On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Tom Piwowar <t...@tjpa.com> wrote: > I have set up several converter boxes for myself, my office and my Mom. > In every case the process was very quick, about 5 minutes. Maybe another > 5 minutes to get the converter box's remote to control basic functions > for the TV. > > What took time ws playing with the antenna. Antennaweb was a big help > because it showed me the direction to the station's broadcast antennas. > The good news in DC is that they are almost all located on the hill top > at Wisconsin and Brandywine. But as I said before, pointing the antenna > was not a logical process. I did whatever the box's signal meter > indicated was the strongest signal. So once I got a good signal from that > collection of stations the job was done and I had my box rescan. > > In the end I did lose some stations, but for the stations I did get, most > had multiple subchannels. E.g. WETA has 4 channels (unfortunately 1 & 4 > seem to be the same program most of the time, I hope they improve that). > So despite losing some channels I have more subchannels so more > programming choices in total. I stopped worrying about the stations I > lost. > > Channels 101-200 is a cable thing. I don't know anything about cable. > > BTW, this is not OT. Digital broadcast is definitely about computers. >
Odds are you need to buy a Clear QAM converter box for cable- QAM is a decoding scheme for digital cable systems. Apparently the cheap converter box program prevented boxes that included QAM decoding from being included in the coupon program. I bought a DVD recorder with a Clear QAM tuner from WalMart for around $150. All the useful looking QAM decoder settop boxes seem to come in around $100. There are dongles for computers and things that are less but I don't see an easy way to use them with your TV. -- John Duncan Yoyo -------------------------------o) ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
