[mythtv-users] Life after cable for SDTV

[David Brodbeck]

Just thought I'd post a little note about what I've been up to.

We got tired of sending $50 to Comcast every month and decided to cut  
our cable service.  I wanted to set up to receive over-the-air TV,  
because we're in an area where you can get a few channels with an  
indoor antenna.  Upgrading all the machines to play 1080i and getting  
an HDHR wasn't really in the budget, but I did have a set-top  
converter box from back when they were handing out vouchers (a  
Magnavox MB100TW9 from Wal-Mart).  I also had an AVC-2410 MPEG capture  
card that had previously been connected to our cable box.  I got a  
cheap IR blaster to tune the converter box, and connected it to the  
composite input of the MPEG card.  It's all working quite nicely so far.

There were only two "gotchas" during setup.  "Fetch channels" in  
mythtv-setup refused to fetch any channels from my Schedules Direct  
lineup; I think this is because it tries to avoid adding ATSC channels  
to NTSC sources.  Eventually I figured out that I had to manually run  
mythfilldatabase with the --do-not-filter-new-channels flag.  Also,  
the SD data contains the actual broadcast channel numbers, but my set- 
top box expects virtual channel numbers, so I had to manually edit the  
channel freqids to match.  This was pretty easily done through mythweb.

My current antenna is a 60" wire dipole, originally from an FM stereo  
receiver, tacked up near the ceiling on an outside wall of my ground  
floor apartment.  I have one rather weak VHF station that I want to  
receive (it's refracting over two hills to get here) and, for whatever  
reason, this antenna worked far better than the TV rabbit ears I  
tried.  I have a UHF antenna on order, which I plan to combine with it  
using a VHF/UHF combiner. And of course, because of Myth's support for  
slave backends, I can put the antenna and tuner in the best location  
for reception and still have the TV in my living room. :)

I realize now just how much digital has changed broadcast TV for the  
better -- in ways that have nothing to do with picture quality.   
Because of subchannels I have far more available than I would have  
before -- the local PBS station alone is broadcasting three  
subchannels where they originally only had one analog channel.