So my last post was about adding Hulu and Boxee into Windows 7 Media Center, something that works well, provided your PC does the job on streaming video (as we found out much to my brief unhappiness, mine does not, so the upgrade is in process, which is why I was only unhappy for a short time). Why do this seemingly interminable antenna exploration? I just don't watch enough tv to justify paying AT&T $1600 a year, bottom line, and many fine local channels are broadcast near where I live. Hurrah!
Want the results? Scroll to the bottom now. Want the story? Read on... First, where am I? Well, I'm not going to tell you exactly but let's just say, hypothetically, that I live at the CalTrain station in San Francisco. (I don't, but it approximates things well enough). Here's my supposed TV signal map, courtesy of the FCC. As you can see I live within range of many strong UHF and a couple VHF-Hi tv signals, most of which are broadcasting from Sutro Tower or San Bruno Mountain. So I've got plenty of options and the signal is strong in my area, with not too many high buildings (meaning, a few, but I don't live in a basement) between me and both broadcast locations. However, they are in 2 different directions which means for me, a highly directional antenna is out, and I need a multi-directional antenna. On with the tests. First candidate on the block - this ugly number from RadioShack. Candidly, I'd bother reviewing this antenna if I cared about RadioShack. For me, it simply didn't work consistently. I'd get 5 strong channels, 5 wouldn't function, and others would pixelate all over the shop. The 'amplification' didn't seem to have any useful effect for me. It worked best stuck on a window right in the middle of the living room, exactly at eyeball height. Move it 4 inches up or down, left or right, and results were worse. So let's call that set of results, "middling". Needless to say, it was returned. Second on the block - this passive Christmas-like affair from Terk. I borrowed this from a friend, and sadly for me, this one was so useless in my testing that I began to get a little desperate. Turns out it's highly directional, regardless of the marketing blurbs, so passing by with a coffee cup was enough to cause a signal dropout even on strong stations. Maybe I just didn't have the patience for such a gross contraption. Whatever. So that's when the real research started. First up, research led me to indoor DB4/whisker designs, made from, wait for it....*ta-da*, coathanger wire. The street appeal of hacking together my own punked out DTV antenna was too much to bear, so I got started cutting up some of the 50 odd useless coathangers I found in my wardrobe. (Thanks go to my cleaners, and happily I've since found out that they recycle hangers so the other 44 are going back to where they came from imminently. Using an old shelf from Ikea (I know!) as the mount, here's the prototype result:
>> err, see pic 2 above <<
And the reception? Middling yet again. After several hours on this project over several days, it was time for a *facepalm*
By this time I was getting frustrated and turned to desperate measures. Pulling the box for my Hauppauge HVR950Q USB tv tuner stick out of the cupboard in order to have a poke around in it's documentation (you know I'm frustrated by something if I've gone all RTFM), I stumbled across this extendable, free monopole antenna:
