Dream Machine - Starting from Scratch - TV via coax

[Seanmike]

Agreed with Martin; if the analog signal you get is really clean and you set your encoding bitrate fairly high, it will look pretty decent but nowhere near HD. The audio will be plain 2-channel stereo, though you might be able to get your MPEG decoder to upmix it to digital 5.1 (I think AC3 filter can do that, though I wouldn't swear to it).

Obviously I don't know exactly where in Ankeny you live, but Antennaweb.org says your major TV stations are all just north of you about 5-7 miles away. You should be able to pull them in with just a simple indoor antenna, you'll get the best HD picture and sound that way from the major networks, plus a bunch of nice extra channels like ThisTV, MeTV, GetTV, MyTV, AntennaTV; those will likely all be SD, but digital SD from an antenna is usually very high quality and upscales to 1080p nicely.

Johnsonx,

I found that website last night and I'm happy to see all major networks do come from these 2000 feet towers. So HD over antenna will include the Dolby Digital? Sorry for my ignorance everyone!

Side note, would the cable modem need digital from this same feed? I'll google that, still learning. Thanks Johnsonx!

[johnsonx42]

Yes, OTA (over the air) digital broadcasts include an AC3 (dolby digital) audio track, which is usually 5.1. A few years ago some digital channels had MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio, but in my area at least they all use AC3 now. When you setup your system you will need an AC3 decoder to handle the AC3 audio track, but you can configure the decoder to just pass the AC3 bitstream out the HDMI port unmodified and let your AV receiver handle the decoding. I use AC3filter for this, but you can find plenty of people to say don't use AC3filter, use something else.

[Seanmike]

Yes, OTA (over the air) digital broadcasts include an AC3 (dolby digital) audio track, which is usually 5.1. A few years ago some digital channels had MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio, but in my area at least they all use AC3 now. When you setup your system you will need an AC3 decoder to handle the AC3 audio track, but you can configure the decoder to just pass the AC3 bitstream out the HDMI port unmodified and let your AV receiver handle the decoding. I use AC3filter for this, but you can find plenty of people to say don't use AC3filter, use something else.

I hooked up an RCA digital antenna of Good quality, not superior, at my folks house 8 miles from the 4 2,000 foot towers and get 27 channels, all digital, no analog, and the channels that aren't SD show 5.1. That'll be a good backup plan. I'm missing ABC but my apartment is on the second floor with no terrain blocking reception and plenty of windows. Once I get a better antenna with amplifier I should get all channels.

My existing Asus ROG laptop G750 has HDMI output at 1 GB dedicated RAM. If I can get an external PCI tuner I won't have to do a thing but configurations for Next.

[SickBoy]

If ATSC with an antenna works for you - the Silicondust HDHR Plus may be worth looking at. I'm using one (in that configuration) with some amount of success. Would be a good solution for a tuner for a small form factor or laptop machine.

Since it's a network device - you just run the coax from the antenna to the HDHR and connect it to your router with a patch cable. You can then place the PC anywhere that you can get network connectivity.

[Seanmike]

If ATSC with an antenna works for you - the Silicondust HDHR Plus may be worth looking at. I'm using one (in that configuration) with some amount of success. Would be a good solution for a tuner for a small form factor or laptop machine.

Since it's a network device - you just run the coax from the antenna to the HDHR and connect it to your router with a patch cable. You can then place the PC anywhere that you can get network connectivity.

Sick boy,

Funny you mention the HDHR Plus as I just purchased one off of Amazon to see how it'll work with my laptop. If that does the trick for definitely antenna I'm golden. Now I just need to make a small form factor PC to finish the job and I'll have my dream machine/setup. You guys all rock and I do appreciate the input!

Too bad my Raspberry Pi won't run this setup. It has an HDMI output but runs Linux. And I purchased the HDHR Plus with a refund check Comcast sent me today. Funny how that worked out LMAO

[johnsonx42]

I'm missing ABC but my apartment is on the second floor with no terrain blocking reception and plenty of windows. Once I get a better antenna with amplifier I should get all channels.

I'm going through the same battle, I can't get ABC here either. I've been through 7 indoor antennas now trying to bring in ABC (VHF 7 here). Your ABC is on VHF 5, which is even worse, so good luck with that. At least you are much closer to the towers than I am; I'm 33 miles away. I can get VHF 9, 11, and 13 with the better antennas, but 7 remains elusive. The lower VHF channels need a big dipole antenna to bring them in, and in fact in a lot of markets the broadcasters have abandoned VHF-lo (2-6) because they're just too tough to receive clean enough for digital.

Good work getting the HDHR. I've repeatedly failed to buy one when I've seen them on sale, and then later regretted it.

Regarding the Raspberry Pi, you can use one as a NextPVR client. You run one of the XBMC distributions (RaspBMC, OpenElec, etc.). Then you can load the NextPVR PVR add-on, and/or mvallevand's X-NEWA add-on. X-NEWA includes a mode that mirrors a copy of NextPVR running on the NextPVR server.

[SickBoy]

Sick boy,

Funny you mention the HDHR Plus as I just purchased one off of Amazon to see how it'll work with my laptop. If that does the trick for definitely antenna I'm golden. Now I just need to make a small form factor PC to finish the job and I'll have my dream machine/setup. You guys all rock and I do appreciate the input!

Too bad my Raspberry Pi won't run this setup. It has an HDMI output but runs Linux. And I purchased the HDHR Plus with a refund check Comcast sent me today. Funny how that worked out LMAO

Cool. Yeah, give that a shot. Setup should be pretty dead simple with it. Make sure to update the firmware on it straight away - I had some issues with the FW that mine shipped with when I configured it to transcode everything to "internet540" H.264. The beta fw releases are here: http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=2484

You should be able to make the RaspberryPi work as a client via xbmc, like johnsonx42 suggested - but I'd tackle the hardware & antenna setup stuff first. Make sure the basics & server side stuff are working before trying to configure clients.

[Graham]

When you are receiving ATSC ... the 'puter does little more than copy the incoming digital stream(s) to a file on the hard drive and requires very little processing power to do the copy(ies). Playback from the 'puter should not require anything special. I would expect that the graphics in almost any machine from the last five years (or more) to be able to playback 1080 HD recordings. The message here is that you don't need to spend much money to build a machine to do ATSC (or most other flavours of TV reception).

[Seanmike]

I'm going through the same battle, I can't get ABC here either. I've been through 7 indoor antennas now trying to bring in ABC (VHF 7 here). Your ABC is on VHF 5, which is even worse, so good luck with that. At least you are much closer to the towers than I am; I'm 33 miles away. I can get VHF 9, 11, and 13 with the better antennas, but 7 remains elusive. The lower VHF channels need a big dipole antenna to bring them in, and in fact in a lot of markets the broadcasters have abandoned VHF-lo (2-6) because they're just too tough to receive clean enough for digital.

Good work getting the HDHR. I've repeatedly failed to buy one when I've seen them on sale, and then later regretted it.

Regarding the Raspberry Pi, you can use one as a NextPVR client. You run one of the XBMC distributions (RaspBMC, OpenElec, etc.). Then you can load the NextPVR PVR add-on, and/or mvallevand's X-NEWA add-on. X-NEWA includes a mode that mirrors a copy of NextPVR running on the NextPVR server.

Johnsonx,

I cannot put anything on the outside of my apartment and a large dipole in my living room might not be the greatest so I may have to just go without ABC. I could probably do a small one on my patio but I'm looking for indoor sleek antennas. I guess I'll cross that hill when I get there.

Thanks about the HDHR, it was meant as a test buy might end up being used in the final equation.

I saw some posts on this forum about the RaspPi as a client. I'll definitely read more. The posts were about the RaspBMC. Another bridge to cross when I get there . Thanks man for your input

[Seanmike]

Cool. Yeah, give that a shot. Setup should be pretty dead simple with it. Make sure to update the firmware on it straight away - I had some issues with the FW that mine shipped with when I configured it to transcode everything to "internet540" H.264. The beta fw releases are here: http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=2484

You should be able to make the RaspberryPi work as a client via xbmc, like johnsonx42 suggested - but I'd tackle the hardware & antenna setup stuff first. Make sure the basics & server side stuff are working before trying to configure clients.

Sickboy,

Thanks for the heads up on loading the beta firmware.

I sent you a PM about your server. Just curious costs and anything you'd change in the setup. Looks like a great machine from the specs.

When you are receiving ATSC ... the 'puter does little more than copy the incoming digital stream(s) to a file on the hard drive and requires very little processing power to do the copy(ies). Playback from the 'puter should not require anything special. I would expect that the graphics in almost any machine from the last five years (or more) to be able to playback 1080 HD recordings. The message here is that you don't need to spend much money to build a machine to do ATSC (or most other flavours of TV reception).

Graham,

Your server looks good too, I'll PM you the same message I sent Sickboy. Thanks!