[kwlug-disc] (no subject)

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

On Feb 28, 2014, at 9:45 AM, Jason Locklin <locklin.jason at gmail.com> wrote:
> ChannelMaster rates it at 2.8dB typical, though I don't know of anyone
> who has tested it to verify. I don't think that's too bad at all, but
> I'm not surprised there are some much better ones made by small outfits.
> Consumer OTA stuff has a lot of compromises for mass production. Just
> look at the CM-4228HD going to a PCB balun. With a little skill, you can
> pretty much always make something of a higher quality than the consumer
> stuff (especially with a Metal Supermakets in town). That said, my issue
> with the CM7777 is not at all noise, it's that it seems to be
> particularly sensitive to overload from strong signals. You have to try
> to keep CKCO out of it as much as possible. If I set up another OTA
> system and need an amp, I will definitely be looking at the kitztech
> (are those noise figures for real? wow). We are moving soon so maybe I
> will find a buyer that wants OTA, and I can start from scratch at the
> new place. Thanks for the link.

The antenna I used was a DigiWave yagi of some description, about 4 or 5 feet long with the “arrow” reflector at the one end. I can’t recall the exact model now but it was cheap and not huge and NOT one of those giant 8-bay monsters you can get.

Regarding the KitzTech vs CM — I only did empirical testing (install CM, observe, install KitzTech, observe) and found that the latter helped bring in the weaker stations on the CN Tower considerably better. This is important with DXing since there’s a lot of air between here and there to get filled with precipitation which really knocks the signal strength down.

> Similar here. Netflix has put a huge dent into my media center and OTA
> use. We mostly watch news and Children's programming on OTA. It's
> probably not even strictly necessary now, but I just love the concept of
> pulling a ~13Mbit data stream out of thin air with some metal outside,
> for free. Also, wife-acceptance of our cord-free media seems to come
> down to reliability, and OTA is about as reliable as it gets. I even
> have a big commercial UPS that can run the TV all day if I wanted to.

Agreed; I really only wanted the antenna for local news and live feeds that we sometimes want (new year’s, olympic hockey, etc.) but even then streaming isn’t too bad. I kind of miss my MythTV setup, but then again I have more time now that I’m not constantly fiddling with it. :-)

-A.