Sage In a Simple Application Shines

[OldPCGUY]

I have been using Sage with Comcast for QAM and Analog for the last year.

Recently, we decided to go OTA + Dish TurboHD(40 HD Channels).

So I went on the roof to hook up my DB2 Antenna and saw a huge VHF/UHF 300 ohm attenta pointed right at San Francisco was already there. Antenna Web tells me that I have SF channels at 243 degrees and San Jose at 126 degrees. So I stuck the DB2 underneath(the big antenna) and pointed it at San Jose and used a 4dB splitter to combine them.(Also I used a 300Ohm to 75 Ohm Coax Transformer for the Big Old antenna).

I went down to the house, opened Sage Deleted the OLD sources and added a single source, put in my zipcode and did a scan.

Wow! I got 47 channels and a full program guide in minutes. No Remapping!!!!(kudos to Hauppage 1800 ATSC Capture CARD)
I Looked at a few channels and I was amazed. I know the HD Mpeg files coming down the cable and through the Air are identical but it still suprised me. This is not your father's TV.

Comparing with my QAM remapping nightmare this was refreshingly easy.

So SageMC is perfect for the house that does not want to pay for cable or satallite and have a modern DVR without having to pay TIVO.

For this simple scenario I think it would be safe to set up Sage for a close friend.

Kind Regards

Tony:

[Djc208]

Actually the HD coming from the cable company isn't always as good. Some companies will reduce the quality (the bitrate, not the resolution) in order to save space for more channels.

That said the only thing I didn't like about OTA was it's variability. My signals were much more suseptable to interference from weather. Which meant sometimes I had a perfect recording and othertimes it was garbage. But until recently I could also get more channels OTA than via QAM so it was a toss-up.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Djc208

Actually the HD coming from the cable company isn't always as good. Some companies will reduce the quality (the bitrate, not the resolution) in order to save space for more channels.

That said the only thing I didn't like about OTA was it's variability. My signals were much more suseptable to interference from weather. Which meant sometimes I had a perfect recording and othertimes it was garbage. But until recently I could also get more channels OTA than via QAM so it was a toss-up.

The MSO's are not supposed to do this for OTA signals.

[OldPCGUY]

I have not seen any weather problems yet. But we don't get thunderstorms in California.

I have done about 20-25 OTA recordings so far and all have been perfect.

I think Satellite is much more suseptble to weather than OTA. But I have not seen any issues here except. My Dish receiver went out of tune and had to resync. Weird.

The size of the Cable(in the clear) 1 Hour HD recordings have been on the order of 7.5G and the OTA have been about the same.

What they do with the other encrypted HD channels is another matter that I would not know about.

[MattHelm]

UHF and VHF shouldn't be bothered by weather unless you are truely at the fringe. Maybe you are the digital knee, and you need a better antenna??? My dad is 50+ miles from the towers and working with a messed up (huge) antenna, and can still get perfect digital signals.

[OldPCGUY]

Those Old Attenas will do just fine with a 300 ohm to 75 Ohm transformer at the source. I added a small DB2 to pick up and extra 10-12 channels that were 26 miles away. The other stations are only 13 miles.

If I wanted to I add a DB8 and pick up channels from 50 miles away.