I Gots OTA Foolz

So Comcrap changed to it's porn name, Xfinity, which means it has to make changes to it's network. The first of those is encrypting everything so no more moochers can steal cable. Bastards. I'm not frustrated that they choose to lock down their network but because they don't have provisions for us HTPC users. I mean, right now, the only way I could make this work is if I bought a cable card tuner like the $400 Ceton card or wait 2 months for the HD Homerun Prime to come out for $250ish. If only AT&T would integrate their software with W7 MCE I would jump ship. Alas, although the devil himself, Microsoft, included such support, AT&T hasn't been too keen on implementing it. I say it's for monetary reasons but others may argue it's because they won't be able to rent those stupid set top boxes... wait, same argument.


Back to the main rant. So half of Xfinity's literature says that unless you have their box you'll get nothing, Jack. The other half says if you have a Clear-QAM tuner you'll only receive local stations (it stops short of saying but who would only want that rebroadcast HD local crap). The rub is that they will rent you these DTA's free of charge that only decode standard definition signals. Your new flat screen is now a POS tube tv. Well, unless you want to pay the HD fee and rent a HD box... for a fee, of course. To make an extremely long story short, I wanted to do a trial of the cable dump. I decided to install a HDTV over-the-air (OTA) antenna and see what channels I got.


Thanks to Tony, about $50, some drillin', rewiring and a small party in a 100+ degree attic I now have an OTA antenna installed. Thanks to AntennaWeb, pointing the antenna was real easy. I can tune almost all the local stations. Some of the more obscure and far away stations are missing but who really cares? I've got all the local stations, most in 1080i HD and it's friggin' free. Time to trial the plug pull then really do it and save $70/month.

Notice the crappy pic. The antenna was mounted to the rafters in my sub-attic. I added lumber to accomplish this. Also, the trash bags aren't trash. It's hard to store oversized stuff in the attic. It was my best attempt at a container. Don't hate.