Big Lots sold a DVD-burner/VHS combo unit with Dtv for eighty-something bucks. I couldn't believe these things didn't fly off the shelf. I bought it and I love it. I just stuck some misc. wire I had laying around into the antenna hole in the back -- and bam! Rock solid reception. I'm very happy with the thing. To my surprise though, when recording from an ext. source I get better results using composite input than S-video. But I tangent. Let's get back to DTV.

Despite my great reception on the second floor, my friends that live on the first floor of the same building experienced much less impressive results when I set them up with a Digital Stream Dtv converter box I picked up at a garage sale for $10. Innocently, I attached to it their old rabbit ears. But the reception was poor, some channels came in good, but others didn't come in at all. I even moved the antenna to a window on the south side of the house using about 50 feet of wire. Still, reception remained unacceptable.

On MakeTV I stumbled across information on a do-it-yourself DTV antenna. I didn't know Digital needed a different design. I printed their directions, emptied about 10 metal hangers from my closet, pulled an old piece of wood from under the bed and put the thing together in about 1-hour without paying a thing. Oh, the big washers I used were probably worth about 2 bucks. Anyway, I attached this interesting looking device to the end of that 50 foot wire and … nothing. I mean, no improvement. I was perplexed.

I scoured the internet for clues and found one blogger who mentioned that the digital transmitters in my area were to the north, not the south. So I ripped down all my 50 feet of wiring and instead, put the insect looking DTV antenna in the south window -- just 3 feet from the TV & box. Still, nothing, no improvement.

I turned a suspicious eye at the unshielded wire I'd used to connect my antenna to the box. I tossed it out, grabbed some extra cheap coax cable that came with some VCR years ago from my drawer of junk, snipped off one end, stripped the two wires and used that to connect my DIY Dtv Ant to the $10 Digital Stream box and -- WAHOO! Blammo! Great reception. All channels worked, though some waned in signal intermittently. Actually, I don't understand why a signal can change depending on the time of day.

Btw, I followed MakeTV's design, but since I had a longer piece of board and extra hangers, I extended the height by 1.5 times. I also used one of the discarded hooks to hang the device from window blinds instead of wasting time building the base. I also experimented with bending a few V-sets of the to-and-fro as an adjustment for reception.

Overall, now the reception is better than previous analogue and I'm excited about the interesting little channels inbetween.

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Books by Author/Illustrator/Speaker Ross Anthony