Saturday, January 13, 2007

HDTV from an antenna

I have Charter Communications for my cable TV provider. I also have an HDTV, which I've mentioned before. I love watching channels in HD, it's great, but I've never gotten ABC in HD and just a week ago or so, my cable company stopped providing CBS in HD. This sucks because that means I have to watch CSI in lowly SD. What sucked is that they dropped the HD channel on the very night that a new CSI was on after their little winter break. SUCKY. So, I thought about getting an antenna and pulling the HD channels over the air. Tonight I bought an antenna. I had a gift card to Best Buy from Christmas and didn't know what to buy with it, so I thought I'd pick up an antenna. I wanted to hide the antenna behind my TV, close to the ground. I knew it was not an ideal location to pick up TV signals. Honestly, I didn't think it was going to work. So, I bought the best antenna I could find there, thinking that anything to help me pick up the signals was worth it, and I headed home. Once home, I assembled the antenna and got to hooking it up. Like I said, I didn't think it was going to work. It worked though. I was shocked. I get EVERY local channel in HD with crystal clarity. I am amazed. So, I reset my settings on the TV to tell it that I now have an antenna AND cable. You see, my TV has the TV Guide on screen menu. It will pull the listings over the air while the TV is off. Then I can arrange them, delete them, and move them around any way I see fit. So, basically, I'm going to nix out the non-HD versions of all of the channels on the menu. Theoretically, it will switch between cable and antenna and I shouldn't even notice the switch. I'm very happy about this. Now I just have to wait for the menu to populate and then I have the tedious task of arranging the channels. To be honest though, I kind of like that stuff. I'm weird like that. I like playing the with settings on stuff and I like installing software. I wipe my PC and reinstall everything from the OS up every couple of months. I think everyone should do that once a year or so, but I do it closer to every three or four months. I know...I'm a freak.

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