[kwlug-disc] Home made indoor TV Antenna

[Paul Gallaway]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> 5-1  CBLT-DT CBC Toronto
> 6-1  CIII-HD Global Toronto, from Paris tower
> 9-1  CFTO    CTV Toronto (same as 13, but Toronto news)
> 11-1 CHCH-HD Independent from Hamilton
> 13-1 CKCO    CTV Kitchener (same as 9 except for news)
> 19-1 TVO     TVO Toronto
> 25-1 CBLFTDT CBC Toronto French
> 28-1 TVO     Same as 19, but from the Paris tower
> 35-1 CHCJ-DT CTV Two
> 36-1 CITS-HD Christian Hamilton
> 40-1 CJMT    Omni
> 41-1 CIII-HD Same as 6, but from CN Tower
> 47-1 CFMT    Omni
> 57-1 CITYTV  City TV Toronto

Looks good! If all those are steady then you've one-upped me with CTV2
(CHCJ) and CTV out of Toronto (two-upped?). The DB8 is a less
effective VHF antenna than the 4228HD which might explain you getting
channel 9 (channels 5, 6, and 11 are virtual channels broadcast on UHF
bands and I'm told a paper clip will pick up CKCO). I've had
successful recordings on CHCH the past couple weeks so perhaps I need
to re-scan and see if CTV2 will lock now, it just started broadcasting
last fall/winter.

I've been curious about the Kitztech preamps. On paper they look
fantastic (lowest noise on the market I believe). There was not a lot
of testing done with them when I was doing my setup and I think the
version with DC injection had just come to market. Keep us posted on
your setup. I suspect you might see some of the more marginal channels
get dropped in the fall but perhaps the Kitztech will allow you
continue locking them. I'm definitely curious about that!

ATSC recordings are just dumps of the digital transmission (MPEG2) to
disk so size depends on the data rate of the transmitter which can
vary to some degree between different channels and possibly the
content being transmitted. This is true of the cheap ATSC PVRs
available, and uber advanced PVRs like MythTV.  On average I see about
6.3-6.5 GiB per hour according to MythTV. If Khalid and I record the
same program with 100% signal then we'd end up with identical
recordings (assuming synchronized start and end times etc.). MythTV
does do commercial detection but by default it does not modify the
recording. You can't cut the commercials without some form of
transcoding which increases my power usage (lossless transcoding is
relatively low processor intensity as it just trims the file of the
excess data but it hasn't worked consistently in the last couple
revisions), and it's risky without first reviewing the proposed cuts
because it's not perfect. Any PVR will generally give you a 30 second
jump key to miss 95% of the commercial content. MythTV will
automatically skip 99% of commercials and allow you to return to the
jump point when it messes it up.

The data rates used for ATSC MPEG2 recordings are generally not good
for transmitting over home wireless networks. Theoretically it should
work in 802.11n but results are mixed as reported on the MythTV
mailing list. You might have a chance with an 802.11ac but I haven't
seen anyone reporting on it. There is a MythTV Android app that works
around this by transcoding on the server on the fly to lower bitrates.
Another option for wireless DLNA playback to 'dumb' or portable
devices might be the new HDHomeRun that does hardware H264 encoding
reducing the demands for retransmitting over 802.11 on your network:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345021

~pAul.

all good things, all in good time...