Skip to main content

I am now getting HD over the air!

A while back, I blogged wondering about getting HD over the air. A bit after that, I saw a deal on an antenna: the Philips MANT940 from buy.com for a somewhat reasonable $30 or so after shipping was added. I got it. It took a while to get to me, and once I got it, I was ready to set it up. I live in a basement suite and as you can probably guess, getting signals of any sort can sometimes be a problem. DC is relatively flat, so you don't have the problems I experienced in the past with antennas in Vancouver where my location on a hill (on the wrong side of the hill) didn't really help get decent signals.

Anyway, I opened the box, took out the 4 pieces, plugged in the antenna (which looks very different from the rabbit ear types) with the provided cable, the signal amplifier and the little piece that connects into the coax outlet on the TV. I put the antenna by my TV and let it search for channels. Soon enough, it picked up about 30 or so channels! I was impressed. A couple of things that really bothered me though were the signal breaking off for some channels when I moved around the house (strange but maybe I am a distrubance). So, I tried something else. I put the antenna on my window sill and got it to search again. This time, I got over 20 HD channels and over 20 SD channels!

Getting TV in HD on an HDTV is amazing. You can see so much detail, some of which is not exactly flattering. I saw an older woman on TV, she had so many wrinkles so clearly visible that I was a bit grossed out. At any rate, getting 20 HD channels is awesome for me. It solves my TV problem vis-a-vis paying a lot for cable or satellite. I won't get CNN or MSNBC or whatever, but I get plenty of TV none-the-less and enough TV shows to keep me occupied. I think this is probably one of the better deals I got for about $30. Imagine if I were on an upper floor or have this antenna mounted at the top of the house! Now I need to find a neat way to tie down the cable wire from the window so it doesn't look terrible. If you're tired of paying the cable company and don't really need all the cable channels, try one of the new HDTV antennas, they're way cooler than the rabbits ears from the past.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Being Happy

I wonder why there is so much unhappiness in the world sometimes. I'm currently reading R. K. Narayan's Waiting for the Mahatma. The world the protagonist in the book lives in is a rather harsh one. And he seems to be quite unhappy. What makes one unhappy? Some days, I ask myself what the heck I am doing here. Maybe its because I have worked for the same person for 4 years and the same company for over 6. This was supposed to be a short-term job that would bring bigger and better things. I don't know what it has brought. I mean, I am doing better things. I am doing bigger things. But I don't know if it makes me happy any more. I don't wake up with the anticipation of hurrying to work to learn something new and make the world a better place. I don't know why. I suppose I have the ability to do that to a certain extent. Is it the lack of ambition?  Reading back to some of the earliest posts on this blog, I gave myself the task of being happy. Like it is somethi...

The shopping bug strikes again

I've been on a binge of late. I have been shopping for all sorts of stuff. I started with an apartment. Couldn't afford it. Moved on to smaller things. I bought a pair of black Diesel Remy shoes. Probably the softest shoes I have ever had. They are SUPER comfortable too. I got a pair of Merrell Mesa Vent II shoes for doing the grind. Very comfortable. Of course... my time didn't improve by that much. I got a Puma Beluga Football jacket. Its colour is officially Pompeian Red-Moon Rock Gray. Looks cool. I got a pair of quicksilver Slang shorts. They are awesome! I also ended up getting Jeans at Mark James (they have a summer sale on now). I got a pair of Diesel Clerby jeans (these are extremely soft) and a pair of 7 for all mankind relaxed jeans. They're both getting altered (hopefully, with the original hem in-tact). How much has all this cost? I would estimate it at over $500. Ouch. And hooray for our dollar being so much closer to being on par to the US one.

Happy Birthday Canada

I have celebrated more than 20 Canada Days in Canada. While this nation is far from perfect and we have so much further to go, there is hope. We are a nation, at 153, looking at the future with a mixed record: we have immense prosperity, peace, safety and a relatively good standard of living for most . We are welcoming to immigrants, refugees and guarantee people with a wide range of rights. We are a leader in respecting people's human rights and punch above our weight internationally. We are also a country that is in the midst of a reckoning right now. We have systemic racism, we are at war with the environment - we are actively digging things out of the ground to sell to the rest of the world. Climate change is ravaging our country - we have floods, fires and drought.  Our past and present deeds towards indigenous people is shameful. We have a long way to go yet, but there is hope. In the midst of a pandemic, with social upheaval to correct past wrongs, or at least make amen...