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February 13th, 2007 Administrator

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Today’s Headlines Include…

Wikia Opens Magazine Sites
N800 Review at Ars Technica
Tech Salary Negotiations

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HDTV Antenna Rennaisance

by Andrew McCaskey

More update on the OTA experiment: Never count on a 20 year old UHF installation with ratty coax. Not quite blizzard conditions here today, but no way am I headed to the roof. The OTA experiment with the borrowed HDTV converter demonstrated what life is going to be like in the digital TV world – with signals just at the margin, allowing capture and buffer of a few seconds, then dropping out when the signal levels are just not strong enough to pull it through.

In fifteen second bursts, it looked pretty good – or as good as an S-video connection into a five year old 32″ TV could be expected to look.

Here’s yesterday’s post for reference:

The resurgence of the over the air (OTA) antenna is one of the bright spots of the HDTV conversion – driven in the main by the ever increasing cable and satellite bills, and the hidden cost of adding in subscriptions to HDTV content, after you have gotten that flat screen into the house and past the significant other.

While you may lust after the 1080p experience at the local Best Buy or Fry’s, a more realistic mix (and a larger screen in the bargain) might include a less expensive but larger monitor, and a resolution, in the short term to grab the live content off the air, and enjoy the DVD resolution from a progressive scan DVD ( now under $75 at Walmart, DVD burner included ).

That’s the experiment this week, courtesy of Mike Stoll who’s let me try his HDTV receiver for a few days. More info tomorrow.

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