Home made Digital TV Antenna

Most people who know me know that I don't watch much TV. TV is my ADD trigger or something. If there is a TV on, I can't help myself but to watch it. So, I keep making TVs into fishtanks or otherwise getting rid of them.

I do have 1 TV that I like (besides my fishtank TV). A friend from an old job gave it to me, thanks Trudi! It is a small, black and white 5 inch AM/FM/TV with AV in. It can run on internal batteries. I mean, it's the perfect emergency TV. Great for Hurricane Country. The best part, is it came with a schematic. I can fix the goofy thing if it ever died.

Well, come Feb of 2009, the antenna won't work anymore. So I picked up a Digital TV converter with analog pass through. The analog passthrough is important to me because I will be playing with enough old video stuff that not having it could be a pain.

Anyway. I hooked it up. No TV. Didn't surprise me, as I don't get regular TV clearly with the internal antenna.

A challenge.

So, I started looking online for quick and easy, DIY TV antennas.

I found one!

Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna: Better Than Store Bought! AMAZING! - The funniest bloopers are right here

It looked like a fairly good VHF UHF antenna.

I made one. It took me about an hour. I got to play with my torch. Any night is a good night when you get to play with fire, right? My soldering iron isn't hot enough to work well with the 12 gauge solid wire I used for the antenna.

I took a video with my Hi-Def video camera of my five inch TV getting High Definition Broadcast Digital Television. Kinda ironic, isn't it?



I get 10 stations for 25 channels? Is that how you say that? A lot of each station has multiple channels in them. The only really important channel I get is the Weather Channel.

A really good website to visit to see what you should expect for TV reception is TV Fool. I am getting about what it says that I should.

I am thinking I will make a 'cleaner' antenna. I want to get a matching transformer on this antenna to see if that works better. I will also be making a few other types over the winter I think. Just stuff to play around with.

I did notice that if I hook my converter box up to the antenna on the foot and a half cable I left myself, I don't get much for reception, but if I use the 40 foot cable I have, I get much better reception. I will need to investigate cable length for reception and such. I am guessing that the long cable is helping match the antenna to to the receiver. Just a hunc though.

Battle of the Videos Part 2

It's funny how solutions to problems can come from unexpected sources. I have had a login for Sourceforge for years now. They sent me a survey for the best software for 2008. The survey had a multimedia category. SCORE! So I checked out what's in the line up.

Media Coder http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Talk about exceedingly complex! There are about a trillion option combinations in that software. But, it can trim my HD files down to size, and a test upload to the video websites shows that the aspect ratio is kept! Best off all, it looks like I can save presets and run it against entire folders - batch processing of my videos.

So, without any further ado, here is round two of the video comparisons.

This uploaded video is a down-sampled rip to mp4 of the original 1080p .mov with a new image size of 480X272.

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PhOfWvuZtQ


Google Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3798221520686157929&hl=en


Blip.tv http://creuzer.blip.tv/file/1074115/


Again, let me know which one you like the best!

Videos

I am not sure if you had noticed, but I picked up a cheap digital camcorder.

It is an AIPTEK Action HD. Yes, a HD camcorder for the guy who owns a 5 inch black and white TV. I had misplaced my digital camera SOMEWHERE since the move. It isn't in the usual lcoations, truck console, next to the computer, on the table, etc. I am sure it's somewhere, but i just can't find it. The cell phone takes terrible photos, and with the kittens, well, it was as good of an excuse as I will come up with.

Anyway, about the camera. It can do 1080p at 30 frames per second, the smaller HD format at 30 and 60 FPS, standard DVD size, and a special web sized just for YouTube. It even has 'made for YouTube' on the box.

Other features include, 8megapixel digital camrea, although I personally think the 5 megapixel mode looks better. Audio recording. I can record video via line in. Built in LED lights for the camcorder, photo flash with a normal flash. It came with a tripod and remote even.

All in all, it's pretty cool. About the smallest camcorder I have seen. It is $200 at Walmart.

So, with all this video I have been taking, you would think I would take it using the YouTube sized format. NOOooooo. I Gotta take it at FULL HD. **sighs**

This means 2 things, `1, the video is in widescreen format. 2, videos take FOREVER to upload.

I have been using YouTube for about a year. I am happy with it, for the most part. The one thing I have found, is that it squashes the video to a 'standard' sized video. It also limits videos to 10 minutes or shorter. Great for my old camera, not so useful with the new camera.

So, I was in search of alternatives tonight.

I uploaded the same video on the 3 services I found, and am comparing results.

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqNutjN9cRk


Google Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5506736372747150667&hl=en


Blip.tv http://creuzer.blip.tv/#1077543


YouTube has probably the friendliest interface. Google Video is the most utilitarian interface - the hardest to use and get to your uploaded videos. Blip.tv has the most options, and is really pretty slick.

Looking at the videos, quality from best to poorest in my eyes is Blip.tv, Google Video, YouTube.

None of them are displaying the video in the correct aspect ratio. This could be a problem with the .mov file created by the AIPTEK camera. I don't really know.

All I am really looking for is the video being the right aspect ratio. YouTube quality is fine by me.

I am looking for free/cheap software that I can use to make the videos smaller before I upload. The video files are .mov format h.264 videos. Windows Media Player won't chew on them. Converting them to .AIF makes them go from huge file sizes to stupid huge file sizes, so that's not an option.

What are your thoughts on the different players above?

Timelapse vidoe of me moving my stuff in.

Here is a time lapse video of Katie and I moving my stuff in.
The time of no activity near the beginning is when I was taking the tarp off and untying the load. This video is over the course of 4 and a half hours.



I am happy to report that the fish tanks survived the trip! The trailer and the tarp are the worse for wear. I have to weld up the trailer some from when the spare tire tried to fall off. The tarp is basically a loss. I expected this though.

The cats are loving the new jungle gym!