I recently installed a new Panasonic projector in my basement home theater. Our main source for TV is DirecTV, with a DirecTivo serving the home theater. I've been trying to decide which way to go for HD. I could get HD from DirecTV, but the new DirecTV DVR doesn't have Tivo, costs $299 (not really a roadblock) and locks me in to DirecTV for a two year contract. They're running Verizon Fios lines through my neighborhood, so before I commit to DirecTV for another two years I want to see what Fios has to offer. So I decided to go with OTA DTV as a temporary solution. I live in Columbia, MD, midway between Washington and Baltimore.
I shopped around online and found a nearby Circuit City with the Samsung DTB-H260F. None of the local Best Buys had it, and evidently this model is in spotty supply. I bought a simple directional antenna for about twenty five bucks. Came home, hooked it up to my system, set it to auto tune. I'm getting reliable reception from Baltimore Channels 2, 11, 13, 45, and 54, and DC channel 5. Image quality is impressive on my 96" screen. I'll probably play around with other antenna configurations to see if I can pull in any of the other DC stations.
It would be nice to get ESPN and HBO in HD, but as a temporary solution this OTA experiment was remarkably easy.
Dave Bittner - Pixel Workshop Inc. www.pixelworkshop.com 410.381.8555 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
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