Cable Alternatives

[Jayme]

I had a commercial antenna and it was only picking up about 40% signal at my house - I'm in a forested area and on the wrong side of a large hill that blocks signal from the three broadcast towers that are in Clayton Park.

This is a bit of a tangent, but there are actually only 2 broadcast towers (well, I suppose you could argue 3 but 1 is only a backup so it just gets used when the big one is being serviced). As of two years ago, only the CBC site had a tv antenna, but I can see the CHUM tower has what looks to be a tv antenna on top of their tower now too (presumably CTV is transmitting off that one). Anyhow, not that it really matters. TV is quite high frequency though, and digital transmitters actually broadcast a much lower power levels than the old analog ones, so it becomes somewhat even more line of sight. But the nice thing with digital tv is that you can get very clear reception with a much lower signal. I think the coolest thing about ATSC is that it's both modulated in amplitude and frequency. We are about to start building tv transmitters at work actually.

Anyway, after that ramble, I guess the real relevant point is if you hope to watch digital tv over the air, you need to have a decent path to the tower for a good signal.

[TJ Brew]

Thanks for all the information.

I hope to get sabnzbd-sick-beard-couchpotato-and-headphones all up and running this weekend. OTA we will play by year and see if we really miss the news and local programming.

[Jayme]

OTA we will play by year and see if we really miss the news and local programming.

I actually think most of the local news programs stream online now anyhow. CBC does at least.

[sleepyjamie]

We have two Apple TV's here. We're an all Apple household so all of our video is in iTunes on my iMac in my office. Gets streamed throughout the house from there. I've had a number of different setups running throughout the years, XBMC, etc. but this has been by far the easiest for me.

I run Sickbeard, CouchPotato, and SabNZBd on the iMac to grab video for me automatically and have a bunch of scripts that I've built to automatically convert, tag and import into iTunes. Another script notifies me on my phone when a new video has been downloaded and is ready to watch. /nerd

this is something i would like to setup. i havent really had the time to invest in it.

can you point me to what i need to do?

im thinking of getting a NAS and raspberry pi so i can run something low power rather than my desktop machine for searching the online content. then convert and push it into itunes so i can stream it to my appletv.

[jeffsmith]

We have two Apple TV's here. We're an all Apple household so all of our video is in iTunes on my iMac in my office. Gets streamed throughout the house from there. I've had a number of different setups running throughout the years, XBMC, etc. but this has been by far the easiest for me.

I run Sickbeard, CouchPotato, and SabNZBd on the iMac to grab video for me automatically and have a bunch of scripts that I've built to automatically convert, tag and import into iTunes. Another script notifies me on my phone when a new video has been downloaded and is ready to watch. /nerd

this is something i would like to setup. i havent really had the time to invest in it.

can you point me to what i need to do?

im thinking of getting a NAS and raspberry pi so i can run something low power rather than my desktop machine for searching the online content. then convert and push it into itunes so i can stream it to my appletv.

I posted a link to a pretty comprehensive guide earlier in this thread. It should help you get up and running.

[GillettBreweryCnslt]

Anyway, after that ramble, I guess the real relevant point is if you hope to watch digital tv over the air, you need to have a decent path to the tower for a good signal.

True, however the correct antenna makes a world of difference. Like I said, my off-the-shelf antenna was terrible (even with the $100 price-tag and high consumer ratings), but once I built that grey-hoverman (SBGH) antenna, even though I don't have a great line-of site, I managed to get 100% signal.

Also, if you go to http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and check your specific address then you can find out exactly where you need to point the antenna. I guessed at first and it wasn't so good, but once I went up with a compass and pointed it correctly my signal increased from fair to good, then the home-made antenna took it from good to spectacular.

There are a lot of factors that the average antenna user doesn't take into consideration that can make a world of difference.

[Jayme]

Somewhere I've got a 1000+ page technical manual on antennas if anyone is interest

[OldMalt]

Most TVs built in the last 4 years have built in ATSC tuners, so before running out and buying a box for OTA you might want to look up whether your TV model has one. I had a great improvement in the number of channels I received when I mounted a Channel Master CM 4221HD 4-bay HDTV/UHF Antenna (CM4221HD) on my roof when I was still living in Toronto. I was receiving 4 - 6 channels and went up to ~17. Obviously you won't get more than 3 in Halifax since that is all that are broadcasting, but I mention it because I was satisfied with the antenna and chimney mount solution. I bought and installed it for about $125 and had great despite the depression my house was situated in.

Right now I am only getting Global via OTA in Dartmouth, but I haven't moved the antenna to the roof. I'll need to get a larger ladder first.

[Downs]

little late to this convo

but i cancelled cable 3 years ago

for a few years i was downloading, first with torrents then wth ddl's (direct downloads)

i did a lot of looking and went with an apple tv 2
hacked it and run xbmc and everyone else

i was using unblock-us for us content but it started conflicting with the atv a week ago
back to canada netflix BOOOO

i dont download anything anymore
used too all the time
now i can find pretty much anything on xbmc
by far the best way to stop getting scrwed by the cable companies

oh and thank the lord for eastlink
was in ontario for a year on rogers
NO unlimited bandwidth option
netflix killed me the first month

[Jimmy]

i dont download anything anymore
used too all the time
now i can find pretty much anything on xbmc
by far the best way to stop getting scrwed by the cable companies

Pardon my stupidity, but isn't XBMC just a media center type of application? Don't you still have to download the videos to play on XBMC?

If you don't have to download, what's available on XBMC?

[RubberToe]

there's video plugins to stream from various sources, that might be what he means.

Sent from the brew timer.

[Jimmy]

there's video plugins to stream from various sources, that might be what he means.

Sent from the brew timer.

Any high quality sources for new TV shows? I'm wondering if it could replace torrents for next day watching of popular shows..

[Downs]

yes jimmy that is exactly what i do
downloading has gone away on the bleeding edge sites
its all streaming now

i watch last nights tv tonight
icefilms has both dvd quality (for the atv cause hd will crash it basically)
and then they offer hd streams as well
i stay away from those on the atv
assuming if you xbmc on a laptop or something that can handle the hd streams they will work
ive had some VERY high quality regular quality streams too
things like sons of anarchy and breaking bad
even the "lower quality" are pretty darn good

[TJ Brew]

Finally got around to doing this. The guide is great, there are a few things that are a little out dated, and I am not convinced that couch potato is working correctly. Everything else went well.

[jacinthebox]

anyone figure out how to get they US feed for the superbowl? tablet or laptop hooked up to the tv and stream using a proxy?

I want to watch the US ads, and not another peracreate and Robins filled superbowl.

[mr x]

You should be able to find a reasonable feed off wiziwig.

[TJ Brew]

I have another question about couch potato. It has found all the movies I was looking for, awesome. So far they are .rar and .mkv .nfro files. How do you watch those? Will using XBMC or Plex solve my problem? I want to be able to access the movies from my Imac and my PS3.

[jacinthebox]

awesome...i'd rather see the US ads live...vrs. after the game

[jeffsmith]

I have another question about couch potato. It has found all the movies I was looking for, awesome. So far they are .rar and .mkv .nfro files. How do you watch those? Will using XMBC or Plex solve my problem? I want to be able to access the movies from my Imac and my PS3.

The .rar files are compressed files and will need something like MacPAR Deluxe to verify and unzip. .nfo files are just text files, they're not of any real value. I'm not sure if XBMC or Plex would play .mkv files, but I would assume they likely do.

[S-04]

I got rid of my tv years ago and have been downloading all my content via torrents etc., but recently I read an article that said that American "copyright trolls" have been given the right to fine/sue Canadian citizens by new Canadian federal legislation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/11/28 ... 03809.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

This has me seriously paranoid. I even gave netflix a try, but their selection is terrible.

[derek]

I got rid of my tv years ago and have been downloading all my content via torrents etc., but recently I read an article that said that American "copyright trolls" have been given the right to fine/sue Canadian citizens by new Canadian federal legislation.

Certainly there's at least one Montreal company helping them out, searching for us. Methinks I don't do enough of it to be worth catching (I have one season of Doctor Who, two seasons of Game of Thrones, copies - only - of vinyl albums I actually own, and a very few books), but I could be in for an unpleasant surprise.

[bluenose]

does anyone have any experience with xbmc on pc?

I'm so vanilla I don't even know how to setup a home network

[RubberToe]

FWIW xbmc plays videos inside rar files.

Sent from the brew timer.

[S-04]

XBMC is awesome.

[S-04]

...

I could be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Apparently they've

collected data on one million people who allegedly participated in illegal file-sharing, potentially exposing those people to U.S.-style lawsuits from copyright holders.

So I'm thinking... is 1 in 35 Canadians a worse pirate than me? Uh-oh.