TV Options

Fun For All

Well-known member
Feb 9, 2014
12,087
6,162
113
I’m old school, I have Bell Satellite TV that I pay way too much for…what are the better streaming options out there to replace it?
 
IP tv and for any desired local content, or low tech for family to use, is over the air antenna.
I do OTA, and pick up more stations in Toronto than almost any where else OTA in the world.
 
@Ponderling , you may want to check L.A ( Los Angeles).
 
IP tv and for any desired local content, or low tech for family to use, is over the air antenna.
I do OTA, and pick up more stations in Toronto than almost any where else OTA in the world.
Yep ...47 stations at the moment from a 20ft.antenna in the west end.
 
  • Like
Reactions: shakenbake
Very good. Does the antenna have a rotor?
I started with 2-uhf 4 bay antennas combined on a common down lead, fixed mount on mast.
Where I live in west end of GTA, that put one aimed at Buffalo directly, and the other mostly perfect for TO.
Wet nights would see some Buffalo signal loss with that rig.

Then I added a rotator and put the 2 4 bays to point in the same direction.
And a mast top amp with 15dB of UHF gain in the feed line, to sort of overcome feed line loss/
Until it gets to the basement just about unity gain distro amp found ther
Splice free RG-6 on the down lead.
Found I did not need the rotor very much any more for TV.
Spends most of its time aimed at 51-x which I find is weakest.

Later I found a mast bearing that takes 3 guy anchors that tie to reinforced spots spread out on the roof.
So now mast rotator sits below that mast bearing, so I can put more antennas above the bearing and not overload the top bearing of the rotator.

So I added a big TV VHF antenna just above thrust bearing, to pick up some Buffalo VHF stations.
But is seems water has got into that coax, because gain has dropped, or they are not broadcasting as well .
I do use it for some further out FM radio stations, and need to spin the rotator for that use.
 
Very good. Does the antenna have a rotor?
No rotor...It will not pull in CHCH CH.11 from Hamilton, but I'm not missing much there.
I use an LNA at the top of the mast and a HDHomerun tuner to distribute the channels over my LAN.
A rotor may help with CBS as it comes and goes with atmospheric conditions.
The Audio and Video quality is far superior to cable, especially the audio which Rogers just cuts the hell out of the OTA bit rate.
 
I use Comwave for both TV and internet. Cost is about $57/month combined. Outside of what I get from there I use the internet browser on my TV and pull up thetvapp.to site and stream anything else I like.
 
I live between downtown Toronto and Scarborough and usually pick up 42 or 43 channels via OTA. Rooftop antenna on a mast with no rotor.