Charlie knows how to get HD…FREE HD! Wait until you see how he did it! Smart.

Here’s a post from Charlie that I felt warranted its own blog entry. What Charlie is describing is happening everyday in households throughout America. HD is great. No question about that. HD which is great and FREE is even better. When making the transition to digital, don’t forget what Charlie so aptly points out…the best HD content is FREE and pretty easy to get.

A really great post:We bought a Sylvania HD LCD for the bedroom. Not large… 26″. I have satellite service but not HD. We bought it because we knew HD was coming so why get a non-HD set? Anyways… we were watching satellite on the new set and it was nice. I couldn’t help but wonder though about the antenna connection. Now… we live in a rural area where I can’t get regular VHF stations using a roof mounted outdoor antenna. Anyways… I took an FM dipole off an old receiver I had out in the garage, used alligator clips and scotch tape to connect that to a matching transformer, and then carefully screwed that into the antenna connection on the TV. Wait for commercial…. switch from the satellite input to the antenna input, search for stations… takes a while… wife about to complain she was missing CSI… hehehe. Done searching. Went to a digital station and … WOW! CSI in HD! amazingly clear. 

‘Want me to put it back on satellite?’
‘No! Leave it alone! This looks great!’

A couple days later I had a $25 indoor antenna hooked up so I could get rid of the FM dipole draped over my dressers. 

When we upgrade the main TV I’ll probably get HD service on my satellite. They offer several stations I’ll actually watch (and many more I never will) in HD, but I’ll drop the locals-over-satellite and just get them in HD over the air.