[quote=bearishgurl][quote=FlyerInHi]New developments (suburban or condo/apartment complexes ) are best to lay fiber.
No so much in rural areas where target shooting don’t bother the neighbors.[/quote]I can’t imagine that we’re going to get Scroogle Fibber anytime soon in (urban) dtn Chula Vista. We’ll be lucky to get buried SDGE cable in my lifetime, eliminating constant 6-8 hr power outages during high-usage A/C days.
For now, my internet cable is strung up on poles and works just fine :=)[/quote] We have internet through TWC, and were seeing basic cable because it was not scrambled (at the time, it is now). We are not running basic internet, so we are paying a bit for it. It is kind of irritating that TWC is charging for local channels. They claim they have to pay for it which kind of makes sense when you consider that TWC changes the commercials that are aired with the channel. But TWC does not have to change the channels, after which they would not be charged for the feed. TWC is trying to ‘both-end’ the deal. Changing the commercials to their sponsors, and then charging to view.
After our feed got scrambled, I was fiddling with the cable for one of the TVs and after a short calculation, found that a full wave antenna at 900Mhz is about 1 foot long. Just for the h**l of it, I had some ‘punch-down’ wire for type-66 telco blocks, so I stripped 1/2 and inch off a 6 inch long piece and just stuck it in a short piece of RG-6 cable connected to the antenna port of the TV and propped it vertically above the TV. I then set the TV to scan for channels and got 18 digital signals… including KPBS!! in high def. Some were weak, but several came in quite strong. The OTA signal looks sharper than TWC’s, so I suspect that TWC is down-compressing the signal, reducing effective resolution. The digital high def signals are sent at higher frequencies than the old VHF TV signals, so smaller antennas work. Most antennas you can buy are not true omni-directionals.
At this point, I have a bit of an ‘itch’ to build a small phased turnstile loop antenna.. (vertically stacked, phased evenly to flatten the reception pattern vertically, extend it horizontally).
