Current Status
Well I returned that expensive Terk HDTV antenna about 2 weeks ago. I just couldn't justify the price ($162 after taxes) for an antenna that could only pickup 2 or 3 stations of varyingly marginal signal strength which are only 20-30 miles away when a $20 antenna works just as well. Suprisingly the $20 dollar antenna is getting different channels, which I suppose may not suprise an Electrical Engineer with any antenna theory under their belt but it seemed odd to me that a standard rabbit ears and loop antenna could out-do a highly directional Terk HDTV antenna (which I assume has some sort of phased array configuration) on the second floor of an apartment 20-30 miles from the tower in an area which gets lots of ghosting and signal reflection. I guess the cheaper model can't pickup the lower power ghosts and as such has an effective "ghetto-filter" at work.
I managed to get ALSA working with the AC'97 chip and outputting over Tosklink SPD/IF on the motherboard after figdetting with the alsa-mixer and alsa config files. The ATI Remote works as well, though I don't like the feel of the buttons. The only remaining thing left is the LCDproc integrated VFD driver (I have the standalone working) and the IR remote that came with the case. Oh, and MythTV. That thing still doesn't work, though I haven't messed with it much since I only get 2 HD channels in my apartment right now; CBS and PBS.
I also haven't had success getting my brand new HITACHI 42HDT51 Plasma 16:9 HDTV (which I got on a really good sale at Circuit City) to output over the IEEE1394 firewire port in order to get DTV recording on the Mac Mini I have. The manual is very terse and uninformative on the operation of the IEEE1394 port and it's intricacies. Quite disappointing.
