TV Antennas or MythTV and HDTV in Toronto

[Colin McGregor]

I am looking for a good, inexpensive and tough outdoor
TV antenna for use with my MythTV box.

I am on Rogers cable, which for the most part I am
basically happy with. The problems with Rogers show up
when it comes to my first stabs with HDTV using a
pcHDTV-5500 tuner card in my MythTV box. Up until
quite recently I gather Roger's offered SOME digital
channels unencrypted (but not at high definition). So,
to get any sort of usable digital signal from Rogers
you now need to rent a cable box (something I can not
cost justify and I don't want the pain of sorting out
the issues of having the Myth box control the cable
box).

The folks doing KnoppMyth (the distro I use on my
MythTV box) have (at least for now) dropped analog
support for pcHDTV-5500 (due problems with the current
driver). So, to see anything via that pcHDTV-5500 card
I need a digital signal.

Using a plain old fashion rabbit ear style antenna I
was able to get CBC-HD from the ground floor (CBC has
the most powerful HDTV transmitter in Toronto).
Shifting the antenna up to the attic, and attaching an
amplifier added CTV-HD and some of the Buffalo based
HDTV channels. Next I tried building one of the
antennas described here:

  www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9613

If anything performance was slightly worse than the
rabbit ear/amp combo.. So, what I am looking for now
is an inexpensive commercial antenna that I could
mount outdoors and increase the number of HDTV
channels I can reliably get over the air. I say
reliably because, I can get the three Buffalo PBS
stations in HDTV, I periodically (like every few
seconds) get pixelization and audio drop-outs. Further
the pcHDTV card driver starts acting squirrelly when
faced with a bad signal...

Suggestions?


Colin McGregor

P.S. A good source of info. regarding Toronto area
HDTV broadcasters can be seen here:

  www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/index.html

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