Quote:
Originally Posted by crysto4
Okay then... I've had a lot of time to think about what has been suggested here.
I am now thinking a little differently on what I should be ready for.
I would like the unit for set to be a useful item for a digital tv. Is this meaning I'd need to consider DVR? If so, is there one that has good reviews? Will it work on my analog tv? From what I've read, I think it should but look to your voices to confirm.
I also would like to start with an indoor attic antenna which would simply be the easiest to install. I'd like it to also work on digital TVs. The 7000R has been mentioned as a great unit but I wonder if I decide to eliminate cable boxes what impact hooking an antenna to more than one tv could be? How many antennas could I possibly need? If I decide I get enough tv with the analog I'll assume the same could be expected of digital tvs? I probably won't need set-top boxes for the digital tvs but ask that with my new consideration of the task of which I'm about ready to pull the trigger on which are solidly reccomended boxes (DVR type) and attic antennas and for multiple tvs is more than one antenna advised?
Thanks,
CJ
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I'll take a shot at answering some of your questions here. I think maybe all the lingo scrambled by marketing is confusing you some.
Any TV antenna works for you. Your father's old TV antenna from 1978 would tune HDTV just fine. Don't let the marketing guys melt your brain! You want one that pulls UHF+VHF.....just like dear old dad's.
As for how many TV's can you feed with one antenna, it depends on the signal strength and how much loss you get down the line. The beauty of doing this yourself is that you hook up one, check it out, then insert a splitter and try another. At worst, you can add an amp down the road. If you can home run the cable into a close and split out from there, that's usually the best setup.
As for how many antennas, start with one. You have signals all over you. I'm guessing you can see a tower out the window too. I don't think it'll take much to get a ton of channels. I'm not sure I've seen such a channel filled plot before. The HD7000R should resonate as soon as you pull it out of the box!
Set top boxes are for cable - those go away. You'll be tuning digital.
Get that going, then look into DVRs. That way, you don't get too many factors in the mix at once. After all TV's can get plenty of channels, you can look into DVR's. We have 3 TV's. One uses a Windows Media Center 7 PC for DVR duties - it's the big one we watch the most. A smaller one just gets a coax antenna feed. Same for the 3rd, which also has a Roku attached to it. I use devices called HDHomeruns that puts the TV signal on my local area network. It feeds the WMC PC and it also lets us watch TV on our laptops. I'm a computer guy so I like that setup. If you want something more plug n play, there's OTA DVR's out there. I think Tivo and Channel Master each have some. The prices may not seem very cheap, but when you cost them out over a couple years, they're dirt cheap vs the cable boxes you pay for now.