Where is the OTA???

[tonyd79]

I have had two friends in the last couple of weeks get their dishes upgraded to the slimlines from the old, old single satellite dish.

In both cases, they ordered OTA antennae (at my suggestion). In both cases, DirecTV failed to deliver the OTA antennae. In fact, on the latter of the two, the installer didn't even know how to do one.

The first friend was told they could not come out to do OTA only and had to talk to multiple people to get them to come out again. (They supposedly put in that she was getting a new dish and they would just not install the new dish since she already has one.)

The second friend called why the new dish install was being done and after talking to four people, got an agreement for OTA only.

Neither has been done yet....we will see.

[bonscott87]

I would highly recommend against the "freebie" antenna that DirecTV provides anyway, it plain sucks unless you're on top of the towers or have near perfect receiving conditions.

[tonyd79]

They are basically 6 or so miles from the towers. That is why I got them to get the freebie. The one has a problem with an indoor antenna because the whole house has wire mesh in the walls, so signal is inconsistent at best. Any outdoor antenna should be good. The other has his TV in the basement and gets most locals on an indoor antenna but there are drop outs because of multipath.

If they were further away, I would have told them to forget it or get a real antenna installed.

Just wanted to list a problem I have seen twice so far.

[mrb]

They are basically 6 or so miles from the towers. That is why I got them to get the freebie. The one has a problem with an indoor antenna because the whole house has wire mesh in the walls, so signal is inconsistent at best. Any outdoor antenna should be good. The other has his TV in the basement and gets most locals on an indoor antenna but there are drop outs because of multipath.

If they were further away, I would have told them to forget it or get a real antenna installed.

Just wanted to list a problem I have seen twice so far.

I know this is an ignorant question...but can't the HR20 pick up the local channels in HD via the satellite? Why do you need OTA...I guess they're only available via the sat in some larger areas?

[liverpool]

I know this is an ignorant question...but can't the HR20 pick up the local channels in HD via the satellite? Why do you need OTA...I guess they're only available via the sat in some larger areas?

You need the ota to have all 4 tuners active. So your recording options are maximised

[cygnusloop]

I know this is an ignorant question...but can't the HR20 pick up the local channels in HD via the satellite? Why do you need OTA...I guess they're only available via the sat in some larger areas?

D* "LiL's" (local into local) are available in many markets. But even then, you will likely only get the 4 major networks from D*. With an OTA antenna, in many cases, you are able to receive 10 or even more local DTV (Digital TeleVision, not DirecTV) stations. When an affiliate does the HD broadcast right, the PQ is unbeatable, as well

[cygnusloop]

You need the ota to have all 4 tuners active. So your recording options are maximised

This isn't exactly right. With the HR20, you can only ever record two programs at one time (while watching a third recorded program), regardless of the source. The MPEG2 programming that is received with the OTA antenna is really no different than the MPEG2/4 programming that is received via SAT. Having all 4 tuners active does not increase your ability to record multiple programs, sorry. Some say this is a hardware limitation, others claim recording 3 programs in the future is possible. Many threads on this topic.

(BTW, there are actually 5 tuners in the HR20, the 5th is dedicated for "future use". there are also many threads on this topic, as well.)