In my office at home, I use my computer as a second TV, so when my wife is watching something I find boring, I can watch what I want. Righit now I have a Silver Sensor indoor antenna and use BeyondTV as my DVR.
Before I originally bought the the antenna, a tuner card, and BeyondTV, I looked at Antennaweb.org to see if I was able to get any over the air broadcast HD channels. For the most part I am able to get every channel you would expect. However, a couple channels are a pain to watch.
Broadcast HD programming does not get “snow” if you get bad reception. It just doesn’t show. In some cases, it is like watching streaming video, with constant buffering. Recently, I got the great idea that I should run coxial cable through the walls upstairs to my attic and hope that improves the reception. I would still use the Silver Sensor, but it would just sit in the attic instead of my office. I know the best thing would be to have an outside antenna but I just do not want to install one.
I have no idea whether reception would improve if I put an antenna in the attic. Before I rip open my walls to run cable, I am going to test it out though by running the cable up the stairs. I figure that is the low tech way of seeing if I am an idiot or not, without having patch holes throughout my house.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Maybe not as economical, but you could also check out the HDHomeRun which would send the HD OTA (or clear QAM) over your home network to BTV.
By the way, reception is often dependent on the tuner hardware itself. I had an LG HD STB tuner which wasn’t great, but the Series3 TiVo by comparison is much better at picking up HD signals (ABC being the prime example). There may be a better card for you…?