using any of your gear for anything other than actually windsurfing is considered an abomination by the wind gods. This is an offence punishable by a full season of sucker wind
lol
A little bit of info on what happened yesterday at The Source (Rad Shack). They had a plasma on display that had a built in HD tuner. I asked the sales guys there if they knew anythging about HD channels, and they all had the same answer... Rogers. I just looked at them and told them that was not 100% true. I asked them what they would say if I told them that they can recive HD channels for free over the air with a regular UHF/VHF antenna? At that point the store owner entered the discussion. He basically looked at me as if I was smoking something. He then went on to say something along the lines of "
listen, we don't deal with illeagl decoder boxes". I just laughed and shook my head at him. He then wanted me to prove it. I asked him to get that antenna that everyone keeps mentioning about on here, and asked him to get the remote for the TV. I hooked up the antenna to the the back of the tv, and then he said, "
you are going to get HD channels with that?". I said yep, but I told him that it might be hard beacuse of all the metal in the roof and walls. I then went into the TV's menu and proceeded to scan for channels. At first I got worried because it was scanning for analog ones, but then 1/2 way through it switched over to scanning for digital ones. Well it found only one HD/DT channel...
CBC 5.1
I was hoping for more, but I didn't expect it to find too many considering the roof and walls in the building (and the antenna was also facing north during the scan, opps... so I guess there might of been one or two more that could of been found if it was at least pointing south. )
He then got all interested in how I was able to get that channel without Rogers. After explaing to him the basics (and showing him and his sales guys this website), he said he was going to go get the big ole UHF mesh antenna they had gathering dust in the back warehouse. He said he was going to try and scan for some more channels after the store closed.
My job was done there.
lol
The price of the plasma tv............................................................ $2400
The coax cable........................................................................... $5
The Rad Shack UHF/VHF antenna................................................... $50
The looks on everyone's faces when they saw that free HD channels pop up.... Priceless.
One more thing. I'm still surprised that CBC came in so easily even wit the antenna pointing in the wrong direction. The tuner in that plasma must also be pretty good. With only a 30% + signal, the channel came in without any drop outs. I can just imagine what I will be able to get with a real antenna up on the roof. (I can't wait for my 260 to arrive).