to know about who acted or even the subject matter. I have an inquiring mind ya know!

the converter boxes do that. They have a guide in them usually 12 hours advanced

Also, my friend in Houston has HD tv and there is a 24 hour weather channel there, she only gets antenna tv too. I like how you can tune to the weather channel and see everything and they play some pretty cool music a lot of times.

Does not Beaumont have one? I thought that was like a law that they had to put the weather all the time on one of those fancy schmancy digital channels.

depends on the market. Larger cities will have that. Here in Minneapolis we have one 24/7 weather but its outdated a lot. I've seen the taped weathercast from the morning guy at 4:00 in the afternoon. Weekends are worse as it may be a day behind.

Smaller markets seem to go for the obvious items first and that is missing networks. Your ABC affiliate has NBC as a subchannel and CBS has a CW affiliate. After that then they might fillin with "other" networks. Depends on who owns the station

Some owners dont have ANY subchannels. CBS is big on that. Our (Minneapolis) CBS is owned by the network (Viacom). On their owned stations there are no subchannels. Fox is another "no subchannel" network. Or they might put a standard definition subchannel on it. Our Fox & My Networks are like that

Considering Minneapolis is the 16th/17th biggest market our choices of subchanenls suck
CBS & Independent..none
Fox, Cw, My...SD counterparts
ABC..a 24/7 replay of newscasts (oh boy)
NBC..24/7 weather
PBS has the most. They have Create, 24/7 weather and the MInnesota channel. It shows PBS programs from other PBS stations in MN, WI, ND & SD

What bugs me is where I use to live, Duluth MN, the ABC has RTV. The station is owned by the same folks who own out ABC (actually they own ALL the ABC's licensed to MN) yet only Duluth has RTV. We get old newscasts

 

[Mr Tony]

and you're right...KUMY is RTV except for 7-9PM when it has My Network programming

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee,

Welcome to OTA Club! If you need more OTA orientation & gear info, Stampeder's OTA FAQ & Knowledge Base is the best info deal on the web, one can find.

What ATSC (digital OTA) TV Tuner Card model did you get? Does it have NTSC (analog OTA) and/or QAM (digital cable) coax IN ports?
Also, I wonder, how you can watch channels via Coolsat 6000 on your TV, if its connected only to your PC (I assume, by pass through coax cable from the switch outside the house)?

Well, the coolsat isn't really hooked up the right way I don't think.
I plugged the cables from it into the back of my pc so that I can watch it through the pc. If that makes any sense. Like I had a vcr plugged in so I could record old video tapes into the pc to keep. Same sort of connections.

I don't really use it much, mostly just to check when things don't work right on the pc, I'll try it on the coolsat and see if it works there or not.

The tuner card I got, I don't know what all it does but it is getting all that new digital stuff. I can paste in the name and model of it, maybe you would know more about it.
It's a "Hauppauge 1196 WinTV HVR-1250 PCI Express Hybrid High Definition TV Tuner Card"

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014YFC18/ref=ox_ya_oh_product"]Amazon.com: Hauppauge 1196 WinTV HVR-1250 PCI Express Hybrid High Definition TV?@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41k23kWu5xL.@@AMEPARAM@@41k23kWu5xL[/ame]

I talked to my neighbor and my son on getting advice on which one to get.
It's the same brand as the satellite card. It shows up in the list of installed cards as a "Wintv-nova-s-plus". I didn't put it in there, the ex did. That's his brainchild.
But it seems to work well and the software lets me tune between antenna and satellite so I'm happy with it.


Whew! Ok, I'm beat. I really have to call it a night for real.
nite nite..

 

[PALL MALL]

Do you have an 18" dish laying around? Before I had my roof antenna, I had a pair of amplified rabbit ears siting in front of an old dn dish. With out the dish channels were barely receivable. The only problem is it not very directional, but the dish works as a great reflector.

 

[zamar23]

Dee,

The card you have Hauppauge 1196 WinTV HVR-1250 supports NTSC Analog OTA and Cable (non-scrambled), and Digital OTA (ATSC) and Cable (Clear QAM), so you can watch all imaginable sources via its 2 tuners, including even connecting Sat TV and Cable TV STBs via S-Video/Stereo Audio IN. It has only one coax IN port though, hence you'd need to switch & combine coax signals from your sources before connecting them all to this card's Coax IN port.

I wonder if Hauppauge WinTV soft has EPG - look through its FAQ and Manuals. Most PC-based PVR software packages offer EPG (Electronic Program Guide): go through [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_PVR_software_packages"]Comparison of PVR software packages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] on Wiki - some of these are quite popular. Since you appear to have a newer PC with PCI-E bus, it may be a good idea to try new Windows 7 OS Media Center among others, as Windows 7 has already being released to print on DVDs (limited distribution so far, but some folks reportedly managed to find it), and WMC 7 is said to be an excellent choice for all TV signal sources. If you decide on installing a new OS, do it on a separate hard drive or partition (in that case you'll need to learn to boot the PC with the OS version you want for a task at hand, since some of your other soft may be too old for Windows 7 to handle), and make sure to install the latest PC Card Drivers supporting the OS. Simpler pass would be to install a PVR package with EPG support (some of most popular are BeyondTV, SageTV, MythTV) - check if it has a trial period to play with.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Dee,

The card you have Hauppauge 1196 WinTV HVR-1250 supports NTSC Analog OTA and Cable (non-scrambled), and Digital OTA (ATSC) and Cable (Clear QAM), so you can watch all imaginable sources via its 2 tuners, including even connecting Sat TV and Cable TV STBs via S-Video/Stereo Audio IN. It has only one coax IN port though, hence you'd need to switch & combine coax signals from your sources before connecting them all to this card's Coax IN port.

I wonder if Hauppauge WinTV soft has EPG - look through its FAQ and Manuals. Most PC-based PVR software packages offer EPG (Electronic Program Guide): go through Comparison of PVR software packages on Wiki - some of these are quite popular. Since you appear to have a newer PC with PCI-E bus, it may be a good idea to try new Windows 7 OS Media Center among others, as Windows 7 has already being released to print on DVDs (limited distribution so far, but some folks reportedly managed to find it), and WMC 7 is said to be an excellent choice for all TV signal sources. If you decide on installing a new OS, do it on a separate hard drive or partition (in that case you'll need to learn to boot the PC with the OS version you want for a task at hand, since some of your other soft may be too old for Windows 7 to handle), and make sure to install the latest PC Card Drivers supporting the OS. Simpler pass would be to install a PVR package with EPG support (some of most popular are BeyondTV, SageTV, MythTV) - check if it has a trial period to play with.

Switch and combine signals?
You mean I can't have one antenna for tv, I have to have two antennas and a switch too? Like on the satellite dishes? OMG...
Oh and I do not have cable tv and have no intention of ever having cable tv. Not until they start paying me to have it.
I'm really confused now. I hate this new digital tv.
I'm still angry that all my old tv's that work fine no longer pick up anything at all anymore.

Now I have to have all sorts of complicated stuff to watch tv. Grrrrrr!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh, and by the way, I went through all the channels I get on the pc now and wrote down the info for the channels I watch on satellite and all the new channels on the local tv too. I've since edited out all the church channels from my viewing list and that leaves me with 6 local channels that are potentially viewable.

There are a few channels I haven't been able to find yet, like KUIL and especially one that I really want, KPLC which seems to be in Lake Charles. I guess I need a big antenna for that one? My ghettotenna doesn't seem to cut it with KPLC.

The reason I want KPLC so much? They carry "this tv" content. Mr, Ed, Patty Duke, Outer Limits, etc. Yes, I want that channel. Very much so.

Well, here's the list of what I can get.
I used the info button to get the signal quality, picture quality, picture size, sound type and some other info I'm not sure what it is.
There was also a lot of numbers that would show when I push info a few times, I have no idea what they are for and there was too much of it to copy down so I left that out.

I tried like crazy to make the list all nice and straight but it was like trying to herd cats with a blindfold on.

sq = Signal Quality    &    pq = Picture Quality

channel         sq%    pq%   resolution         ?    sound type

KAOB-LD          90    100    704 X 480        4:3    DD2.0
KAOB-LD          90    100    704 X 480        4:3    DD2.0
KAOB-LD          90    100    704 X 480        4:3    DD2.0
KAOB-LD          90    100    704 X 480        4:3    DD2.0
KBMT-A          100    100    1280 X 720    16:9    DD2.0
KBMT-N          100    100    1280 X 720    16:9    DD2.0
KBTV              100    100    1280 X 720    16:9    DD2.0
KFDM6.1        100    100    1920 X 1080  16:9    DD5.1 (little picture)
KFDM-CW       100    100    704 X 480        4:3    DD2.0
KITU-D1         100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
KITU-D1         100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
KITU-D1         100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
KITU-D1         100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
KITU-D1         100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
KVHP-HD         93    100    1280 X 720      16:9    DD2.0
KVHP-SD         93    100    720 X 480         4:3    DD2.0

Aw heck, while I'm at it I might as well do the satellite channels too.

White Springs    100    100    480 x 480          4:3    MPEG Layer II Stereo
RTNEAST            100    100    720 x 480          4:3    MPEG Layer II Stereo
RTNWEST           100    100    720 x 480          4:3    MPEG Layer II Stereo
History               100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
Bio                     100    100    704 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
PBS Create        100    100    720 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
PBS Montana     100    100    720 x 480          4:3    MPEG Layer II dual mono
PBS World          100    100    720 X 480         4:3    DD2.0
PBS HD East      100    100    1920 x 1080    16:9    DD5.1
PBS HD West     100    100    1920 x 1080    16:9    DD2.0
PBS HD feeds    100    100    1920 x 1080    16:9    DD2.0
NASA                 100    100    544 x 480          4:3    MPEG Layer II Stereo

Edit: The list above is so jumbled up I just made a picture of it on my pc.
Click the attachment for a much nicer view that you can actually look at without wanting to scream.
I also added ION back to my channel list because Reba is a good show and they may every once in a while have something else too. You never know.
ION has the same info readings as the nasa channel.

 

[Mr Tony]

There are a few channels I haven't been able to find yet, like KUIL and especially one that I really want, KPLC which seems to be in Lake Charles. I guess I need a big antenna for that one? My ghettotenna doesn't seem to cut it with KPLC.

The reason I want KPLC so much? They carry "this tv" content. Mr, Ed, Patty Duke, Outer Limits, etc. Yes, I want that channel. Very much so.

It looks like you'll need a big antenna for that. Few reasons
1. they are transmitting on VHF (7-13) whereas Fox from there is on UHF. The FCC in their infinite wisdom said you dont need much power on VHF to travel as far. So the power is cut big time (and hindering distance reception)
2. The tower for KPLC is NE of Lake Charles in Jefferson Davis county (yeah I know....parish) whereas Fox is NW of there near the state line

Is it doable? Possibly...maps show it cuts out right before Beaumont

 

[Mr Tony]

As for your chart where it says 16:9 or 4:3 and a ? that is how it looks on a HDTV

16:9 fills the whole screen if its in HD...if its not then there are black bars on the sides (sidebars)
4:3 is SD only and fills the whole screen

 

[Dee_Ann]

As for your chart where it says 16:9 or 4:3 and a ? that is how it looks on a HDTV

16:9 fills the whole screen if its in HD...if its not then there are black bars on the sides (sidebars)
4:3 is SD only and fills the whole screen

Oh.. Ok.. Well I don't have a wide screen like my folks or bf, my tv's are all squarish. Old fashioned I guess you could say now.

One of the channels just puts a little square picture in the middle of the screen, KFDM I think. The do the same on my folks wide tv. It's that way all the time too, not just occasionally.

Thank you!