Last year, EchoStar announced the TR-40, their $40 digital converter box. It had the best feature set of any converter box and the $40 price made it free with government coupon. But then the TR-40 was postponed and the DTVPal was released, a different converter box that EchoStar priced at $59.99. The TR-40 remained a [...]
Judging from the number of emails I have received on the subject, there seems to be quite a lot of interest in building your own UHF antenna for HDTV reception. I’ve discussed this topic a few times in the past, but here are some resources for prospective antenna builders.
Simple Antennas
These two UHF antenna projects are [...]
There were persistent rumors before the DTVPal digital converter box was released on June 26 that DISH Network had already signed up Sears and Radio Shack as national distributors. But neither chain sold the DTVPal after the introduction. The DTVPal remained available only through the official DTVPal website and through some smaller, local retailers.
But SkyReport [...]
Regular readers of these pages may remember my earlier attempt to build a UHF antenna for HDTV reception. It worked surprisingly well, especially considering that it was a crude prototype. My subsequent attempts at antenna building were less successful, for a variety of reasons I may go into later.
I think that the copper wire I [...]
While I was waiting on a street in front of several houses today, I was struck by the large number of antennas on one house. It was a fairly small house, but it was covered in dishes and antennas; I counted 11 in all.
Mounted on one side of the house:
1 DISH Network DISH 500 satellite [...]
Doc Searls wrote an article which poses this question about the digital television switchover: What happens after TV’s mainframe era ends next February?
He raises the point that nobody else seems to address, that many people will lose television stations after the switchover. Despite statements to the contrary, just putting up a new antenna won’t always [...]