the andersonfam enters the world of HD
I’m officially the owner of an OTA HD receiver now. I picked up a Voom receiver, which, at one point, Voom customers would have used to get HD satellite service. Now that Voom is defunct, the receivers are being used by people for their included OTA HD receiver. I decided to go HD due to the horrible quality of the basic (analog) cable service we’d been experiencing as of late. We don’t own an HDTV, but figured that the HD signal (even when down-sampled) would have to be higher-quality than what we had been getting. I’m certainly pleased with the results…I’m quite close to the Shoreview Towers, so I didn’t even need the “official” HD antenna I bought. With just a little wire whip antenna, I was able to pull in all the local HD channels with between 95-100% signal strength.
Nice. What channels are you able to get in HD? Just the locals or did you pick up HDNET, DISCHD, ESPNHD???
Just the local broadcast channels. Here’s a good listing:
HDTV Twin Cities.
Did you get that on Ebay?
Yup. $35 bucks. They’re going for more like $75 now, though.
Too bad they don’t broadcast PAX in HD. Little House on the Praire would ROCK in high def.
To get the cable channels, you have to have at least basic digital cable and an STB, at least with Comcast. For $5/month you can get HD above that package, but the $10/month is more worth it since it comes with an HD DVR.
I agree, even on our SDTV the picture is night and day better. The main downside being everything is letterboxed. Anne has mentioned especially the obvious difference in seeing numbers on players’ jerseys during basketball games, for example. That’s a good deal on the tuner.. a year ago they were $150 at the cheapest and more like $200. I ended up getting a PCI card that acted as a combination OTA tuner and DVR, but ended up scrapping the idea and selling it once I found out about how cheap an HD DVR is (since we get digital cable anyway).