Thursday, June 11, 2009

Free TV 101 - Part 7: Swapping "The Shack" for "The Depot"

Sorry there hasn't been any new post for the past two days. I was wrestling with a broken air conditioner, and I just didn't feel like writing a new blog piece in an 86 degree house.
Of course, I went home and quickly set up this Frisbee looking antenna. Connected it with my handy 6’ cable. I put this on top of my TV cabinet and had to rerun the scan on the TV. The learning curve was shorter this time because I remembered to scan first to compare results.

Most impressive! The digital stations were much clearer and for the most part the analogs were acceptable. Still, I could only get only a few more stations with this antenna.

I tried it repositioned but it really didn’t make a bit of difference. Now I quickly realized what I really needed was a long piece of coax so I could move the Frisbee to different locations in the house to hopefully improve reception.

On the Web I found the Shack had a 100' coil of coax that should fill the bill. Wow, they wanted over $50 for this coil. Too rich for me, so I decided that I may have to order from the Internet. I started the search and found I could get a 100' coil at most sites for about ½ the price of Radio Shack. Then I had the revelation: what about Lowes or Home Depot? I checked. Just as I thought -- they had the cable in stock at both these stores for about the same price as the Internet stores. So it was off to The Depot
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