Online Radio and TV

I have wanted to continue using this space to pass along word of Hamfest’s that I receive information on to help get the word out for the Amateur Radio Clubs that put these on. The Shelby Amateur Radio Club will be sponsoring the 2008 Shelby Hamfest (their 52ng annual). The dates are August 30 and 31, 2008.

The hamfest will be at a new location this year. The location will be the Gaston County Park in Dallas, North Carolina. (Directions: From I-85 take the 321 Exit, North on 321 for 2 miles, take the ramp onto 279 towards Cherryville for .8 mile and then you can park at Gaston College.)

Gates open at 7AM both Saturday and Sunday. $5 admission for pre-registration and $7 at the gate. More info can be found at the Shelby Hamfest Website.

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There are so many great web resources that sometimes it’s easy to forget or misplace one. I was reminded today of RadioReference.com which is a big resource to forget, but I’m into so many varied projects I’ll use that as an excuse. In fact, they have a great radio frequency database that allows you to drill down by state and then county to find the “in use” radio frequencies for an area. This is fantastic for scanner owners.

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This really probably isn’t a surprise, but according to the Neilson rankings of web traffic, Hulu is now #10 in traffic among web video sites. They knocked Google Video out of #10 to do this. (Not Youtube… but the other Google Video.) In March they were #30 and April is when they made #10. So, will they succeed?

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I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on the Spanish Language TV Streams Online page. There are so many good live feeds online and several of my favorites are the news networks. Primarily, I’ve been using them to practice my Spanish language skills. There are a good number of entertainment channels there that are available as well as the news of course. I’ve spent quite a bit of time compiling the tv streams, but I’ve also been spending a lot of time (too much) watching them. Here are some of my recent favorites.

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I noticed in the last week or two that I haven’t made many more additions to the site here. What I’ve been doing is getting side tracked by all the good Free English Language Live TV Streams and Free Spanish Language Live TV Streams. Of course, i’ve also got some Live Sports video streams online as well as Free Chinese TV Online and Free French Language TV Online, it’s been kind of distracting though…. In fact it’s kept me from getting some of my other planned items done for this site.

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What is IPTV? Basically it’s TV delivered over the internet protocol. In some sense, that’s loosely available now if you look in the right places. If you search here and there (I have a few sites listed here) you can find a few streams of tv streamed live over the internet. In Europe it looks like Iptv has had pretty good uptake. But… there are some options becoming available in the United States. At&t’s U-verse is one such iptv provider (markets may be limited.) But do you have to buy from a big provider? What about a-la-carte buying a few channels at a time?

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So… to bring you up to date, I’ve ben looking at the digital tv conversion process. I’ve got a magnavox converter box and live in suburban/rural fringe area in the mountains. The nearest city is the other side of the mountains from us and our line of sight view is towards Tennessee (we live in North Carolina near Asheville.) After the first round of testing with a cheap ($6-$8 antenna) left me thinking that the digital conversion was going to leave is in a slightly worse reception spot than before. Yes, crisp pictures are possible, but from what I’ve been able to do our signal still wasn’t enough to keep a solid signal.

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I hope to resume the digital broadcast tv conversion series next week, but in the meantime….

So many things have been achieved by asking what if… These days radio receivers, AM, FM, shortwave, etc. have wide variations, there are simple cheap sets and then there are those with all the bells and whistles, meters, etc. etc. What if you had a box that could plug into a computer and then you could just use a desktop computer to decode the signals or chart the received information? That’s basically what WinRadio is. The idea is that you buy a receiver which runs from about $500 up depending on features, coverage (shortwave/wideband/uhf/vhf/marine/etc.) This plugs into your computer and you use the WinRadio software to hear what your tuning.

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Over the years I’ve accumulated a couple small, black and white portable tvs. These are usually my “storm”/power outage tvs just because I can move them to a place where their antenna should pull in a good signal. They’re also my favorites for this because it’s easy to power them from batteries or a car lighter socket. I like options…. So, this is what I have first tested with a digital converter box. This article will talk about the box and it’s features.

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I just got a chance to play around with one of the new digital tv converter boxes and I wanted to give a series of articles on it so that you would have a clearer idea of where broadcast tv is going to be after this analog to digital conversion and what things will look like. First off, I wanted to give you a summary of our location, our previous over the air (OTA) reception of tv (analog) and give the background of why I’m interested in making sure we get digital reception. So, I live in Western North Carolina… Buncombe County to be precise in an area north of Asheville. Back before cable arrived….

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