I bought an OnairGT and am quite happy with the result, even with the little antenna I am able to get a couple of HD channels. The quality of the HD channel is very good. Captured at 1920 X 1080, the stills and video looked great.

Ryan at Autumnwave have been very helpful and patient with all my e-mail questions. I bought it from CopperBox and they are very good too.

I am now in search of a better antenna, still debating to go indoor or outdoor.

I am subscribed with Rogers with the 3250HD box on a 10 month trial.
They HD channels look good.

I plugged my Roger's cable into the OnAirGT TV and are disappointed with the DTV signal, the display tells my I am looking at 520X480 resolution. How come it is not 1920x1080? Am I missing something. I am new to OTA

I also considered the OnAir Creator since it has a Mpeg Hardware encoder, anyone have experience with the quality of the Mpeg hardware encoder compared the quality of the Software encoder of the GT which uses the Honestech software encoder?

Thanks,
Leo

The OnAir will only provide 1080 through it's onboard OTA tuner, which is a very good tuner indeed. Capturing video from another source, Satellite/cable etc will only render at 480 since the connection is only by analog S-Vid or composite.
As far as an antenna, scroll through the OTA sections on this site for your area and see what everyone is experiencing.

I plugged my Roger's cable into the OnAirGT TV and are disappointed with the DTV signal, the display tells my I am looking at 520X480 resolution. How come it is not 1920x1080? Am I missing something. I am new to OTA

You will NOT get HDTV from Rogers without buying/renting an "HDTV terminal" from them, and also paying a "digital services access fee":(. Ted Rogers did not get rich by giving stuff away free.

There isn't very much unencrypted, other than analogue basic and digital basic. The really desirable QAM (digital) channels are encrypted. For a list of what's NOT encrypted, see... http://www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/rogers.htm The actual digital channels may vary from city to city.

If you want to see what you can get on your system, plug in the cable, pull up the Autumnwave menu, and run a scan with ATV(C) and DTV(C) selected. That stands for "Analogue TV on Cable" and "Digital TV on Cable", respectively. I'd be interested to know what you get.

I get a lot of channels, too lazy to type them all out when I connect the cable into the GT(pretty much whatever package you are subscript to). I also try to connect the out from the 3250HD box to the GT, I don't get any channel when I scan the DTV channels but I get all the channels I would get if I switch to ATV and by using the 3250HD remote to switch channels with. The signal of the HD channel like HDnet shows a resolution of 720x480.

Hi, guys, I just moved to East York, GTA. I want to buy a WinTV-HVR-950 USB NTSC/ATSC tuner to watch TV at home. I wonder if I can get digital signals indoors with the original atena coming with the tuner?

That antenna is rated for up to 10 miles so don't expect to get any of the stations accross the lake.

I just got the package of Hauppauge 950. Now here is my result.

1. Installing drivers.
It had no problem with my laptop with WinXP. But I got problem to install it on my VISTA ULTIMATE 64bit system. I went to the website to download the lastest driver for Vista and fixed the problem.

2. HDTV channels
I used my laptop to try it first. Using the provided antenna, I only got three digital channels but my laptop could not play none of them at all. My laptop is HP NX9420 (Duo 2 Core T7200, 2GB Ram, ATI X1300 256M Graphic adapter). I connected it to my desktop, and got 4 channels. My desktop can play the digital channels, except that some channles are not stable so I lost them when I switched channels.

3. Antennas
I tried the antenna coming with the USB tuner first. I am living at the second floor of an old building at Main/Danforth in Toronto. I just put the antenna at the window and got 3 channels. Later I used another antenna cost me $4 only at a dollar store. It has two antennas. I felt lucky that I got 5 channels eventually. Although the 1041 has no signals.

The list of channels I got is:
1051 CBLT-DT
1041 WIVB-HD
1091 CFTO-HD
1231 WNLO-HD
1000 ATSC-3

I tried it in Media Center, but the analog TV's picture is a mess. MCE can't play digital TV. Does anyone know how to fix it?

MCE can't play digital TV. Does anyone know how to fix it?Sure it can - check out Peter Near's hack to allow Canadians to use digital TV. It is detailed here: http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/pnear/archive/2006/11/22/202706.aspx

It is the same method whether you are using Vista or XP MCE.

Thank you Wayne very much! I did as that instructions. However, MCE didn't get any digital TV tuner and channles. But surprisingly, 1051 can work in MCE now. Other channels can't work though. For example, I don't know how to add channel 1000, which works on other HDTV viewer.

I think Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950 is kinda weird. Last night, I scanned the digital channels and got four working channels. I turned it off to take a shower. When I came back and reopened WinTV 6, no any digital channels left. I rescanned for many times this morning, but still got no digital channels. However, when I use KMPlayer, I got channel 20 and 66, which are 1051 and 1000.

So please tell me how to add channel 1000, and if possible, could you tell me is it caused by software or hardware that I got no digital channels in WinTV?

Thanks.

Channel 1000 sounds weird since there is a method to the numbering and 1000 shouldn't be allowed. For example, 1051 is channel 5, sub-channel 1. MCE adds 1000 to the channel number so as to not have conflicts. I use MCE with a Rogers digital cable box for channels 1-900 (or whatever) connected to a Hauppauge PVR-150 and the HD OTA channels are all above 1000. I don't know what channel 1000 is - perhaps WinTv uses a different scheme.

For a list of channels that you may get check out the web page that Peter links to. With a decent antenna you should get some of the Buffalo stations, including channels not available on cable such as 43-3 - aka 1433.

Peter explains how to add channels in step 5 of his intructions. Follow that and you should be able to add all channels available.

Channel 1000 is SunTV HD. In MCE, I can't add 0-0 in digital channel. However, I can watch it as channel 66 in KMPlayer.

Sun-TV should set up as channel 1661.

I added SunTV as 1661, but it didn't work.

I wonder why Canadian TV stations use such low power for digital broadcasting. Those US stations use hundreds or thousand Kw. Will Canadian stations increase the power?

SunTV has issues in MCE. I haven't gotten around to doing the detailed troubleshooting with their engineering team, but I'm guessing they have something misconfigured on their end.

Pete

I just bought the Zenith HDTV indoor antenna. It's amazing that I got CITYTV-HD with very stable signals.

Now I have 1051, 1091, 1251, 1571 channels and they are very stable; 1041 and 1231 are not stable. the SUNTV(channel 1000) still can't be added in MCE. :( Also I wonder why I can't get FOX HD even its signal is so strong?

The fact that SunTV shows up as 1000 is probably part of the problem. That would imply to me that their PSIP data is incorrect. More info on what I'm talking about here: http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/pnear/archive/2006/09/12/202708.aspx

As for Fox - it's a weak signal and I have troubles getting it with my attic antenna. I'm surprised it's showing as so strong for you.

Pete

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant the power of FOX channel is so strong, but I could not even get it here either.

Got it. Fox is a strong signal but it's all aimed south so as not to interfere with Canadian stations on the same frequency. It is a shame...

Hi guys. Newbie here and after reading various threads, I couldn't come up with the answer I am looking for in regards to setting up an HTPC. Anyway, let me give you some details...

I'm looking to setup my own PVR with program guide functions via laptop (Vista, 2GB ram, 1.6ghz Dual Core Duo.)I am in GTA with Rogers SA3250HD box. Basically, I want to be able to have PVR functions (record, pause, rewind,etc.) off the digital box to my laptop with an external 500gb hardrive. I will be looking at a USB tuner that does hardware encoding. I was thinking of Hauppauge WinTV PVR-USB2 or the Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB 2.0. Would that meet the needs of what I am looking for? I believe that at this moment that the HD channels will not work off the box, only via OTA? I'm fine with that. I will be using it to watch the PVRed shows on my TV (Samsung 46inch lcd).

Also, I have a universal remote (Harmony 880) that I would like to use with the HTPC setup. Would it work with the WinTV PVR-USB2? Or is there even a product that exists that can do what I want? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.