TV Question

[[JiF][AARP]Tissueman]

TV question: Most of you know that I’m a frugal, trailing edge technologist. The house we bought came with a TV antenna in the attic. For the first 20 years we lived here we used this antenna. A few years ago my wife decided to get basic cable because she was tired of poor reception on some channels. Actually, I think the level we have is below basic, perhaps survival level. We get NBC, CBS, ABC, two local channels (19 and 64), CSpan, CSpan2, some shopping channels, several PBS channels, etc. – a total of about 25 channels with perhaps half useful.

The family room TV was a very old CRT that was getting painful to watch (except for my wife – see note below). The top of the picture was often wavy and the colors were washed out. The red would often smear. My daughter and her husband (along with many others) would always make fun of the TV. They were visiting this weekend and my wife said “go buy a TV”.

I bought her a 32 inch Samsung LCD and hooked it up to the cable (Actually my son-in-law did. I rely on him for audio-visual stuff. It’s his passion.) Since we have the cheap cable plan we only get one channel in high definition. My plan is to connect it to the attic antenna to see how many high def channels I can pull in (it has built in high def thingy). There are supposed to be 13 over-the-air high def stations in the area.

When we had the cable installed, I told the guy to use the antenna line I had running down from the attic rather than run another line. So my plan is to go into the attic and disconnect the cable and connect the antenna and just use the cable network to feed my TV’s for a test (assuming it isn’t some sort of permanent splice). If I can successfully pull in over-the-air signals I’ll either run two lines down so I can connect both or if my wife is happy with over-the-air only we’ll drop cable.

My question: This means I’ll be going through the splitters the cable guy installed when he ran the cable. Will this work for an over-the-air signal? I also have the old booster/splitter I installed to run multiple TV’s off the antenna. I could hook that up, but if the existing set-up works I’ll just keep it.

WIFE NOTE: Tissuema’am was willing to watch the wavy TV with washed out smearing colors without complaint. The new TV doesn’t show the regular broadcast signal real clear. It is slightly blurry. My s-i-l explained why to me (difference in lines). I don’t think it looks any worse than the old TV, but she doesn’t like it. I think she is comparing it to the one high def channel we get. She was complaining about it last night. I asked her if she wanted me to put the old TV back. She said she might. I bought this TV with a vision of the future when high def is the norm. She obviously has a different vision.

[[JiF]KellysHero]

It should go through the splitters just fine and the booster will help as well. There are new antenna's for digital (HD) signals that work better so your old antenna may have to go, but you'll probably be dropping the cable once you start watching in HD unless you like CSPAN and the home shopping networks.

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and Channel 64 each have two channels in the digital spectrum. One is the normal broadcast, the other is weather/alternative programming. Not to mention PBS has channels 14-1, 14-2,14-3, 14-4, and 14-5. Plus there is another PBS broadcaster, and Channel 25 and 38 (one or both are in HiDef).

The rub about these TV's in general is they all pretty much broadcast HD great, it's when you get to the standard def stuff that they have issues. Samsung should be one of the better brands at displaying SD signals based on reputation. You can adjust the aspect ratio when watching SD broadcast that may help some. SD is 4:3, but many TV's have the option of 4:3 expanded view, which stretches the screen out so that there are no black bars on the sides when viewing. HD on the other hand is broadcast at 16:9 which is the aspect ratio of your TV. There could be burn in issues with LCD's so you may want to switch the aspect ratio every once in a while to 4:3 expanded.

[[JiF][AARP]Tissueman]

UPDATE: I could make this a very long story and perhaps I will write up something on it sometime. Some of may remember my story about how many times I had to crawl over my entertainment center last time I did an AV upgrade. I'm running off my old attic antenna now pulling in 44 channels. Fifteen (15) of them are regular broadcast with signals of varying quality. The other twenty-nine (29) are digital signals with about 9 in high def. I get NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CH64 in high def along with some PBS stations. Many of the digital signals are the multiple channels some PBS stations are broadcasting. In order for this to happen, I had to run through the old splitter/booster I used to use and upgrade most of the cables. I was using a hodge podge of cables that I had lying around or fabricated myself. Some were pretty cheap; they didn't even screw on. The main cable running from the attic to the basement where the splitter/booster resides was here when I moved into the house in 1893. Now I'll see how the quality holds up for the next few weeks. If it holds, we'll cancel our $10.45 a month survival cable and just use the over the air signals.

[[JiF]LtWaterboy]

UPDATE: I could make this a very long story and perhaps I will write up something on it sometime. Some of may remember my story about how many times I had to crawl over my entertainment center last time I did an AV upgrade. I'm running off my old attic antenna now pulling in 44 channels. Fifteen (15) of them are regular broadcast with signals of varying quality. The other twenty-nine (29) are digital signals with about 9 in high def. I get NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CH64 in high def along with some PBS stations. Many of the digital signals are the multiple channels some PBS stations are broadcasting. In order for this to happen, I had to run through the old splitter/booster I used to use and upgrade most of the cables. I was using a hodge podge of cables that I had lying around or fabricated myself. Some were pretty cheap; they didn't even screw on. The main cable running from the attic to the basement where the splitter/booster resides was here when I moved into the house in 1893. Now I'll see how the quality holds up for the next few weeks. If it holds, we'll cancel our $10.45 a month survival cable and just use the over the air signals.

You moved into your house in 1893????

Damn! You're older than I thought!!!

LT

ps. I think I know what you meant...