What's the Plausability of OTA Antenna and Internet HDTV Only? — Community

#1 Aug 5, 2009 at 10:52 pm

Hello;

I'm seriously considering purchasing an OTA HDTV antenna for all my local channels and a Moxi DVR in order to get internet HDTV. The drawbacks are that the Moxi does not accept or tune OTA signals so the antenna input would go directly into my DLP (1080i) TV. The Moxi will stream internet tv, but is not able to record it (I don't think anyone can yet since this is an internet limitation rather than a Moxi limitation).

I would like to know what other forum members think about this. I'm paying $80/month for Dish and local channels and only watch about 5 shows that I can get OTA or on Hulu for free. At $800 for the Moxi DVR, I'd have it paid for in 10 months (0% interest right now too) by redirecting my Dish payment to Moxi instead.

Any and all comments are invited please.

Mark

#2 Aug 5, 2009 at 11:39 pm

Hi mhumm

Consider buying it here . no tax except NY + KY and free shipping ! { and, AMAZON does have "free interest" if you must! }

http://www.amazon.com/Moxi-MR-1500T3-Di ... =de_a_smtd

By-the-way . . . we have only a 160 GB hard drive & need to "practice" in order to always have space available for those 3 A.M. recordings ---- BUT --- for your massive recordings / down loadings / etc., you WILL need at least a 1TB !

"HD' recording takes an Enormous amount of Storage!

eli

P.S. - - - There HAS been frequent debates re: The Internet and it's capacity / ability to withstand any Mass Adoption by new customers of "www" based programing!

I, for one, would certainly hate to have that sort of money tied up in a useless box in the near-future!

Why not just add an eSATA external hard drive to your VIP-722 ?

#3 Aug 6, 2009 at 9:39 am

mhuum ..

"Forgot" - yet again !

There are NO such animals as .. "HDTV antennas ! "

Lots now being 'promoted' as .. Special, Amplified, " new for HD" ... blah, blah @ $149.99 or IMAGINE higher!

Pure advertising HYPE, for want of another stronger expression, please believe.

There ARE simply 'VHF' and / or "UHF" transmission Bands ... that's "ALL!" Those O.T.A. signals are NOT aware of their nature whatever ... just "o" & "1" by the billions!

Save your funds whenever it comes time to buy .... (1) excellent Outside UHF unit has been the {DB-4} ... a "combo" might be the [Channel Master # 5646] .... each is well under $55, even including del'y!

Only (1) web store of very many is:

www.solidsignal.com

eli

#4 Aug 7, 2009 at 7:13 pm

In fact, I am located approx. 45 miles out from the broadcast source for most HD OTA programming. I have cut back my DishTV to minimal basic so that I can still DVR in HD any PPV I want, but I spend more time on local HD channels now anyway - I hate to say it but most of the commercial cable/dish programming is over-priced or watered down with extra feces and other effluent I hate wasting bandwidth or money on.

I just installed the Channel Master 4221HD 4-bay HDTV/UHF Antenna along with the Channel Master CM 3414 Distribution Amplifier (CM3414) and it works like a charm! Check out www.SolidSignal.com - great service, decent prices.

By the way, I built my own DVR for OTA programming using the Hauppauge Win TV 1600 dual tuner, but the base processor I used is too slow to keep up with the decode/encode stream, so I will re-do this with a dual core processor and a better video card - should be able to do this all for a lot less than $800!