Recording "Over The Air" programming

An issue for those thinking of giving up cable is how does one record TV shows without the cable companies DVR, subscription based TiVo or the old analog VCR. Well it turns out that Dish Network makes a product to do just that.
It's called the DTVPal DVR and it is made specifically for recording over the air broadcasts.
It comes with a nice electronic program guide that is available in most cities. Our CBS affiliate (KDKA) sends out the signal here that runs that guide.
Amazon carries it as well as Kmarts on-line store.
I ordered mine from Kmart today and should have it by November 4th.
There is a nice review of the unit here...

http://www.laaudiofile.com/dish_dtvpal_dvr.html

The links for Kmart and Amazon are no longer active so I deleted them.
The replacement, identical unit is now branded as the Channel Master CM 7000PAL...

http://www.channelmasterstore.com/HD_DVR_receiver_for_antenna_p/cm-7000pal.htm

DSL is up and running

Yay! The DSL line is up and running. We will be calling Comcast on Monday to cancel their service.
I'm glad I waited for Sean to set it up. He ran into a configuration problem and needed to call tech support. Also, trying to get 9 wireless devices to recognize the wireless signal was a chore. 2 Windows laptop, 2 Mac laptop, 2 iPhone, 2 iPod Touch and a wireless printer. Whew! 
Speed is pretty decent and faster than the current tier we had with Comcast at about half the cost.

The four port digital TV signal amplifier should be here early next week. That should allow us to pull in at least 2 more TV stations and possibly a few more.


I have a 30 foot antenna tower on the side of my house that currently has a 2 meter HAM radio ground plane antenna on it. I'm considering installing a really nice, large TV antenna on it with a rotor next spring. I should be able to pull in stations from Ohio, West Virginia & Central PA with a set-up like that! 

Yesterday I noticed that I was not receiving Channels 22-1 & 22-2. These are very local stations affiliated with MyNetworkTV & COOLTV. I checked the antenna charts and I believe that a water tower is between my house and their antenna. I still should be receiving their signal though so I checked my Radio Shack in-line amplifier by disconnecting it and found out that it is not working. That means that all the channels that I have been receiving are from the antenna signal only with no amplification.

I ordered a new power amplifier/splitter from Amazon made by PCT and it should be here by the weekend. Hopefully it will help pull in channels 22-1 & 22-1.

The combination amp/splitter will mean that I can eliminate the splitter that I have now for a cleaner and less signal loss connection to our 4 TV's.

I'll post an update when I have it set up.

Also, the Verizon DSL modem/wireless router came last Tuesday. I'm waiting for Sean to come over this weekend to help me install it. He's much better than I am at software/hardware installations.

Antenna/Cable Setup

I took a few photos of the new antenna. I also got a shot of the Signal Amplifier that has been connected to our in-house cable system. I had to install the Signal Amplifier about 10 years ago or so because our Comcast signal was so weak it would not supply a decent signal to our 4 TV's. I believe it's a 10-12 db gain unit. When connecting the new antenna last Friday, I disconnected the the Comcast cable from the Signal Amp and then just screwed in the Antenna cable to the Signal Amp. Easy installation. All four TV's have an excellent OTA Signal from the antenna. No dropout or pixelization.

OTA Channel Line-up

A few friends have asked what channels I pick up with the new Antenna.

Here they are...

North Hills Pittsburgh O.T.A. (over the air) Channel Line-up

2.1 ~ KDKA (CBS affiliate)

4.1 ~ WTAE (ABC affiliate)

4.2 ~ WTAE (THIS TV Network) reruns of vintage movies and TV programs

11.1 ~ WPXI (NBC Network affiliate)

11.2 ~ WPXI (RTV - Retro Television Network) reruns of vintage movies and TV programs

13.1 ~ WQED (main WQED programming / PBS)

13.2 ~ WQED (WQED-DT2 programming / Create Channel)

13.3 ~ WQED (WQED-DT3 programming / Neighborhood Channel)

16.1 ~ WQEX (ShopNBC) A home shopping network

16.2 ~ WQEX (BIZ TV) personal financial planning info

19.1 ~ WPCW (CW network) Formally UPN & WB. Various original & rerun programming.

40.1 ~ WPCB (Cornerstone TV) Christian television station

40.2 ~ BDC (Cornerstone TV) Christian television station

53.1 ~ (FOX affiliate)

53.2 ~ (CMT) Country Music Network - music videos, taped concerts, movies, biographies

59.1 WBGN (Independent Station) variety of programming - first run syndicated shows

59.2 HSN - Home Shopping Network

59.3 Info-TV - Infomercials

59.4 ~ Universal Sports Network - various Olympic style sports programming



That's about 6 more channels than Comcast was supplying on their lowest tier when I dropped them 

Hello DSL

I ordered high speed Verizon DSL today while I was watching the Steeler game. Second step of eliminating Comcast DONE!
I should have the DSL equipment in a few days.
I'll have my REALLY geeky son Sean help me install it next weekend.

This should actually simplify things as Verizon already supplies our land-line and the DSL bill will now be combined with the land-line and automatically deducted from our checking account.

Nancy is not ready to ditch the land-line yet. Maybe next year.

BTW, the TV Antenna is working out very well. The picture is VERY crisp. A lot better than Comcast was delivering and we're enjoying a few O.T.A. stations that are not offered on cable.

Goodbye Comcast

Comcast has been a miserable company to deal with from the start. Regular price increases, decreasing services, bad technicians (when they actually show up) and the worst customer service I've ever experienced.

Ever since the digital switchover last year they have been systematically removing the TV channels from our line-up in an effort to force us to go with their "digital" packages. Their digital packages require a Comcast addressable box to use with each TV that you have. In our case 6 of them and of course they charge a monthly fee for each of them. They really want you to go with the digital package as they can then sell you down-loadable movies and such. A big money maker for them. NO THANKS I kept telling them. It got so bad earlier this year that I decided to downgrade to their lowest level of service since I was not receiving that many TV stations anyway and was being charged well over $100 month for TV + Internet service. Our monthly bill was reduced to around $48. At first with their lowest tier TV service we were actually receiving more stations than before! That did not last long, maybe 6 months as they began switching those extra channels to their digital only service. Well OK I said, I'm not paying for those extra ones anyway. We were basically receiving only the local analog and digital channels, the weather channel and a few paid advertising channels as of 3 weeks ago.
Well about 2 weeks ago they started to remove the local digital channels from my line-up. In our case that was digital 2.1 (CBS), 11.1 (NBC) & 11.2 (RTV ). That left us with the analog feed of our local CBS & NBC affiliate which on an HD TV is barely watchable. Now remember, when the FCC made all the TV stations switch from analog to Digital a couple of years ago the cable companies were required to carry the digital local feeds even on their lowest tier service. Apparently a recent change in the law made them only liable to carry analog signals which Comcast is bent on carrying out.


About a 1 1/2 weeks ago after I noticed a few of our digital local channels missing I started a chat with Comcast via the internet with the intent of asking them why they removed those channels even as they are continually raising prices. After chatting with 3 different reps and being disconnected repeatedly from their chat service (literally dozens of times) over more than an hour and them trying to up-sell me to their digital service, the last one discontinued the chat with no warning. Not only that but less than 2 minutes later my internet connection went down. Apparently the little bastard pulled the plug on my internet service. All the while my son Sean was also logged into my laptop watching the chat and could not believe these imbeciles were not even answering my questions.
Sean commented on Twitter...

"Comcast is really terrible tonight, they are spending hours chatting with my dad about wpxi 11.1 and 11.2 disappearing from their lineup and now their comcast internet went down... WTF Comcast????"

I'm glad he was watching as I don't think anyone would have believed their ineptness.

I had to call them on the phone and get them to re-connect my internet service. Another 45 minutes down the drain with a fellow from India.

That was the last straw. After putting up with their crappy compressed Digital TV signals that they were taking away anyway and them supplying even worse analog TV signals  I knew it was time to dump them.

But who to go with?

Being an amateur  radio operator I knew that the Over The Air broadcast signals that the local stations put out are the very best quality you can get. After all, companies like Comcast receive those same OTA signals, compress them, stuff them into their cables and sell them to suckers like us.

Time to get a good antenna!

After thoroughly researching TV antennas, I came across Dennys Antenna Service in Michigan and really liked his small EZ-HD Antenna and decided to buy it and install it in my attic. 

Denny has a lot of good info and links on his site on how to choose the best antennas and equipment.

I bought the EZ-HD last Sunday and it came on Wednesday. Today I installed it in the attic and I am now enjoying the best Digital TV quality that I have ever seen and I get more channels than I was getting from Comcast! And it's FREE

http://www.dennysantennaservice.com/ez_hd_tv_Antenna.html

These 3 things also are a contributing factor in my decision to drop cable.
1. A lot of TV programming is available on-line and it's pretty easy to connect a laptop to our HD TV    and watch it on the "big screen".
2. We subscribe to Netflix and watch a lot of movies delivered to our mailbox.
3. Sean bought an Apple TV a few weeks ago and has been bringing it over on the weekends. A lot of programming is available through Apple TV including movies via our Netflix account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV

Next I need to dump our Comcast internet service which by the way I never really had many problems with. A few bad modems along the way and waiting way too long for their techs to come out but that is about all.

Sean recommended DSL Extreme which looks good and is faster and cheaper than what I have with Comcast. I'm also looking into Verizon DSL but eventually I would like to drop our land-line also so the DSL Extreme running on a dry loop may be the way to go.

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4587166_dry-loop-dsl-work.html

Stay tuned....