"mm" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 05:44:52 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

Baltimore or Washington.

I'm in the same area and in the same boat and live in the shadow of a
hill
that obscures the line of sight with the big TV antenna complex near the
Sears near Tenleytown. The problem I had with the rotor is that my DVR
has
no way to rotate the aerial to the proper direction for the channel I
want

They never do, do they?

Two antennas made it theoretically possible to switch back and forth via a
timer, but that was an incredibly complicated solution compared to spending
another $200 on a second DVR and having a two completely separate recording
"chains." It's turned out to be very useful for the sweeps when the only
three interesting programs broadcast all year are telecasted on the same day
and time.

to record. Since I have two DVRs, I ended up putting two antennas in the
attic: one optimized for DC and the other for Baltimore. I segregate my
recording based on that. Stations coming from Baltimore go to DVR one,
stations from Washington, DVR two.

Very clever. I haven't tried this yet but someone on
sci.electronics;.repair said one could use a splitter (combiner, same
thing) to connect both antennas together, implying that there would be
no problem interactino. No one contradicted him but I never asked
further. I figured I would try it, so there wasn't much point to
discussing it. But I havent' got the omni-directional antenna yet.
Still, I do have that 6 or 8 foot wire.

I've done similar things (multi aerial receiver for household X-10 RF
controls signals), but in this case, the antennas are at opposite ends of
the house (Washington signals are strongest on the south side, Balto on the
north) so there didn't seem to be any point to combining the signal. I
suppose it might not be a bad idea to see what happens if I combine them.
Hmmmm . . .

Later this year, I am going to mount a
tall mast on the chimney and put up the rotor again, with the largest
aerial
I can find to pull in the stations like 22 that broadcast from Annapolis,
90
degrees away from Baltimore or Washington and some other transmitters
that
aren't located with the other major towers. )-:

I still get dropouts, though, from overhead planes, rain clouds and
elves.

Dropout is the word! Mine are all elves. I've never seen a reason.

It's pretty annoying. It's like microwave ovens. My old reliable Litton
had nothing but a mechanical spring timer that lasted over 20 years with
only a broken door latch. The replacement has a super-fancy multi-function
"cooking system" (aka "timer") that locked up tight the first time we used
it. Sometimes newer is not better.

(IOU, I am not sure what causes them, but I do know they proliferate at
the
ends of programs where they're saying "Of course, the killer had to be -
silence, splotches, more silence and finally the picture returns).

I've been pretty lucky. It usually comes back when they're on the same
jeopardy clue, or it drops out during commericals or during part of
the news I'm not interested in.

But a week ago, I missed the last 5 minutes of Alfred Hitchcock. I
went to zap2it.com , but it only gave a generic description, good for
all episodes. I was going to search on the description.

So I looked for alfred hitchock full episodes and got
several hits. I thought I would have to start watching each, but they
each had one still shot from the given show, and mine had the back of
a nurse's head with a guy facing her whom I actually recognized from
the show. I rarely recognize anyone. So it took only a couple
minutes to find the show, and I let it play in the background until I
got to the last 5 minutes. It ended just like I remembered from 45
years ago!

That's good detective work. I had a similar experience the other night and
discovered Wikipedia has a lot of synopses for old TV shows with pretty
detailed commentary. I like to watch Hitchcock just to look for actors who
made it to the big time later on. HD OTA is great because I am getting to
watch old movies that used to be available only on AMC or TCM. That and the
Outer Limits where you can see a futuristic looking video-telephone device
equipped with a rotary dial!!!!! There's nothing as funny as old science
fiction where they either got it half wrong or all wrong. I remember when
computers were represented by huge arrays of flashing lights.

As fuzzy
as analog was, I don't remember losing key parts of the transmission they
way I do with digital.

Right. The arrogance with which they asserted that it woudl be better
than analog.

There are so many things that turned out to be better for the sellers than
the buyers. Hell, I like HD for movie viewing, but I don't want to see the
news anchor's nose hairs or acne scars. What ticks me off most is the
aspect ratio issue. I was watching something on Comcast's analog net and it
was a conversation between two people, neither of whom were on the screen in
4: 3.

I've also discovered that there's an incredible
variation in tuners. The Polaroid DVR doesn't get half the channels that
a
new, no name 7" portable can pull in off the same aerial. Probably a 7
year
difference in date of manufacture, though. I have noticed that even my
friends with FIOS have problems in rainstorms because the weather affects
the satellite transmissions from orbit to the FIOS dishes.

Very interesting. Thanks. I noticed this years ago with analog
tvs, and also with radios, that famous brand doesn't make much
difference

I've got almost a dozen different devices with ATSC (HD capable) tuners,
from USB cards to DVR to LCD TVs of differing sizes. The variation in the
number of channels each different device sees when scanning from the same
antenna is pretty darn wild. The best tuner is in my LCD TV, which sucks,
because I can't record from it! The worst is a Samsung DVD recorder, the
best a Panasonic DVD recorder (although the DVD part crapped out one week
after the warranty did after burning less than 25 disks so it's useless).
On the other hand, my older Panasonic DVR with DVD recorder has burned over
500.

Still, I'm happy with basic cable, OTA HD and Netflix. And having a DVR
with a commercial skip button. I don't think I could watch TV anymore
without one.

I didn't know they made those. A year or two before the switch, a
friend gave me a VCR with commerical skip, but it turned out the whole
machine didn't work. I wonder if I was supposed to know that. Anyhoe
I didnt' get it fixed before the switch. I still plan to connect a
VCR to watch movies I bought for a dollar and never watched, and
things I recorded, but there's no rush.

There aren't many DVRs left on the market. I was told is was because TIVO
sues them out of production, but I can't say for sure. But both the
Panasonic DVR and the Polaroid have commercial skip buttons (Panny is 1 min,
Polly is 30 sec). Neither is available new anymore, although I believe
Philips and ChannelMaster are making consumer HD DVRs. My units aren't HD,
but in HQ mode, I really don't notice the difference. OTA HD still has a
lot of SD content.

--
Bobby G.