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Crist I spent a small fortune on a antenna a Terk tv35 There is NO way to get local HI DEF other then a antenna. Anyways over a couple years even this monster is cheap comparied to cable.

I'll narrow my comment to just the distribution side: When I bought my home a few years ago I knew going in that it wasn't wired for coax and most certainly wasn't wired with CAT5. Rather than try and cable to all rooms across 3 levels which would have been a huge pain or try to use the 2.4GHZ wireless video senders (which don't like the "cutting edge" 802.11b equipment I had just bought) I purchased some of the Terk Leapfrog HomeNetwork devices to distribute sound and video throughout the house over the existing telephone cabling.

This works very well and video quality is high - nearly equivalent to coax. This approach is cheaper than a full cable install, and without the hassle. Best part about the Terk devices is because they plug into a phone jack if you want to move them to a different area, that's easy enough.

Additionally, these devices solve another problem that anyone with centralized A/V sources has: In addition to moving the video out to the other rooms, you need to be able to relay the IR control signals from the remote room back to the main A/V cluster. These Terk devices also do IR relaying, and they do it well.

For anyone trying to use these devices, here's a small tip: Because they use phone lines to send the signal, if you have lots of phones or stuff like DSL on the line the signal will degrade. Any twisted pair cable will do, however - the cable does not need to have telephone company voltage on it. Because the telephone cabling in most homes has several twisted pairs, you can oftentimes get very high quality by just using one of the other unused pairs in the phone cabling.

In all I was able to hook up 3 remote rooms for AV distribution and remote control relaying, keeping the cost to under $400 and the house intact, making for a happy wife.

Presumably both the standalone HD TiVo will handle OTA reception of HD locals, but lots of folks don't look at "old fashoned" antennas too kindly. Not to mention all the markets that don't have OTA HD yet.

You don't have to necessarily have a big ugly lightning rod on your roof... I use a nice amplified Terk TV-50 antenna in my attic, and receive all high definition chanels here in Dallas area without a problem. (using a Toshiba HDTV tuner)

I have had a HDTV (without a tuner) for about a year, I bought a tuner (nice one too)a few months ago and was disapointed,I even bought a fancy antenna. There was only 4 channels that broadcast hdtv and the quality ranged from amazing to _realy_ bad. Left it hooked up but did not use it for a while, then I had it scan for new channels last weekend and lo and behold six new channels! It looks like the local TV stations have been upgrading becase the the quality seemed to of increased also. Now it's worth it, six month ago I am not so sure.. HD is fast becoming "worth it".

I wanted the Pioneer Premier DEHP-740MP indash MP3 player for my VW Corrado. The radio was XM capable, and I got a super good deal (buddy in the business) on the XM tuner module and Terk TRK-SR2 antenna. I figured I might as well go ahead and get the XM.

I could have spent a buttload of time researching my choice, but I didn't. XM was already launched in my market, I got the hardware cheap, and the programming selection was varied enough that I was sure to find something to make it worth my $10. And, as I said, the Pioneer receiver basically locked me into XM.

I've had it a few weeks and I've already found that I use the XM tuner more than MP3's (This coming from someone who has hundreds of gigs of MP3 files amassed). I find that many times I listen just for news.

I've found that sound quality is good. The voice compression leaves folks sounding a bit tinny, but music is OK (It's not as good as CD, but it beats the pants off FM). I've had only one "unexpected" drop-out. It happened in a HEAVY storm driving under tree cover. It lasted less than a second. I do lose signal when I go underground in my parking garage (same place I lose FM signal), but have found that I can still listen when under bridges and even while my car was in a repair garage about 50 feet from the only overhead door.

The commercials are a non-issue. Most channels have a very limited number of commercials compared to broadcast FM.

My #1 complaint: No Howard Stern. They need to devote a channel to simulcast WLXO from Lexington, KY.

I think that if satellite radio in general is something that you want, then you probably can't make a bad choice with either XM or Sirius. You'd probably be most happy with your audio system overall by picking the receiver model that fits your needs and wants most closely and going with the provider that the vendor is aligned with.

-x

I've had XM in my Chevy C/K-1500 for about three months now and I've been very happy with it. If you listen to the radio a lot, or travel a lot in the car, or live in the boondocks, I would recommend XM Radio. Here are the basics; you need a deck that is XM ready, or a system that has an adapter, an antenna, and a receiver. The receiver is a boring box that goes somewhere out of sight in my case, the antenna is small and went on the roof, and the deck replaced my old crappy Delco built in 1987. The quality of the programming can't be beat, and it is very high quality sound. What I have preset on my deck. 10 40 41 42 44 65 The guts of the system My CD Player My Satellite Receiver My Antenna XM Radio Rock and Roll Very happy with the service and the programming.

To connect multiple TV's to one cable signal, satellite signal, PVR, etc..., just use Leap Frog (there's a wireless one, too, check the website).

This is a great site to find out what stations you can pick up with an antenna. Enter your address and it will give you which stations you can get with different antennas, both standard and HD broadcasts. I've been shopping hdtv's, too, and this helped a lot.

http://www.terk.com/tv/antwebframe.html