Other Sean

Repost: Cheap Local HDTV in San Francisco

One of the things that bothered me about moving from Pixelnomad to this domain was losing my archives to the world. While it wasn’t filled entirely with gold, there are some entries I am fond of and plan to re-post here for old times’ sake. Earlier today I was chatting with a friend about my HDTV post and realized it’s inaccessible now.

So my first re-post is the longest one I’ve ever written, and possibly useless.

This post originally appeared on December 7, 2007

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Original Note (12/7/07): This post is not for everyone and I put it here simply to have it as a matter of record for other people seeking advice on how to setup their own systems. Also, this is only my San Francisco experience, I cannot vouch for whether or not this will work and/or how much it will cost in any other area. That said, I do believe the cableCARD advice applies pretty much everywhere.

I recently received an HD Television but don’t really watch all that much TV. I’m only really interested in the major networks and didn’t want to have to pay Comcast tons of money for cable I wasn’t going to use. Thus began my quest to figure out the cheapest way possible to score HD for local TV only in the SF Bay Area.

My Setup

Here is a breakdown of the equipment I have: 

• LG 42” LCD HDTV (Major Black Friday Deal: $899)
• HD TiVo ($279 at Costco)
• Comcast Limited Basic Cable ($17.99/month)

Here are some resources I used to gather all of this information: 

• CNET HD Overview
• AVS HDTV Forums
• TiVo HD Comcast Thread]
• List of San Francisco HD Channels with Broadcast Source

There are three main ways to get HDTV according to this well researched CNET article: antenna, cable, and satellite. Satellite was pretty much out of the question for me so I began researching my antenna and cable options for this area. 

Antenna (also referred to as Over the Air HD or OTA HD)

Most major networks broadcast their signals over the air in High Definition, much like they broadcast their normal signal (referred to as Standard Definition). Do you remember or have you ever seen a rabbit ear antenna on an old TV set? Well it is entirely possible that a rabbit ear antenna can pick up an HD signal. However, there are antennas on the market that are specifically for HD and include features such as amplification to enable a person to get a signal from up to 40 miles away. The inherent beauty of the antenna option is that all of your TV is free and in glorious HD. Additionally, it is said that over-the-air HD looks better than HD from other sources because it is uncompressed. Free, beautiful HD? Sign me up!

The key limiting factor to antenna technology is being able to get a signal from the tower. There are two types of HD antennas: indoor and outdoor. Because I live in a condo in the middle of San Francisco (near USF), an outdoor antenna was out of the question. There are two types of indoor HD antennas: directional and omnidirectional. 

Directional antennas require that you point them directly at the source (the TV tower) and omnidirectional antennas scan 360 degrees for a signal. The advantage of the directional antenna is that it can receive a signal from much farther away. The obvious disadvantage is that you have to know the direction of the emitting source. Since HD Tivos work with antennas, my original plan was to use an indoor directional antenna and based on reviews I read I ultimately decided to get the Terk Indoor Antenna. After picking up the antenna at my local Best Buy, I continued reading about OTA channel availability in San Francisco.

In my surfing, I found this excellent reference page for local HD channels in San Francisco. Sadly for me, I discovered one glaring problem: all of the channels except for NBC are broadcast from Sutro tower (the giant one on the hill). NBC is broadcast from the San Bruno tower, which is many miles away and 90 degrees from Sutro. You can see how this would be a problem for both a unidirectional antenna (direction) and an omnidirectional antenna (distance). NBC is a channel I want so I had to return the antenna and check into my options as far as cable is concerned. I should divulge here that I never actually opened the antenna and tested it, so it might actually work.

One quick note: there is such a gizmo as an antenna splitter, which will enable a person to setup two antennas and merge them into a single signal. Theoretically, I could have gotten two Terks and pointed them the two sources and merged them into a single signal. At $70/each, I was not interested in this. 

Cable

I did A LOT of research on how to get the cheapest local HD from Comcast. I read a lot of different things that seem to contradict each other. One thing that resonated was that Comcast charges different prices in different regions and gives different answers pretty much every time you contact them. Other than that, the most important information I learned was this: The FCC requires cable operators to broadcast the HD signal of the local channels unencrypted. This means that you can have access to local HD at the lowest tier Comcast offers, limited basic. However, for your setup to be able to display this signal, it must have what is known as a QAM Tuner].

A QAM tuner basically allows your TV to interpret the digital HD signal. The FCC originally mandated that all TVs larger than 25” or larger must have QAM tuners built in, and on March 1 of 2007 that mandate extended to all TVs. Chances are high that a shiny new HDTV has one of these babies. Essentially, what this means is that you can plug the coax cable from your wall directly into your TV and tune to HD (in San Francisco, this means tuning your TV to stations 701-707 in primetime and during sporting events). 

However, I am fully addicted to TiVo and needed my HD. Technically, you can plug your coax into your TiVo and tune to the HD channels as well. For some reason this did not work for me. The other problem with this is that your TiVo won’t have access to guide data for these channels because they are digital. Because of this, I needed one more thing, a cableCARD.

cableCARDS

In an attempt to provide customers with more choice, the FCC mandated the creation of a device known as a cableCARD. Before the invention of this device consumers were at the mercy of the cable operators as to what set-top-box (STB) they had to use to interact with their cable channels. If you had Comcast, you had to use their crappy Motorola boxes. The cableCARD changes all of this. Now consumers can buy any cableCARD-enabled STB they want and plug in the cableCARD from the cable operator for full functionality.

The cableCARD becomes the “brain” of the device and tells the box what channels it receives, who the provider is, etc. A cableCARD is about the size of a credit card and is a fabulous consumer invention. The TiVo HD box is cableCARD ready and requires a cableCARD to be fully functional (for HD guide data). In fact, the HD Tivo requires two cableCARDS (or one “multi-stream” card) to be able to record two shows at one time. All you have to do to get this setup is call Comcast and ask for two cableCARDS. 

At this point, they may try to upsell you to other packages. Stay strong, we want cheap HD here people. They will most likely tell you they need to setup an appointment to install the cableCARDs. This is a ridiculous step because they’re very easy to install. However, cableCARD technology has only been in full circulation for about a year and they’re VERY flaky. When they first launched Comcast was getting too many customer service calls from users self-installing and decided to require a technician to install them to reduce the number of complaints. This service call typically costs about $15. The first card is free and adding the second cableCARD to your account will cost you an additional $1.50-1.89 per month. Some people actually get the second one for free, but this didn’t happen to me. And that’s it. That’s right everyone, local HD from Comcast for less than $20/month.

The installer who came to my house was very familiar with the TiVo and with the cableCARDS. He brought two multi-stream cards with him and the first one failed. The second one worked great and I am now deeply in love with the quality of HD. I hope this helps, if I can clarify anything, ask in the comments and I’ll answer if I can.