Over the Air (OTA) HD tv and me

UncleChet

I'm toying with the idea of getting an HD OTA antenna. I have a media center PC and a home theater set up. I have questions. Does an HD OTA antenna support 5.1 surround sound? Do they support HDMI out? I believe I can hook it up to my media pc with tv tuner and dvr shows that are available to media center. Can i then put these shows on to a zune HD? Does the antenna have to go outside/on my roof or can I have it indoors?

Help?

Djeet

All the OTA antennas I've seen terminate in RG-6 (co-ax), so you'll need to run that from the antenna to your PC tuner card.

A co-ax cable looks like this:


WRT sound, I don't think there's anything preventing 5.1 channel sound being broadcast OTA, whether or not you can get it depends upon if the stations providing you signal are broadcasting in 5.1.

Antennas can be installed wherever, though antennas intended to be installed inside the house probably will not be able to stand up to the weather if you mount them outside. Some intended to be installed outside (on the roof or on masts) can be installed in your attic. If you rent be aware there are likely lease agreement restrictions regarding installing antennas (outdoors).

Zoolander

Just want to point out that there's really no such thing as an HD antenna. Any plain old antenna ever made will pick up HD OTA signals.

What you will need to have is an HD tuner. Most TVs come with an HD (the technology is called ATSC) tuner, but if you want your HTPC to read that stuff, you'll need to get an ATSC tuner card. So you'll have to check if your existing tuner card supports ATSC or not.

As for whether you need an indoor or outdoor antenna, it totally depends on how far you are from the broadcasting stations, if there are tall buildings around you, how high up you are, etc. You can plug your address into http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx and they will give you a suggestion of what might work.

Once you have it on your HTPC, you should be able to transfer it to your Zune HD somehow, but I don't really know how.

UncleChet

Wow, You're pretty awesome! Thanks! Going to check that website out. I own my home, so can do pretty much what I please. I think my tuner card supports OTA digital and SDTV broadcast, not sure about ATSC, doubtful though. Thanks for the input.

hottoq

I recently jumped into this as well. Went over to Best Buy to grab an antenna and set it up in the attic, not thinking it'd work at all. Well, it did. I get all channels with great reception. Am pulling the trigger on getting an HTPC once Win7 comes out, will finally get rid of $90/month cable! The HTPC will pay for itself inside 6 months.

Zoolander

UncleChet wrote: »

Wow, You're pretty awesome! Thanks! Going to check that website out. I own my home, so can do pretty much what I please. I think my tuner card supports OTA digital and SDTV broadcast, not sure about ATSC, doubtful though. Thanks for the input.

If it can pick up OTA digital, it is ATSC.

DiannaoChong

I tried this recently, with 5.1 you have to be careful that your sound card can decode the 5.1 from ota. I dont know if its my tv (I run coax to the tv, the sound goes by optical out to my htpc's optical in), or the sound card, or ubuntu, but all I get is static with 5.1 because somewhere something dosent get decoded correctly, and from what I remember, it wont be ever.

Just letting you know in case it happens to you what the issue is.