Tuner for OTA Broadcasts in the US (1 Viewer)

[depassp]

The capability is there to provide guide info in OTA, but not all providers do (or do it properly).

You can support schedulesdirect if you like.

Personally, I use the xmltv plugin and mc2xml, which pulls guide info from microsoft or from titantv

 

[crawdaddy]

It appears that the HVR-1250 only has a 3 egg rating at newegg. Not that I doubt winterscape, but anyone else have any experience with that model card? I'm in an area that could be considered a weak signal area, so I need good sensitivity. Additionaly, it's going in my main operations computer, which would be running tv-server in the background. Will not having a MPEG encoder onboard dump the encoding duties over to the processor? Thanks.

 

[depassp]

You don't need an MPEG encoder for ATSC, it's already digital.

 

[winterescape]

1) As mentioned, you do not need any encoding for over the air ATSC, Us digital TV.
2) You can subscribe to schedules direct or use zap2xml or MC2xml. See this thread…
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/newcomers-forum-240/web-epg-zap2it-zap2xml-70394/

No idea why the 1250 only gets 3 eggs...

 

[GuruSR]

I'm also OTA (have been for over 40 years). Some things to consider when you convert from analog to digital:

1. Replace your distribution amp (the unit that supplies coax cable to various rooms), if you don't have one, consider getting rid of that splitter web and putting one in properly.
2. Adding in a digital pre-amp on the antenna mast to the distribution amp. You'll see those channels that are only there parts of the day go solid. (Thats my current problem, but the weather is too sour this year to do the addition. I do have the unit though.)
3. Make sure you're using either a really large antenna up high (have 12 footer well above the roof line) or one of the new digital ones with a good clear view of everything, some people like to mount them onto their chimney. If you have a converter box for digital, use it's signal meter to gauge where to aim it for the most of your channels. If you live in the GTA area, there's "saveandreplay.com", you can actually visit them for more information, great people. They even have all the stuff you need for free OTA TV and Satelite. If you don't live near them, they will ship, great prices too, I shopped around first.
4. Lastly, don't cheap out, I spent a grand replacing my vcr's with dvrs (capable of doing OTA recording), amp, pre-amp, digital switcher (for the entire set of equipment). It may be a lot at first, but imagine what you paid on cable compared to it. My 1G took less than 10 months to pay for itself.

Some things to know about OTA. OTA is mostly 100% (uncompressed) signal, whereas cable, satelite are mostly 75% or less. A 1 hour HD show on OTA is typically a 6+ GB .ts, recorded the new "V" series on ABC, each .ts was roughly 6GB (+/- very little). So if you're going to do a lot of recording with OTA, expect enormous files and possibly put a 1TB SATA300 AV drive in and dedicate it only for recordings.

A shame the mpeg recording was removed, otherwise it'd be a lot less of a space hog, but mind you, OTA at 100% isn't going to get any smaller anyways, unless you want to lose quality. Which I guess you could, but it'd put you back to cable quality.

Oh and free TV rocks.

GuruSR.

 

[crawdaddy]

Just bit the bullet and bought the HVR-1250 per winsterscape's reccomendation. Hopefully I didn't screw up...

 

[winterescape]

I'm also OTA (have been for over 40 years). Some things to consider when you convert from analog to digital:

1. Replace your distribution amp (the unit that supplies coax cable to various rooms), if you don't have one, consider getting rid of that splitter web and putting one in properly.
2. Adding in a digital pre-amp on the antenna mast to the distribution amp. You'll see those channels that are only there parts of the day go solid. (Thats my current problem, but the weather is too sour this year to do the addition. I do have the unit though.)
3. Make sure you're using either a really large antenna up high (have 12 footer well above the roof line) or one of the new digital ones with a good clear view of everything, some people like to mount them onto their chimney. If you have a converter box for digital, use it's signal meter to gauge where to aim it for the most of your channels. If you live in the GTA area, there's "saveandreplay.com", you can actually visit them for more information, great people. They even have all the stuff you need for free OTA TV and Satelite. If you don't live near them, they will ship, great prices too, I shopped around first.
4. Lastly, don't cheap out, I spent a grand replacing my vcr's with dvrs (capable of doing OTA recording), amp, pre-amp, digital switcher (for the entire set of equipment). It may be a lot at first, but imagine what you paid on cable compared to it. My 1G took less than 10 months to pay for itself.

Some things to know about OTA. OTA is mostly 100% (uncompressed) signal, whereas cable, satelite are mostly 75% or less. A 1 hour HD show on OTA is typically a 6+ GB .ts, recorded the new "V" series on ABC, each .ts was roughly 6GB (+/- very little). So if you're going to do a lot of recording with OTA, expect enormous files and possibly put a 1TB SATA300 AV drive in and dedicate it only for recordings.

A shame the mpeg recording was removed, otherwise it'd be a lot less of a space hog, but mind you, OTA at 100% isn't going to get any smaller anyways, unless you want to lose quality. Which I guess you could, but it'd put you back to cable quality.

Oh and free TV rocks.

GuruSR.

Good list of things to check. I will add that a very good web site for US antenna selection is AntennaWeb just enter your zip and select an antenna by color code.

Your comment about the ATSC data stream is somewhat misleading but we both come to the same conclusion. You need a big hard drive. All ATSC broadcast is compressed using MPEG. The cable companies just throw away more data to allow them to fit more channels over the pipe. If you use Media Portal, and most other DVR software or hardware solutions, it does just store the Transport stream and then decompress it on the fly to display it when played back.

I think saying, “most cable and satellite uses a higher compression ratio than network broadcast ATSC TV” makes your point.

 

[crawdaddy]

Oddly enough, antennaweb says that I shouldn't be recieving ANY OTA channels, even though I'm recieving channels from 3 different cities, some quite far away. But, my antenna is one of those crank-up camper antennas on the roof of my camper, which has an apparently powerful pre-amp in the antenna. I still need to take a little while to try to tune the aiming of the antenna for max reception. Wish me luck with the HVR-1250!

 

[winterescape]

Oddly enough, antennaweb says that I shouldn't be recieving ANY OTA channels, even though I'm recieving channels from 3 different cities, some quite far away. But, my antenna is one of those crank-up camper antennas on the roof of my camper, which has an apparently powerful pre-amp in the antenna. I still need to take a little while to try to tune the aiming of the antenna for max reception. Wish me luck with the HVR-1250!

Wow, the channels don’t even show on the list for the larger/ stronger antennas? Hmmm…

 

[crawdaddy]

Yeah, I know. When I enter in my exact location, or ZIP code, it says that I don't have any stations within recievable distance. And this isn't a fluke either. My grandfather, who also lives about 100 yards from me in a camper can pick up the same stations on his TVs. I think it's the directional amplified antennas we have on our campers that are making it possible. They must have some uber-high gain on them, albeit moderately directional. I hope if this hauppage card works out well to get a second and attach it to another directional antenna pointed at some of the affiliates that I can only pick up weakly....backup in the event of bad signal strength.