Do You Need a VHF Antenna?

I’ve been in Las Vegas this week for the Amazon re:Invent conference. While there are enough sessions, receptions, and parties to keep you occupied day and night, I just couldn’t pass up a chance to check out the Las Vegas OTA airwaves. The Vdara staff was a bit mystified by my request for the highest south-facing room I could get, but very accommodating. So here I am on the 49th floor with good line-of-sight to the major towers (and a view of the desert instead of the Bellagio fountains, which apparently most people ask for.)

I had packed up a full Entangle development setup, including my trusty Silver Sensor antenna (aka the Zenith ZHDTV1). What I failed to do while busily packing was to check the RF frequencies of the Las Vegas broadcasts. As it turns out there are a few major channels in the VHF bands, including one on channel 2. Sadly the Silver Sensor is a UHF-only antenna.

This brings up an interesting point regarding the current state of OTA antennas: many of them, particularly the compact ones, are UHF-only. Even the ones that claim to be both UHF and VHF don’t handle VHF very well. At best they’ll pull in VHF-Hi. But can you make do with a UHF-only setup?

Continue reading “Do You Need a VHF Antenna?”

Using SSDs in DVRs

Every so often someone asks if I’d use an SSD to store recordings in a DVR. Just a few years ago, I would have quickly replied “No.”  SSD endurance just wasn’t up the demands of recording TV broadcasts.

But the last few years have seen some advances in the durability of SSDs. Now rather than “No”, the answer is “It depends…”

Continue reading “Using SSDs in DVRs”

When Program Guide Data Goes Astray

DVRs revolutionized TV by allowing everyday, non-gadget-oriented people to record shows by simply selecting them from an on-screen guide. You didn’t have to program start time, stop times, and channels by pressing tiny buttons located in the worst possible location of your VCR. Or enter arcane VCR+ codes. With your DVR, you browsed through the guide, found something interesting, and pressed select. Thanks to its program guide data, it knew when that show started and stopped, and which channel it was broadcast on. It even followed time slot changes if the broadcaster decided to shuffle its Sunday lineup.

But what happens if the program guide data goes astray? Continue reading “When Program Guide Data Goes Astray”

First Look: Didja’s Local TV Streaming Service

One of the interesting things about being in the Silicon Valley is that startups are popping up all around you. Earlier this week I came across Didja, a startup providing a free service that streams local broadcast television, similar to Sling TV or DIRECTVNow. It includes a cloud DVR that allows you to record about 300 hours of shows.

Didja is based in Mountain View, California. As it turns out, they’re half a mile down the street from me and in a building that used to house one of my former clients!  Well, with such an auspicious location I had to see what it was all about. Continue reading “First Look: Didja’s Local TV Streaming Service”

Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!

April 7, 2018: Please take a look at the follow-up to this review.

Koherence’s projects have long been powered by SiliconDust HDHomerun tuners. At present 13 HDHR4s are feeding the three production Entangles, and a venerable HDHR Rev 2 handles other sundry tasks. The RF and power supply cabling has started to become quite…entangling…so the announcement of the four-tuner HDHomerun Connect Quatro was received with much anticipation. As soon as a (not quite local) Best Buy got it in stock, I was off to get one for evaluation! Continue reading “Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!”