Background:
Our living room TV is a large computer screen connected to a quiet Linux PC. We watch OTA Digital TV using MythTV and a Silicondust HDHomeRun tuner. We get following channels over the air for free:
WUNC (PBS), WRAL (CBS), WTVD (ABC), WNCN (NBC), WLFL (CW), WRDC (MNT), WRPX (ION, qubo, ION Life), WRAZ (FOX, RTN).
Gray Hoverman Antenna:
I built a Gray Hoverman antenna out of a cardboard box, some fencing wire, hot glue, and a $5 balun from Radio Shack. The antenna is mounted upstairs in the loft along with the HDHomerun box and just an ethernet cable running down to the main network switch.
Local TV Transmission Towers:
The Gray Hoverman antenna is directional by design, which makes it sensitive to small variations in rotation and tilt. I used a combination of the webpages listed below and hdhomerun_config_gui which tunes into each channel and displays the signal strength.
Right now we point our antenna directly East so that it picks up WRAL (CBS) and most other channels except UNC (PBS) which is in the opposite direction.
Future directions:
There are some occasional drops in signal quality which cause glitches in the picture. If I can't improve these by tweaking the antenna position then I may have to try adding an omnidirectional antenna to my setup. Suggestions are welcome.
Resources:
Gray Hoverman antenna plans:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/
This webpage lists the local stations around your zip code:
http://antennaweb.org
This webpage displays a Google Map of the transmission towers around major cities in the USA
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/programming/broadcast.php
