Normal, boring, everyday TV aerial

friznit · Post by **friznit** » February 5th, 2011, 18:17

New home, made by Taylor Wimpey. I was pretty sure they said it had a loft installed digital freeview aerial. It's got a connector in the wall that says TV on it, but nothing's coming out. I'm not sure I want to fuck around putting a big aerial up, and I don't watch enough TV to warrant getting Sky Sat. So, anyone any idea what my options are?

Post by **Dog Pants** » February 5th, 2011, 19:20

Have a look in the loft? Might be there but not facing the right way.

Anhamgrimmar · Post by **Anhamgrimmar** » February 6th, 2011, 17:02

Plug your postcode into banewolf's tv reception guide:
http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tva.exe? (for analog tv)

or
http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe? (for digital)

And that'll tell you which way you should be pointing (also what type of aerial you should be using)

It may be that your region has gone through digital switchover, but your antenna is pointing at the wrong transmitter tower.

If twidling it about doesnt help, give me a shout (i did ariel/sattelite TV installer for my ressettlement), and i can tell you what you'd need

friznit · Post by **friznit** » February 6th, 2011, 20:40

Roger. I'll need to find a ladder and look in the loft first. It may be there isn't an aerial at all of course.

Also, self T/J

How do I go about stripping DRM shite of Blinkbox downloaded videos? Just found out the licence restricts them to a single computer, and my TV / Boxee / NAS set up doesn't recognise the software that assigns the licence, so I can't watch the bloody things on my TV using any combination of media center, Boxee or network storage. Seems the only method is to physically plug a laptop to the TV with HDMI, which is faaabulous since I don't own a laptop.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 7th, 2011, 5:18

Do you have a Boxee box, or are you just using the software on a PC?

You should be able to connect any PC to your TV. Many TVs have a VGA input, and even for those that don't DVI to HDMI converters are easily obtainable:

A very cheap media centre PC connected up to the telly might be the easiest option, since it can run all the software, stream videos you already have off your network yet still be a PC you can configure.

That way it can be remotely controlled via remote desktop from the comfort of your main PC for the purpose of installing stuff on it and getting downloads and from your armchair via about £20-worth of infrared USB dongle and remote control unit.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » February 7th, 2011, 11:13

I bought a Boxee Box, thinking it would basically be PC in a box that I could RDP and config normally. Unfortunately the app is apparently still wank in beta, doesn't support any UK content other than BBC iPlayer and cannot be remotely controlled via the PC to do anything useful. In hindsight I'd do what you suggest - buy a cheapo laptop with an HDMI port and run some sort of media centre software on it.

However, I currently have a Boxee Box. It's networked to the PC, NAS and Internets but cos of the arse software, I can't easily access the likes of BlinkBox to download, stream or register movie licences. Hence I'm stuck viewing them on my PC (which is in a different room) or using alternative acquisition methods until the film industry wakes the fuck up and realises we're in the 21st century.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 8th, 2011, 7:35

I guess all you can do is petition the Boxee people to provide more content, unless there's some way to turn a Boxee box into a regular PC.

If it's anything like the PS3/XBox, though, apart from iPlayer, ITV, C4 and Five's efforts everything else is stuff you have to pay for. Lovefilm, Sky, etc. The US-based services like Netflix manage to detect you're outside the US even when you're logged in with a US PS3 account, which I guess is the same on a Boxee, it's probably only possible to trick them if you use a PC to do internet connection sharing.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » February 8th, 2011, 14:05

I can access a bunch of site scrapers and other shit which I think is from the US. They have a bunch of not very good quality stuff but the feeds are generally so slow you can't stream without constant buffering. I havn't worked out if they're downloadable yet.