Seriously though, I will be so glad when it is done. I am tired of seeing the commercials about the switch, the 30 minute infomercials, etc. Now only if I could actually get more than 1 Station at my house would I be happy. After the switch I will probably fix the antenna at my parents house, funny that they can get everything from Pittsburgh now, and when I was at home, most of the analog channels had interference on them.
Since I have some time off from work, I decided to make some antenna’s to try and get some local HDTV signals. Tonight I was looking for some UHF bowtie plans, so off to google and I started typing in “how to make a ” and this is what the auto search showed me.. Thought it was kind of interseting what showed up.
It seems that Elgato has 2 different EyeTV Hybird USB Tuners for the Mac.. The one you can find in the stores is NOT the one advertised here. The one in the stores does NOT do Clear QAM. They decided to add Clear QAM support to the “2008″ version but kept the name and model the same. So to those who want one that does QAM you need to buy it directly from Elgato and not from a local retailer. Only get it from a local retailer if it has on the box “Clear QAM” in green listed some place. The others will not do QAM at all, which means if you bought it to watch HDTV via Cable it won’t work. This information the last time I looked was not clearly visible and was buried deep in their support forums.
So to sum up, if you want a TV Tuner for your Mac and you want to watch the Digital Stations on Cable that are in the clear, you need the Tuner that does Clear QAM. The 2007 version will only do over the air HDTV, which in my area means 1 PBS station.
Wonder when these will actually show up in the On Screen Guide:
189 (MTVHD)
190 (NGCHD)
191 (FOODHD)
192 (AETVHD)
193 (HGTVD)
194 (UHD)
195 (USAHD)
196 (HSTRYHD)
776 (HDT)
779 (HSTRYHD)
780 (SCIFIHD)
Not sure why HSTRYHD is showing 2 different channels. But none of these are in my HD box yet.. but are appearing in some listings. It is about time they get some more HD content. Now if they would only put the Over The Air channels back on to the “right” channels. (I.E. I used to be able to tune my TV with the QAM tuner to 53.1 and get WPGH Fox 53 out of Pittsburgh. Now it is on channel 109.2301. Don’t have a clue why they changed it to that.
