Tuesday 2nd, March 2010
New TV Experience - Real High Definition from an antenna!!03/02/2010Category : Environment
We are in Mississauga, Ontario, just north of Dundas and east of Winston Churchill. So, if you are looking for an alternative to Cable or Satellite and you live in the neighborhood, this may interest you.
We were Cable customers for too many years, paying $60 every month. The only show we watched on specialty channel was Daily Planet on Discovery Channel. When you add up the few TV series plus Daily Planet, that's tops two shows per day ... @ $60 a month ... so we paid about $1 for every TV show we watched. The often bad signal quality eventually made us reconsider the options. So from this here
to a really top quality, uncompressed high definition image it was a matter of a $100 investment for the antenna. And we never had to look at the pixel blocks anymore.
The Olympic games in Vancouver just finished and the picture quality was just outstanding. We could actually see the ice pebbles on the curling ice surface. We watched CTV most of the time and only once was the signal distorted due to a weak signal from the CN Tower.
I installed two antennas, one pointing to the CN Tower, one pointing to Buffalo stations. It's hardly noticeable that we have an antenna on the roof, at least not from the front of the house. By now, the savings already paid for the antenna, by the end of this year, the new Sony TV is also paid-off by the savings.
We receive all the regular channels plus PBS which was not in our Rogers bundle before. The channels are: TV Ontario, Global, CHCH, Omni1 + 2, CBC, CTV, CityTV, Sun TV. Then NBC, PBS, WIVB (4), WKBW, The CW, FOX 29, and myTV. They all come in without disturbance in high definition - except TVO. There are a few more, mostly duplicates from existing channels.
One thing I learned during the installation, you need a top quality cable between the antenna and the TV. I even replaced the splitters that came with the antenna with top quality splitters. I didn't feed the signal into the existing house wiring to reduce the amount of splitters and connectors. From the roof, the cable goes directly into a Surge Protector, then into the recording unit and from there into the TV. Because of the two antennas, I had a ghost image on the non-digital channels. After adjusting the gap between them, the problem disappeared. I found lots of good information on the Internet that helped me in my decision and fine tuning. A few links to get you started are:
remoteCentral look for Toronto & Buffalo HDTV Channel Map under Features.
SaveAndReplay for your antenna needs.
And don't forget to check Wikipedia under High-definition television or any of the abbreviated buzz words. If you decide to sign up with one of the High-Definition service provider, Cable or Satellite, keep in mind that these signals are compressed. One source mentioned that the compression ration is over 30 times. The Over-The-Air signal on the other hand is not compressed.
Up to the time of this writing, we are very happy with the choice we made.
We were Cable customers for too many years, paying $60 every month. The only show we watched on specialty channel was Daily Planet on Discovery Channel. When you add up the few TV series plus Daily Planet, that's tops two shows per day ... @ $60 a month ... so we paid about $1 for every TV show we watched. The often bad signal quality eventually made us reconsider the options. So from this here
to a really top quality, uncompressed high definition image it was a matter of a $100 investment for the antenna. And we never had to look at the pixel blocks anymore.
The Olympic games in Vancouver just finished and the picture quality was just outstanding. We could actually see the ice pebbles on the curling ice surface. We watched CTV most of the time and only once was the signal distorted due to a weak signal from the CN Tower.
I installed two antennas, one pointing to the CN Tower, one pointing to Buffalo stations. It's hardly noticeable that we have an antenna on the roof, at least not from the front of the house. By now, the savings already paid for the antenna, by the end of this year, the new Sony TV is also paid-off by the savings.
We receive all the regular channels plus PBS which was not in our Rogers bundle before. The channels are: TV Ontario, Global, CHCH, Omni1 + 2, CBC, CTV, CityTV, Sun TV. Then NBC, PBS, WIVB (4), WKBW, The CW, FOX 29, and myTV. They all come in without disturbance in high definition - except TVO. There are a few more, mostly duplicates from existing channels.
One thing I learned during the installation, you need a top quality cable between the antenna and the TV. I even replaced the splitters that came with the antenna with top quality splitters. I didn't feed the signal into the existing house wiring to reduce the amount of splitters and connectors. From the roof, the cable goes directly into a Surge Protector, then into the recording unit and from there into the TV. Because of the two antennas, I had a ghost image on the non-digital channels. After adjusting the gap between them, the problem disappeared. I found lots of good information on the Internet that helped me in my decision and fine tuning. A few links to get you started are:
And don't forget to check Wikipedia under High-definition television or any of the abbreviated buzz words. If you decide to sign up with one of the High-Definition service provider, Cable or Satellite, keep in mind that these signals are compressed. One source mentioned that the compression ration is over 30 times. The Over-The-Air signal on the other hand is not compressed.
Up to the time of this writing, we are very happy with the choice we made.