logictortured.com Blog

The death of the rotary antenna

Kara and I are thinking about dumping cable, since most of her shows are online anyway. I started thinking about getting a rotary directional antenna to pick up regional TV for free. (From what I’ve read, despite their name, multi-directional antennas only work if they’re pointing directly at the transmitter.)

The problem is that you cannot really use a rotary antenna with a DVR because the direction of the antenna needs to change for each channel/record. I thought there had to be some interface between the rotary device and a PC/DVR/Tivo so that it would automatically change the direction depending on the channel. But there isn’t. I cannot even find a rotary with a timer, so that it would change the direction at a specific time. (Which I’d forget to set anyway.)

And then it struck me: rotary antennas are dead. They’re buggy whips in the automobile era. Despite the fact that you can receive free HD over the air, the more expensive cable and satellite services won the war.

I personally think there was an intentional effort by the big box electronic stores to eliminate even the idea of over the air HD. If you go to Best Buy, for example, the tips on getting High Definition content at home is buying a Blu-ray player or signing up with whatever satellite company BB has contracted with. Heck, you cannot even buy real antennas at Best Buy. Double heck, even Radio Shack stopped selling outdoor antennas. It’s all about retail partnering with a large corporate content entity and selling a monthly service. Informing people about free HD content would only interfere with that cash cow.

Anyway, I’m weird. When I was a kid I loved using our rotary to find different channels. I did the same thing at our house in Lapeer, well before we moved in, back when it had a giant rotary antenna. I could get channel 28 out of Toledo after WFUM went off the air for the night. Plus Canadian stuff too. Those were the days.

Share this:

Fox News puts yet another nail in the coffin of "legitimate" news!

Fox News has fired a columnist for reviewing a leaked copy of the soon to be released Wolverine movie.

This whole debacle gives a real life example why so called “legitimate” news is actually worse and less informative than blogging. Bloggers can report the truth. (I’m not saying bloggers “do” or “will” report the truth, only that they are free to do so.) However, “legitimate” news is always tied to their corporate interests and will always reflect that bias.

It simply makes no sense for Fox news to ignore this huge story, that the movie Wolverine was leaked, and pretend it never happened. All this is doing is putting yet another nail in the coffin of “legitimate” news agencies. As all this will do is validate most people’s belief that “legitimate” news sources are so biased. I mean, let’s face it, if you can go to Fox News for the truth, where can you go? The answer is the blogging community.

Share this: