HD techies help needed

[ProudMarineDad]

This is a question on HD signal. I took back my HD cable box today and my wife's regular cable box. We are just trying to save some money until AT&T's U-Verse is available in my area. Our local Charter cable company is a pain to deal with as far as getting any special deals.

My question is both of our TVs are HD and I was wondering what kind of antenna would allow me bring my local channels in HD for ball games. Does it have to say HD in the description or does a regular one do the job since our TVs have digital tuners? I was talking to a guy at Radio Shack and he told me it didn't have to be an HD antenna but I wasn't convinced so I thought I would ask you folks. Don't want to put much into it because I am switching to AT&T as soon as they make U-Verse available.

[Norwester]

The Radio Shack guy is right,don't spend extra for an "HD antenna".
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/dtvantennas.html

[RRK]

Good thing to have for football anyways. I have U-verse and they use very aggressive compression which can result in some pretty crummy looking football games.

[Scuba Steve]

If your tv has a built in digital tuner, then you should be able to pick up some hd channels on standard cable. Just do an auto program on your tv and it should pick up unencrypted channels. They will be on channels like 82.16 or 102.34 for example.

[ProudMarineDad]

The Radio Shack guy is right,don't spend extra for an "HD antenna".
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/dtvantennas.html

That's good to know and thanks for the link.

Good thing to have for football anyways. I have U-verse and they use very aggressive compression which can result in some pretty crummy looking football games.

Scooby Doo said it best

Other than that, do you like U-verse? Do you use their internet to play videogames online? If so, is there any lag? How about the DVR?

[RRK]

Other than that, do you like U-verse? Do you use their internet to play videogames online? If so, is there any lag? How about the DVR?

Uh, I like it. Its kinda neat and cutting edge but that comes with a lot of glitches. I never had Time Warner come to my house but I have had AT&T here like 20 times.

I don't really play online games but I think others say the connection is great for that kind of thing accept some of the other companies have started offering bandwidth much higher then U-verse but the latency and consistency is very good.

The problems are that the boxes are running Windows CE and it has problems and the fiber optics only go to the box out in the yard and they use a regular phone line to go the rest of the way into your house so they have very limited bandwidth.

The advantages are that the menus and everything look cool and they are always making little updates and coming out with new features. The channels change immediately when you press the button like tv did 20 years ago and there are a lot of channels. The standard definition channels look a lot better then what we got from Time Warner but the high definition channels are not as good when there is a lot of movement going on.

We just got a bigger DVR and you can watch and record things to your DVR from any of the other TV's in your house. You can stream your music and photos from your computer to your TV and you can get caller ID on it.

Oh and you can only watch or record 2 HD channels and 3 SD channels at a time.