Well, my cable company has finally crossed the line (And The Walking Dead is done till October.) The cable portion of my bill was $90 or so. Now they will require me to rent a box for each tv that is 'not connected to Cox equipment,' for a monthly fee. I'm done. $100 a month for entertainment could buy a lot of a-la-carte episodes on Amazon, or a bunch of movies, etc, etc, all without commercials.
But I still need PBS for the kiddies, so I need an antenna. I'd like to do an outside antenna and distribute it throughout the house.
So, here's my setup:
One HTPC above the garage, which would be the easiest spot to locate an antenna as well. Then I would need to split the signal to get to two other TV's at the other end of the house. The cable runs to those TV's would likely be near 100 feet.
I see several types of external antennas available:
http://www.amazon.com/Channel-Master-30 ... tv+antenna
Coolest name, most expensive... Still around the same price as a month of cable.
http://www.amazon.com/Winegard-HD7694P- ... tv+antenna
I feel like I've heard of Winegard before... Kevin, is this what you have?
http://www.amazon.com/Amplified-Digital ... tv+antenna
There are a bunch of these weird looking buggers out there.. pretty cheap..
I'm in a location where both TVfool and antennaweb.org show that I will have an easy time getting most of the major channels (including PBS). But I would like to get as much as possible.
Future postings will probably go into how many roku's I need to buy to augment my already-great windows media center coverage in the house.
Cutting the Cable... Which TV antenna??
Re: Cutting the Cable... Which TV antenna??
You need to do an RF survey to figure out the signal strength and bearing of the transmitters you are interested in and pick an antenna (and installation height) based on those requirements. Contributing factors are optimizing the gain pattern of the antenna and seeing if you need any VHF bands. Since your reception should be the same as my reception, you will need the VHF high band, which are RI Fox ch 64 and RI CBS ch 12 (the actual RF channels are 12 and 13, hence VHF high).
You can make the HTPC be the hub and keep your signal strength up by running just one coax to the HTPC. I think you will need a new tuner, which will also require a little bit of a selection process, but no where near the antenna. I believe the Ceton tuner does CableCARD or QAM only, not ATSC.
Then you can route all signals digitally in the house. Record shows, schedule, watch live TV (through an Xbox 360). You can use the same Xbox 360 to do the things a Roku can do, I believe, while doubling as a media extender. Maybe Mulligan can help you figure out why the extender solution never worked out, in terms of network performance issues.
Another option is to use the Silicon Dust Ethernet-based tuner, which would let multiple HTPCs share the tuner pool, giving you live TV at multiple TVs (requires a WMC box, instead of an Xbox 360, depending on whether that is advantageous to you). But you won't have an integrated recording schedule with that approach.
Either way, I would aim for a solution/architecture that derived maximum utility from the HTPC and supplement with as little as possible. Or nothing if you get cheap Xbox 360s to use as set top boxes, which should do all the things a Roku can do, plus WMC, plus games. Xbox 360 also has an IR receiver and you may be able to use a regular WMC remote for non-WMC features, which would be even better.
You can make the HTPC be the hub and keep your signal strength up by running just one coax to the HTPC. I think you will need a new tuner, which will also require a little bit of a selection process, but no where near the antenna. I believe the Ceton tuner does CableCARD or QAM only, not ATSC.
Then you can route all signals digitally in the house. Record shows, schedule, watch live TV (through an Xbox 360). You can use the same Xbox 360 to do the things a Roku can do, I believe, while doubling as a media extender. Maybe Mulligan can help you figure out why the extender solution never worked out, in terms of network performance issues.
Another option is to use the Silicon Dust Ethernet-based tuner, which would let multiple HTPCs share the tuner pool, giving you live TV at multiple TVs (requires a WMC box, instead of an Xbox 360, depending on whether that is advantageous to you). But you won't have an integrated recording schedule with that approach.
Either way, I would aim for a solution/architecture that derived maximum utility from the HTPC and supplement with as little as possible. Or nothing if you get cheap Xbox 360s to use as set top boxes, which should do all the things a Roku can do, plus WMC, plus games. Xbox 360 also has an IR receiver and you may be able to use a regular WMC remote for non-WMC features, which would be even better.
Re: Cutting the Cable... Which TV antenna??
Other ideas I am kicking around because my FIOS contract is up in either June or July and I expect at least a $50 hike per month:
Chromecast on each TV - 30-35 each * 2 TVs = $75 one time cost.
Hulu plus - Has every show my wife watches, the Speed channel, Discovery, Science etc. $8 per month
Netflix - $8 per month - better movies than Hulu, more old shows on demand, who knows, if Hulu is really good, might cancel Netflix.
Internet: 55 or 65 depending on if I want 25 or 50 mbps through Verizon. I already have Netflix, so total I am paying 103.69 + 8 = 111.69
I could get rid of cable and the phone that only telemarketers use and add Hulu and pay:
55 + 10 tax + 8 + 8 = $81
65 + 10 tax + 8 + 8 = $91
You will say, 91 isn't much less than 111, but that 111 is about to go up significantly, and the 91 may actually have more programming. I lose Velocity, but gain Speed, which has a lot of overlap. Plus I don't watch much TV, and Hulu has everything my wife watches. Also with the baby, we don't watch anything when it airs, it is all DVR, and Hulu is like a huge cloud DVR, you can watch any show any time. It looks like some shows are available a day later, but who cares?
If you haven't looked at Hulu, I recommend it. It has a lot more than I thought it did.
Chromecast on each TV - 30-35 each * 2 TVs = $75 one time cost.
Hulu plus - Has every show my wife watches, the Speed channel, Discovery, Science etc. $8 per month
Netflix - $8 per month - better movies than Hulu, more old shows on demand, who knows, if Hulu is really good, might cancel Netflix.
Internet: 55 or 65 depending on if I want 25 or 50 mbps through Verizon. I already have Netflix, so total I am paying 103.69 + 8 = 111.69
I could get rid of cable and the phone that only telemarketers use and add Hulu and pay:
55 + 10 tax + 8 + 8 = $81
65 + 10 tax + 8 + 8 = $91
You will say, 91 isn't much less than 111, but that 111 is about to go up significantly, and the 91 may actually have more programming. I lose Velocity, but gain Speed, which has a lot of overlap. Plus I don't watch much TV, and Hulu has everything my wife watches. Also with the baby, we don't watch anything when it airs, it is all DVR, and Hulu is like a huge cloud DVR, you can watch any show any time. It looks like some shows are available a day later, but who cares?
If you haven't looked at Hulu, I recommend it. It has a lot more than I thought it did.
Re: Cutting the Cable... Which TV antenna??
Tuner recommendation for Ed:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1
This is actually the only thing that Newegg carries which would work for your application (aside from crappy USB single tuners).
The Silicon Dust gives you a lot of flexibility though. Connect it as close to where the coax comes into the house as you can and then distribute via network. Clients will need to be hard wired for consistent performance.
Using the Silicon Dust driver, WMC will see two tuners and work normally but you can also put those tuners into a pool and let multiple WMC clients access them if you want. But if you had network everywhere that you had a WMC client, you would be better served to dedicate those tuners to a single, central WMC and use an XBox 360 at each remote TV (not limited to two, either).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1
This is actually the only thing that Newegg carries which would work for your application (aside from crappy USB single tuners).
The Silicon Dust gives you a lot of flexibility though. Connect it as close to where the coax comes into the house as you can and then distribute via network. Clients will need to be hard wired for consistent performance.
Using the Silicon Dust driver, WMC will see two tuners and work normally but you can also put those tuners into a pool and let multiple WMC clients access them if you want. But if you had network everywhere that you had a WMC client, you would be better served to dedicate those tuners to a single, central WMC and use an XBox 360 at each remote TV (not limited to two, either).
Re: Cutting the Cable... Which TV antenna??
Just to put the tuner thing to bed, Ceton has this on their FAQ:
ATSC (e.g. over-the-air digital broadcast): InfiniTV is designed for digital cable and does not support over-the-air ATSC broadcasts. Low-cost ATSC TV tuners are available from a number of manufacturers. You can install InfiniTV tuners as well as ATSC and/or analog tuners on the same PC.