I'm 24 and I have never had cable in my life. Frankly, I'm surprised it's not more common. You get a LOT of TV for free. I grew up watching PBS and Simpsons and etc.
I remember at superbowl some of my friends were amazed that I was able to watch the football game without cable. I was floored. They didn't even know that channels came in over the air. I showed them the antenna, where it installs in the TV, how cheap they are. I got HD video without having to pay anything.
These weren't dumb people either. They worked for tech companies. They legitimately did not know it was an option.
A lot of people cut their cables after that party.
I've had the same experience. In my experience the quality is much better than legitimate online streaming services or even cable. That might be in my head but the quality is seriously good.
Nobody believes me when I tell them I get it for free with a $20 antenna. There's over 50 channels in my area (though to be honest only ~40 of them never air anything worth watching).
No it's not in your head at all. Cable and satellite providers will compress, often very badly, the same feeds that you get via OTA antenna before transmitting those feeds to their customers.
I've had my Mohu Leaf for 3 years. In general, it's as good or better than cable or streaming. Had one apartment where I had to spend some time figuring out how to mount it to keep it reliable, and it didn't work in every room, but that apartment had infinite problems with anything wireless, from phones to internet.
Most of the US market had shifted to cable TV by the introduction of digital TV, and simply wasn't aware that it existed.
I think there's a bit of a generational divide: older people think of the cable companies as the institution that brought us 500 channels. Younger people either can't imagine a world without cable TV, or loathe the cable companies for high prices and poor service. I'm the latter, and have been eager to find any way to reduce any connection to the big telecom companies. Right now, rabbit ears + Netflix/Hulu + cable internet is just one element short of perfect.
The dual to it: there is absolutely no advertising or public-awareness effort for local OTA programming (whether radio or television.) The OTA broadcast stations for a given place aren't given as part of "considering moving to [city]" guides, "local free resources" lists, etc. Ask the average city-dweller and they'll likely have never seen a digital antenna, and won't be able to tell you whether there is any local OTA content to pick up.
With OTA television especially, if the relevant stations also exist over cable/satellite/telco-fiber/etc. then those stations don't bother to announce the fact that they broadcast OTA.
For example, here in Canada, you can get CBC (i.e. government-sponsored) television programming OTA pretty much anywhere, but there's nothing to even suggest that possibility; I just found out because I went and bought a DTV antenna on a whim. Meanwhile, the CBC emphasizes the multi-channel accessibility of its radio programming (OTA, web streaming, podcasts, etc.) at every opportunity, doing heavy cross-channel advertising. It truly feels like "CBC Radio" is a public service they're trying to bring to as many people as possible, but "CBC Television" is, for all intents and purposes, just some cable channel.
A lot of the problem comes down to low-level discoverability, though. OTA DTV is broken for discoverability purposes, in that a degraded signal may as well not exist. With analogue OTA TV, you could buy a TV and turn it on without any wires connected to it, and it would still scan for channels and display a few fuzzy pictures peaking out of the static, and it'd maybe occur to you that with the help of an antenna those could be cleaned up. With a digital television, you just get a "No signal" infobox.
The "fix" would be to make televisions somehow able to "see" the weak DTV signals around them again with no wires plugged in. We'd have to re-think OTA digital broadcasting completely to enable this: either to attach to each digital channel a sister "wideband, low-data-rate, fountain-encoded" channel (to let the TV pull a 240p signal out of noisy 1080p-equivalent bandwidth, with the implication that an antenna would "upgrade" the picture); or to do away with live-format OTA broadcasting altogether, in favor of heavily-redundant packet-based transmission, such that a 30min program could be buffered in advance over several hours, and then "scheduled" at the client-side onto the channel.
Related: Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs - nowadays LEDs have about 95-99% of the warmness profile of an incandescent and are relatively cheap (can result in <1y ROI), but people still keep buying incandescents.
Another related: NiMH slow-discharge batteries (Eneloop) are very good, last as long in a remote control, and have more consistent charge levels than an alkaline. Yet people (even enviro-conscious relatives) keep buying alkalines. Why?
I haven't had much experience with LED bulbs, the early ones I saw weren't omnidirectional, cost a bunch, and needed good ventilation for a reasonable lifespan. I earnestly tried CF for awhile. Maybe due to early technology or cheap bulbs I had to replace them way more than incandescent (I suspected inconsistent power affected lifespan). In addition to that, the extra price and bad color temperatures or flickering bothering me made be go back to grabbing incandescent bulbs when I've had to replace lights. I do plan on doing research and switching to LEDs--I've noticed some LEDs have flickering that annoy me I hope I find something I like after some research.
A year or so ago I bought a recharge pack (Microsoft branded) for my 360 controllers. After only a few charges they wouldn't hold a charge anymore so I went back to alkalines. Either it was a poor quality battery, poor charger, or poor charging habits.
Taking time to research and paying more for a quality solution can be too much for most people. Prematurely releasing technology or poor implementations can also turn people off.
I think this is a change that's crept up on people, whereas broadcast TV was always there. Apparently the US is phasing out availability of incandescent bulbs?
For low-discharge applications like remote controls, the battery lasts years so it hardly matters. High-discharge devices increasingly come with their own lithium rechargeable batteries.
I'm legitimately surprised that technically savvy people literally wouldn't know they could get network channels OTA (given reception in their area).
However, I suspect the general state arose because there was a period when much less was available over the Internet, a lot of talked about shows were on cable (premium or otherwise), and you might very well get a better picture with cable/satellite (which is still true for many). So people just got into the habit of thinking in terms of needing cable to get the TV they wanted.
Personally, I can't get anything OTA. If I could, I'd drop cable TV (still need it for Internet and phone) in a heartbeat. As it is today, it's a more difficult decision.
Are you in NYC as well? I love the antenna, and even though I haven't quite kept up on my promise to myself to learn Spanish the inclusion of multiple Spanish language channels (plus Korean, Chinese, and I believe a few other languages) is a super neat bonus.
I'm in Florida, English and Spanish are the only 2 languages and most are English but there is probably 10 to 15 Spanish channels. But to tell you the truth I only watch a few of those, just like I did when I had cable.
Ethernet cables. My friends constantly complain about the quality of wireless, and I try to get them to take a step back in technology and try a wired network.
I'm lucky that I own my own house and can put Ethernet wherever I want (barring a few ill placed concrete blocks / walls). My friends who use and complain about wireless are all in rentals.
I've had good luck running cables along the base of walls, or under carpets when absolutely necessary. It's possible to hide the cables while not damaging anything, if one is careful.
I took a look at a relative’s cable bill last year. He lives in a town with three competing cable/ISP services. Here is how the monthly costs broke down:
Expanded basic service: $60
High definition converter box: $10
Digital converter rental: $3
HBO Cinemax package: $18
Premiere Total Pack: $16
Showtime/TMC: $5
Starz: $5
Franchise fee: $7
Broadcast TV surcharge: $4
Sports programming surcharge: $2
Total monthly cost: $130
Annual cost: $130 × 12 months = $1,560
That doesn’t include Internet access, which adds another $60 or $70 per month, plus the land line. So they’re paying close to $250/month. Sadly, that’s typical for a lot of people around here, who often get suckered in by $99 “triple play” deals and don’t read the fine print about extra fees, premium packages, or escalating rates after years 1 and 2.
It’s a total racket.
One thing to add about TFA: DTV reception even over a good antenna within 10 miles of the broadcast towers can be spotty. We live near Boston, and every time a car drives by our house the image freezes even for the big VHF channels.
>DTV reception even over a good antenna within 10 miles of the broadcast towers can be spotty.
It ends up being about more than distance. TV is just radio. If there are hills blocking the signal then even close transmitters can be a problem. If both you and the transmitters are on high places then the distance can be ridiculous.
In general indoor TV reception tends to be flaky. If the signal has to go through and refract around a whole lot of objects close to the ground then you end up with so much mush. There are reasons that people back in the day had an antenna on the roof and those reasons have not gone away. If someone is suggesting that their indoor antenna design is somehow better that what existed in the past they are pretty much selling snake oil.
There are sites that model TV reception. TVFool.com is the best one right at the moment.
I don't know about that last point. I live about 45 miles from Philly and 55 miles from NYC. I get pretty much all of the stations from both with minimal drop and I have a $35 antenna inside in my attic.
I'm curious about the antenna you're using. I'm also approximately equidistant from NYC and Philly, but I tried a digital antenna once, and could only pick up one NJ station, and none of the NYC or Philly ones. I'd love to find an antenna that works!
Try the "coat hanger antenna" (google it). It's directional enough to be effective. There are some tweaks you can make to it to adjust how directional it is. (Adding more elements, or doubling it mainly.)
It's very cheap so you can experiment.
You'll need one of those impedance converter thingies to convert from twin lead to coax.
What's crazy to me, especially as a person who grew up without cable, is that you can get these channels for free, but they have commercials and there's no guarantee nothing good will be on. OR you can pay all of this money, and there are still commercials and nothing good is on! What are you actually paying for?
Careful. That $1,500 the OP quoted includes HBO, Starz, etc which you can't get OTA.
The $10 set top box is also usually a DVR. An equivalent OTA DVR was $300, the last time I looked. And an OTA USB dongle mated with a computer to function as a DVR still requires a whole computer so there's really no escaping that cost.
With the exception of the low power stations, if you're within 10 miles of the tower and have a 'good' antenna (for some reasonable definition of good), you shouldn't have any trouble picking them up. I'm about 15 miles from mine and get maxed signal strength using one of those flat piece-of-paper-sized Mohu with no amp.
Is there an LOS issue (huge building, mountain, etc.) between you and the towers? Is there something in your walls turning your house into psuedo Faraday cage? If your channels are VHF-low (physical channels 2-6) is your antenna rated for that and not just UHF/VHF-hi?
I live in the woods 40 miles outside of Atlanta. I can (usually) get all of the important Atlanta stations, no problem. My Antenna was $150, but I have been using it for almost 10 years (you do the math). I do require some formidable signal amplification and lose picture when an airplane flies overhead.
I think it can be very situational. I've pulled a signal in (reliably) over 40 miles using an antenna similar to the one here, with no amplification, with the antenna indoors:
That station actually came in better than a closer one that had a worse path, the 40 mile one was basically a clear line of site, the closer one had a lot of hills between. Usually I pointed it at the closer antenna, about 40 degrees away from the further antenna, and still got good reception on the further one.
I could pick up a station 60 miles away, but it would not come in reliably.
With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else. Plus, most of the things that we watch are on-demand anyway - we don't have patience to sit through commercials for 1 hour to watch 20 minutes of a Sci-Fi episode.
I've been using Chromecast since it came out, and prior to that I had a similar setup that I configured myself. Never really needed/wanted an antenna, as I don't really watch much T.V. anyways.
What's interesting, is that when my parents saw my setup they immediately canceled their T.V. subscription with Comcast and bought 3 Chromcasts (one for each room) & a Netflix subscription, and switched to an antenna for their local news.
Once their friends saw this setup three or four of them setup the same thing.
It seems pretty popular among the older generations which grew up with antenna anyways, plus with the ease of using Chromecast, they can cut their bills down and get everything they want.
I might be classified as older but I'd suspect that with this story topping HN, the number of responses, etc. that it's less of a generational thing and more of a people of all ages are sick of cable companies thing.
You can get a lot of NFL and college football from the antenna. I use my parent's cable login to cover the rest (WatchESPN) but of course that's not a real solution available to everyone.
NFL is doable although there's no obvious solution for MNF except using someone else's login.
NCAAF is a little random since some games are on non-cable but a majority aren't. I'm on the west coast and the games are usually on FS1 or Pac-12 network.
NBA is pretty much impossible until the ABC has their Sunday games and the NBA finals.
Pretty much all of the MLB stuff (except for playoffs) is cable only. NFL will at least of the either Monday or Thursday game along with your local on Sunday.
OTA FOX only gets one or two playoffs games and the World Series.
In previous years it was possible to watch most of the games online via "live alternative video feeds (excluding the broadcast feed)", and now even that is not allowed.
I suspect that some league (NHL perhaps?) will specifically exclude webcasting from its next huge TV contract. Or it will extract a higher price not to be the first to do so. It will be the beginning of the end for regional sports channels, and eventually for ESPN.
For the cost of one to two months of Cable TV you can get all the regular season games online; since I'm a fan of an out-of-market team anyway, it's a no brainer for me.
If you are in an an urban or a rural area in the lower 48 you can get a satellite package that is roughly equivalent to a cable package -- although you might need to cut down a tree or win a fight with your landlord, homeowner's association, etc. The only real drawback is that fading can get bad when it is wet (say you are staying at home watching TV because of a snowstorm but you can't get any TV)
For TV-only service there is definitely a price war situation with cable in urban areas, but all the services differentiate themselves as best they can. If you can't get enough of American Football, for instance, you can get the "NFL Sunday Ticket" from DirectTV which gives you pretty much all the football you could get without violating some law.
The TV Licence funds the BBC content, which is Free to Air TV, online stuff, Radio etc. It has no ads and aims to have as much diverse stuff as possible.
I'm also happy to pay, and feel sorry for Americans who have to put up with inferior public TV services.
Not only is the BBC awesome, the licence fee is much lower than cable or satellite charges, and BBC programmes are not stuffed with mind-numbing adverts.
The BBC is awesome, but the TV License is incredibly regressive (it's basically a poll tax), and has failed at making them independent of parliament (instead of a parliamentary debate over how much money to give the BBC, we just get a parliamentary debate over how much the license fee should be). And their enforcers are... not nice, and an incredibly inefficient use of human labour. It would be better to fund the BBC from general taxation.
Not quite - the license fee only applies if you watch live programming. If you're an iPlayer catch-up sort instead, or only watch iTunes/Blu-Ray/Netflix, no fee is payable - although it's hardly a bad idea to support a broadcaster as good as the BBC.
Two years back I decided to make my own antenna. I had no idea what a folded dipole was, but found a website that instructed me to use a metal clothes hanger cut to the proper length for HD US signals, and a block of wood. I had neither so I taped some leftover enamel wire to a piece of cardboard. I still use this antenna today, and get about 50 channels, living 30 miles away from the nearest broadcast antenna.
Point is, these broadcasts are incredibly easy to access, and it doesn't seem like the voodoo designs of $200 dollar antennas are actually needed by most people. It's somewhat surprising TV manufacturers don't simply add simple antennas as an accessory the same way my FM radio tuner came with one.
At the UHF frequencies digital TV is using, antenna location and direction matter more than antenna design. If you have line of sight to the transmitter, almost anything will work.
The article talks about antennas having become an exotic product. That's just not true. WalMart has a good selection of outdoor TV antennas, starting from $20.[1] Home Depot also has a selection, but many of theirs still have the VHF elements, which you don't need and make the antenna much bigger, harder to mount, and more vulnerable to winds.
WalMart's selection indicates that many WalMart customers are getting TV from antennas.
Less than 2% of TV stations went back to Low band VHF after the transition. I'm in one of those areas where one station decided to go back to low VHF after analog was shut off, and it's an NBC affiliate (and NASCAR and SNL are really the main two things I want to watch).
I just got finished building a folded dipole specifically for this channel (6 foot half-wavelength). It works great beside the TV, it's not really doing great in my attic. I'm going to try and re-position it more than a wavelength off of the roofline and see if that helps.
The requirements for a working antenna are actually pretty loose-- In most cases the TV will have two RCA jack inputs; one for cable and one for an antenna but the coax cable that goes from the wall to the TV will generally work just fine as an antenna if you plug it into the antenna jack and remove it from the wall so just the cord hangs off the back of your TV.
If you are in an optimal RF location (within a mile or two of the transmitter, no major obstructions, low noise floor, clear conditions etc) it should generally be possible to pick up OTA signals without any antenna at all.
Still, we can figure this out: Wikipedia says North American UHF frequencies are on average 680MHz across all channels, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 44cm. A folded dipole needs to have a length half of that, so we want a 22cm antenna when folded, plus about a 1cm gap.
I just recently installed an antenna in our attic after we
cancelled our cable TV, and I've been very pleased with the
results. Here in the Atlanta area, we're getting almost 60
TV channels, plus about 10 audio-only simulcase of several
local radio stations. There's even a channel that displays
a program guide, like the ones you find on the cable or
satellite services.
People's lack of awareness of over-the-air television has
been surprising to me. We had houseguests last week, a
retired couple in their 60's. This is in the age range that
I would expect to be familiar with broadcast TV, having
grown up with it as the predominant, "default" option. And
yet, I was still asked, "so you don't get CNN?"
I suspect that, for many people, getting cable (or satellite) has just become sort of the default. Of course, many do watch sports which often (though not always) run on non-network channels.
Also, not everyone is able to get TV OTA or is in a position to install an attic/rooftop antenna. I personally can't get anything OTA. I regularly toy with cutting back to a very basic bundle but haven't seriously pursued yet.
Well, that's just one sport. In New England at least (and I assume this situation exists in other places as well), a lot of the local sports are primarily just on cable--NESN in the case of New England.
I don't watch much in the way of sports in any case, but a lot of people buy cable and satellite sports packages.
I actually agree with the basic point up-thread though. I do think a lot of people probably pay for their monthly cable package without a whole lot of thought about how much value they're getting and what alternatives there might be.
I do this with Windows 7's included Media Center as a PVR. I was surprised when checking out popular "media center" software that most of it seems to concentrate on playback of videos and not support being a PVR.
I did that as well, I had two tuners plus an external HDTV adapter with an IR blaster. I would make my own cable channel line-up pretending I had cable and satellite. The nicest aspect was that the xbox360 on the other TV could also stream the content from the media PC and it did not require a gold subscription.
As a heads up, Linux users should check and make sure tuner they buy has a Linux driver. I once got really excited when I saw a really good deal on a tuner, only to find out it had no Linux driver. I had to cancel my order.
Get internet service from cable provider with basic cable plus HBO for less than the advertised price of the internet service alone. Have to call back every year to get the promotional price back, which sucks. But we almost never watch the cable channels. Local channels in HD with a couple low-end antennas in the attic. And tend to watch HBO GO on a Roku, where we also have Netflix, Prime, etc.
Doing Sling during football season for ESPN.
As others have said, would like to have a better antenna setup with DVR that does not require subscription. Need a community-driven site where people can put in the type of antenna they have and what channels they get for more precise location-specific antenna recommendations.
tvfool.com has been the go to resource not only will it help you determin what type of antenna you will need but also what stations you can expect to recive as well as what direction the broadcasts come from so you can better am your antenna.
>would like to have a better antenna setup with DVR that does not require subscription
I have been looking at a Channel Master[0] for this exact purpose; the cost is $250+HDD. It has an ethernet port which allows one to get an EPG [1] from Rovi, but it isn't required. If I pull the trigger maybe I'll do a write up and submit it.
Isn't an EPG part of the US-American standard? It has been part of the DVB (rest of the world…) standard since the beginning, so there's generally a button on a TV remote to display it.
(The DVB MPEG transport stream contains mostly video packets, but is interspersed with the EPG — in bits — and other media. Almost all TVs will cache the EPG, though earlier systems required the user to wait until the requested information was rebroadcast.)
EPGs are part of the standard and broadcasters are required to transmit them, but there's no quality control on them beyond what the broadcaster does themselves; some broadcasters do a great job and some... don't.
That's where paid services like SchedulesDirect [1] come in; they pull data from the same source that Tivo and the cable/satellite companies are using, which (usually) gives you accurate scheduling.
Thanks. A good option. Definitely would pay for itself over time if switch from a cable provider alternative. We've never had a DVR before, so hard to justify the jumping in cost.
It would be cool to see Roku or Apple TV combine this functionality.
With my OTA system I get a pretty good package of sports on the weekend and really enjoy the beautiful high definition imagery of golf, NFL and College Football, as well as the other sort of Futbol. You definitely get more with ESPN but you do not get better.
Agreed. I will always use our OTA signal rather than the cable package for overlapping channels. A handful of college games I want to be able to watch are on ESPN and Monday Night Football, as well. Plus nice to be able to turn on SportsCenter every now and then. A good lineup of other channels on Sling, too, which I just wanted to try out. Will likely quit Sling at the end of the year.
I'd say a good experience, but not great. The picture is good. I view primarily through a Roku connected to TV, but also nice to have access on a phone or tablet.
There can be a little lag time loading programing or jumping between shows. It has occasional reliability issues, cut-out midstream, didn't come back up from commercial break, but not the norm and may be device related.
Comcast. No complaints about internet service. I get 50mbps, which I believe is advertised at $80/mo. With the basic cable plus HBO promotional rate, our bill is about $72/mo.
I'll also chime in to say that we have a similar deal. Not as cheap but still less than a lot of people pay. I usually get 100-120mbps down and 10-ish mbps up, cable with a bunch of channels that I never watch (but my gf seems to want), some of the channels are in HD, many are just stretched SD, again, I don't really care since I don't watch much. The "main" channels are in HD at least. Also HBO (main channel in HD, others in scaled SD) but I only really use it for access to HBO Go.
As far as hardware, I only get the tuner/DVR from Comcast. Own my own modem and router. No phone service because it would be redundant.
Total cost is around $99/mo. I'd just as soon knock it down to internet only but that's around $70/mo and I'd spend the extra $30/mo subscribing to the various services that carry programming I currently access with our cable account login.
Not saying it's all sunshine and lollipops. We've had the usual billing and service tech issues that come with these sorts of companies that cut every corner imaginable. But when it works for most of the year, it does the job I guess.
On the subject of OTA antennas, I do have one hooked up to my PC's tuner card (since they did away with any unencrypted QAM over the cable lines....bastards) and when I watch one of the 5-10 channels I can pick up, the local HD broadcasts look so much nicer than the compressed stuff on cable. I actually prefer to throw a football game on my secondary monitor while I'm messing around on the computer rather than watch it over cable upstairs.
We had something similar with Comcast in SF - 2 boxes and 1 dvr in the house, '50Mb' (I'll leave that in quotes) down, 10'ish-maybe up.
When we first moved into our place last year, the internet was stable and worked well enough (I say well enough because the d/l speed would fluctuate pretty consistently at night). Sometimes there was a hiccup, but overall, it worked.
Then this summer hit. No warning, no reasons, nothing - internet no longer stayed stable. It was all over the place. Some nights, 2mb down. So, you have to spend the time to talk to tech people since it's late at night and the kids are asleep and you just don't feel like getting on the phone to battle.
Got the usual excuses that service was being upgraded in the street, the line looked fine to them, it must be something on our end (that one's always predictable). Annnd of course, a tech came out, twiddled and fiddled and discovered our signal was low. Weird that it just happened now and now when the second cable run was installed when we moved in.
Because my wife and I (sadly) work from home after hours, when you have no internet, you're screwed. We weren't watching tv anymore and when we did it was netflix or game of thrones or silicon valley - all watchable via hbo go. So, I switched to Sonic.net (the best isp in the bay area in my mind) and haven't looked back.
Sure, we're running over at&t fiber (sigh) and capped at 50 down/5 up (sigh), but it just works. We're not running 50 one day, 80 another, 10 another and we're paying about the same for internet as we were on Comcast.
It is for me in my location through Comcast at double the speed you are getting, which I want. I went and took a look. Comcast charges $60 for 25mbps and $75 for 50Mbps. Typically no promotions on just internet. Have to get phone or TV included for promotions. So I am paying less for more. Just have to be on top of it every year.
In 2010 when I lived in the San Francisco I ordered my broadband from Comcast, but I didn't pay for the TV package.
I added a splitter to the Comcast coax cable, then plugged one wire into the cable modem and the other into the back of my TV. Network TV channels for no extra cost.
In 2012 there was an FCC vote to allow cable operators to encrypt the local channels as well. Your clear QAM signals are pretty much gone now, especially after the analog channels were allowed to go dark.
Is there any chance a grassroots effort could get the rule for clear QAM local channels restored? It seemed like such a reasonable trade-off for giving the cable operator a local monopoly, to provide free and clear HD broadcast channels which my TV could display so nicely without any external boxes. It was so sad watching the channels drop out after they started encrypting them :-(
In South San Jose you need a "pretty big" antenna to receive a decent line-up of OTA channels being broadcast from north San Fran... A smaller powered antenna even up on the roof would not pick them up clearly.
Given the current economic climate and the lobbying power of the cable companies, this would be a very uphill battle if not impossible. They also shot down Aereo, which would have been a cheaper solution for you.
A year ago i canceled cable TV subscription in Germany because i had most important channels anyhow via DVB-T. I had internet subscription for years with them and was satisfied so this had to be kept working.
Knowing a bit about how these cable networks work inside the building i was curious to see how they will implement this. I thought they might have a filter for all those just having internet subscription but this could only work with certain types of wiring inside the building and also depends on access to the equipment which is not always available to them.
Then i thought they might replace the wall socket either with some filter build in or just missing plug for the TV. But again this is only possible when they are allowed to access the equipment or maintain their own. Also this seemed to be rather expensive. The basic cable package doesn't cost that much and the provider outsources all kinds of installation related tasks. I would guess using this rather weak method would pay for some years of Basic TV package subscription.
Long story short, i waited several months and nothing happened. I still watch cable TV like i did before. But as is said, its possible that they are able to cut you off on some kind of installations. But its also questionable if the cost of this would be adequate.
I cut the cord 6 years ago, and just found out last month that this was an option. TWC literally has an option to add network channels to an internet only package for $10/mo. I wonder how many people they're ripping off with that.
I pay LESS than $10 for all the basic cable channels on Fios (I HATE Verizon and DON'T recommend them due to dishonesty in every area I ever had to deal with them (Hidden also means dishonest, but I delt with absolute lies)) same thing with my other carrier. For $4 more I even get ESPN.
It's still free for me w/ TWC. I have them only for broadband, but happen to get Clear QAM network channels anyway free of charge. Wonder how much longer they'll be doing that where I live.
I've even purchased an eyeTV tuner and hooked it up to an old Macbook Pro I had laying around, and basically made a DVR w/ guide for the network channels.
There's precedent for things that get delivered to you being yours to use, even if you didn't order or pay for them. While I am aware that it is absolutely not the same thing, there is a law that anything sent unsolicited to you in postal mail is yours to keep, no questions asked. This is to prevent a type of now-dead fraud that involved doing that, then billing people for it.
It's really the responsibility of the cable provider to correctly filter services, if they want to charge for them. And you'll probably find that if you call up and try to "complain" about this, that they'll do nothing and tell you to do as you like, as it isn't even worth their time to bother about... putting a rather low bound on the degree of harm you're "inflicting" on them even in the worst case.
I understand your point, but I think there's a difference between the cable company "correctly filtering service" and a person getting additional hardware to bypass the cable modem demarcation. It does get muddied by them allowing customer cable modems, which means there's not a clear a demarcation point anymore.
There may be a terms of use clause forbidding splitting like this but it almost certainly isn't a demarcation issue, so there is no real 'bypass' that I am aware of.
The demarcation is generally clearly marked (plastic box often called a 'network interface device') and is almost never located at the modem itself.
Typically, the legal demarcation is on the exterior of houses. For a multiple dwelling unit (apartment complex) or commercial building, the demarcation is usually inside. ISPs try to choose a demarcation that is accessible from the outside, so as to not require being allowed into the building to test signal leading to the premise. This cuts down on cancelled repairs due to 'no access'. My point in all this is that for most coax and twisted pair services, the indoor wiring is usually the property owners and not the ISP's, especially at the point where it connects to the modem. For someone to add a splitter to wire that is their responsibility and property is almost certainly legal.
I worked for one of the bigger ISPs up until last year, so I speak only from my personal experience. For more details:
> The demarcation is generally clearly marked (plastic box often called a 'network interface device') and is almost never located at the modem itself.
Yes, but if cable companies always provided and required you use their cable modems, then there would be a clear demarcation point, the cable modem. Whether it's usually inside or outside is irrelevant (and "usually" in this case is debatable. I've worked at multiple business locations where it's inside, because there is a location dedicated for it). Of course there isn't a clear demarcation at the cable modem, as many cable companies allow you to use your own cable modem instead of theirs, which is why I said the issue is "muddied".
I remember being told by my cable company that network channels were free of charge with internet service. Of course, they were on crazy channels I have to have the TV autoscan for. And now they're probably encrypted and I'd have to rent a cable box for $8/mo.
Doesn't stealing - technically speaking - mean taking another person's property without an intention of returning it? Duplicating someone's property without their permission is copyright infringement, not stealing. You're making more of it, not less of it.
The SCOTUS agrees with you (in Dowling v. United States). Dowling prevailed, because while he committed copyright infringement (for profit!), he didn't steal.
The (compressed) picture quality for the basic network channels I'm paying Comcast for is technically stealing from me. And they will charge you extra if you get broadband without the basic TV channels. I ended using an OTA antenna regardless.
Local television stations (__not__ networks - although there are a small number, limited by law, of network owned-and-operated local stations - usually the biggest markets), which may or may not be affiliated with a network (CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC), broadcast the signals.
If a local station is affiliated with a network, they've agreed to broadcast the network's prime-time feed (7pm - ~midnight) including the national ads that the network has sold to large brands.
The local tv stations get (not very many) ad spots to insert in between national ads. The local tv station does not generally get any revenue from the national ads (the big ads for big brands - Coke, Apple, Nike) and only receive revenue from local ads (Stu's burger shack down on main street).
There are also open slots where the national network does not have shows scheduled and local stations can broadcast locally produced shows, News, and, sadly, tons of infomercials. This is the non-prime-time - daytime, weekends and late night.
If the show being broadcast is locally produced, there are generally more open ad slots for local ads. It is possible that the local station also gets a cut of national advertising during that show.
The local TV station has purchased the exclusive right to use the frequency/channel (in a particular "market") from the Federal Government, but has to provide, as part of the agreement, a number of things, "to promote the public welfare" - such as educational programming, community service programming, and a few other things.
Television stations (e.g. the local NBC affiliate) broadcast the signal; they get paid by advertisers who give them money to air commercials on their station.
What I'd like is an easy, cheap DVR solution for OTA. Mostly I'd just like to be able to pause and rewind live TV. After cutting the cord, it's like living in the 80s again shouting at family members to be quiet when you need to hear something.
Not exactly easy or cheap, but a data point for you:
My OTA DVR for the last 8 years setup has been a PC with Windows Media Center. Apart from the setup, there is no monthly cost for the guide data, as with Tivo etc. Right now this runs on a NUC, with a SiliconDust HD Homerun (HDTC-2US) living in my attic, which transcodes the OTA MPEG-2 to H.264, saving tons of disk space. A nice side effect is that I can archive shows (e.g. NOVA episodes).
P.S. One interesting tidbit I remember from a Tivo ad (but can't dredge up right now), based on their users TV consumption stats, apparently ~ 87% of what people watch is available OTA.
Edit: Windows Media Center was dropped from Windows 10. The replacement will be Xbox One DVR functionality, coming 2016.
Interesting, I have a similar setup, but with the old standard PCI-based tuner that just pulls the data and dumps it. I hadn't seen a tuner option that would transcode it on the fly. Is there any noticeable lag when watching live? Does the WMC still record it in the standard wtv format, just with a different video codec?
What's a rough size estimate for a 1-hr show? Can you adjust the amount of compression or otherwise tweak the h.264 encoding parameters?
Transcoding happens on the fly, in hardware I assume. The compression is configurable, from a very high quality 1080p profile, down to more lossy streams for mobile devices, 3 profiles total IIRC (non tweak able). The highest quality mode is _almost_ indistinguishable from the OTA signal. No lag or stutter, whatsoever.
An added bonus of the transcode is the reduced bandwidth in the LAN. Previously I needed CAT5 for a stable ATSC stream, now Wifi suffices (e.g. to iPad/iPhone). There is an app for the iPad, to watch those streams. On iPad Air 2 it renders 1080p without lag.
Also, putting the HD Homerun in the network let's one get away with a small head unit (in my case an Intel NUC).
You are correct, the resulting files are still wtv container, but with h.264 stream inside. VLC can play them fine. Not sure about conversion to MPEG4.
A 1-hour show comes out around 1.5GB (from memory), maybe less. Much better then before.
Great info, thanks. That's a 4-6x size improvement from what I'm seeing now, so that'd be very helpful. Probably actually cheaper to buy this than just get a larger HDD.
I'd looked at options that would auto-transcode recordings on disk, but they generally changed enough things that it wouldn't maintain the metadata and/or otherwise treated them as individual videos and not episodic content.
One last question, do you happen to have any extenders? I'm using an xbox 360 as an extender and I wonder if it can play the h.264 encoded video.
Silicondust is releasing their DVR in the next month or two. I'm in on the kickstarter but not at the level that is currently testing. There are also dedicated devices for people less tech savvy.
I'm really looking forward to the Silicondust DVR software. I was never able to make MythTV work correctly for me.
I've been using Windows Media Center with an HDHR Prime, but the quality of the WMC listing accuracy took a huge dive around the time when they announced they've halted development and would not provide a version for Windows 10.
Again, another not super cheap option is Tablo[0].
It's different than most since it doesn't actually have an HDMI plug, but rather it's basically just a back-end box than records off an antenna and then can play back on its app on most of the standard devices, Roku, Chromecast, Apple/Android/Fire TV as well as Android/iOS mobile devices and desktops via Chrome.
You'll likely want a subscription at $5/mo or $150/life, but you can do basic live recordings/pausing and such without it [1].
It's kind of amazing to me that they can get $200 for that. Since it doesn't have video out it's positioned as a "network device", which is perfectly valid since we already have roku and chromecast. Except, it can't use NAS? I'm thinking there must be a cheaper option for getting OTA into e.g. Plex. [EDIT:] Also there must be some EPG service for cheaper than $5/mo?
Yeah, I'd like NAS support as well. I think their thinking is that the variability introduced by the network speed (especially since they advertise it with wifi), might cause unexpected failures that they won't see with a usb drive. They seem to be riding the line between a "just works" appliance and something more configurable. I'm surprised, frankly, that there's not an option to just get the HDD bundled with it and call it a day, in order to guarantee the user is using a known-good HDD.
If you already have a home server, this is probably not as good of an option as you could just add some software and a dual tuner for $75-100. The EPG thing is more of a hassle once WMC gets deprecated. For mythtv and some others, you can do schedules direct for $25/yr. There are some free setups I've seen using scripts and such, but they mostly seem to be held together with twine and bailing wire and seem likely to break if a 3rd party decides to crack down.
For someone who's looking for a whole-house DVR though without running a bigger media setup though, it seems reasonable.
If you find a good appliance that'll get stuff onto a NAS on the cheap using reliable EPG, I'd love to see it.
I just mentioned them in another comment, but I'm not a redditor and so it took me a long time to figure out this is possibly the best solution. Are the manufacturers of all these solutions present in that subreddit as well?
I use a Homeworx dvr. Have to supply my own USB hard drive and deal with a goofy interface (not that you'll see it just for pausing live TV), but otherwise it works well. It can buffer live TV for a decent amount of time too.
No, where did you see that? It isn't constantly buffering live TV though. What I do is pause and go fix a drink for a few minutes and that gives me ample ability to fastforward commercials. I'm actually not completely sure about how rewinding works on live TV, since I almost exclusively let it record my normal shows for later.
Edit: from one of the Amazon reviews:
"It does let you pause live TV (temporarily recording to the hard drive just like the DVR does). However, unlike the DVR, this unit does not automatically record anything so if you missed something and want to see it again, too bad - unless you had previously entered into "Timeshift" mode by pressing Pause. Therefore, assuming you have enough hard drive capacity, it's probably best to press Pause then Play at the start of watching anything to let the thing start saving to the hard drive- then you will be able to Rewind, Pause and Forward through content that was buffered. (all the more reason you should use a big hard drive and not USB stick). While in Timeshift mode, you cannot change channels until pressing Stop."
That's true, but is as simple as hitting pause, I don't really think of it as a special mode.
I have a HomeWorx HW180STB and it worked great. I have an old HDTV without an internal receiver. I have only used it to watch over the air sports (otherwise I use Netflix).
I haven't tried the pausing TV (or recording TV) yet. I think this coment will inspire me to try out the recording and pausing.
Subscription is a deal breaker. I just want to be able to pause and rewind free TV signals. I'm willing to pay once for a device to do that but not a subscription.
When I got my TiVo a few years ago, you could buy a lifetime subscription. I think it was about $300, which seemed pretty reasonable. I've had the unit for almost 4 years so I've definitely broken even on it.
They still seem to offer a lifetime plan, but now it costs $600. That's a bit harder to justify.
I bought a Roamio OTA for my mother-in-law, who has no internet. I set it up at my place (it usually wants to upgrade to latest firmware over wifi when you unbox it), scanned for the OTA channels, then I took it to her place and wired it up.
The operation without monthly activation is bare-bones. I mean, you don't even get channel or station names. But you can tune to prescanned OTA channels and watch tv and pause it live.
Our family has used their previous model for years with great success. Dual tuners, program guide (picked up OTA as well), and no fees or subscription.
I can vouch for this model. Works great. I think it gets the guide over ethernet. It comes with a jack for that, or you can get an optional wireless USB dongle.
The interface is decent, nothing great, but better than most cable provided boxes. I've got mine hooked up to a 2TB usb drive I had laying around. Worked immediately.
It has reasonably good recording options. It can do string matching, so you can say "record any new shows with the word 'Masterpiece' in the title." That kind of thing.
I don't have any first-hand knowledge, so thanks for that.
However, it is my understanding that if you hook this up to the internet it gets its EPG from Rovio. OTOH, if you do not link it, it will have a crappier, yet sufficient EPG from OTA signals. I believe Rovio gives EPG 2 weeks out, but EPG via OTA is 2 days out.
Broadcast TV as a service is what I want so badly. Beats hooking up an antenna dongle to your laptop or PC. At any rate since OTA reception is poor where I live I just don't watch TV if the signal is bad. Really hoping Playstation Vue becomes available where I live.
Maybe it's different here in Europe, but most Smart TVs have had this functionality for the last few years - they store recordings on a USB drive. Before DVB tuners were integrated you had to get an addon receiver box, I have one from 10+ years ago that has a 80GB HDD to do exactly this.
Click "See which TV stations you can get on a map", then click ">> Start Maps <<" and enter your address or just the zip code. When the map appears, check the "Show lines pointing to each transmitter" checkbox for best presentation.
That tool is handy, but I think the more standard one, especially if you're looking for antenna advice on somewhere like the CordCutter reddit, is actually under 'Check your address for free tv'.
Same major data provided, but in a table that's easier to pass around and you generally don't need the map unless you're just curious.
Yeah, antennaweb uses that system the antenna makers set up involving coloured zones. Unfortunately that oversimplifies the problem too much. In practice you need more detail so TVFool.com ends up being much more useful.
My understanding is that OTA HDTV is actaully uncompressed, which means you get the best HDTV picture quality when receiving over the air.
Cable, uVerse, DirecTV etc all compress their HDTV signals resulting in far more artifacts and pixelization. It is far more noticable when you have a 120 inch projector displaying a football game with lots of moving images etc.
OTA uses the 8VSB modulation standard, which provides about 19 mbit/sec of payload.
If your station is not broadcasting any subchannels it's a VERY nice signal. (It's still compressed with MPEG-2, the raw bitrate of a 1080p video is over 1Gbit/sec)
Unfortunately most channels in my market are sending 3-4 subchannels which knocks down the quality of the primary. AFAIK only Fox broadcasts a single stream (and football looks pretty freaking great there).
Yes, the cable and dish operators recompress the MPEG-2 stream into whatever they are broadcasting and they do it at a lower quality to cram more channels into their pipe.
It depends on your local station; my Fox affiliate does have subchannels. But the Fox network is only 720p anyway, so they should have the bandwidth available.
What typically happens here in the USA is that your local TV station gets, via satellite, a "master feed" which typically is very high bitrate Mpeg4.
It then converts it to Mpeg2 (which requires a higher bitrate for the same quality), and compresses it to fit into its 19Mb/s ATSC 8VSB broadcast standard. If your local broadcaster has no subchannels, then you win(1). The network show gets all 19Mb/s of bandwidth.
However, if your local station has many subchannels (eg, 24hr weather, local news, re-runs of shows from the 1950s, etc), then they all share that 19 Mb/sec and you get far less than 19Mb/s allocated to the network show (especially when there is a lot of motion on the subchannel). The worst I've seen is some ABC affiliates who actually had a SECOND "HD" subchannel for the "livewell" network, which made their network programming look horrible. I put up a bigger antenna to pull in ABC from a neighboring market & avoid a local affiliate that was doing that.
Your local cable company picks up the MPEG2 broadcast and if you're lucky, it just passes it through (re-muxing it into a 38Mb/s QAM subchannel). If you're unlucky, it takes the already compressed MPEG2 stream and compresses it harder.
Back in the "good old days", the network satellite feeds were not encrypted, and people with the right equipment (Big Ugly Dishes) could pick up the raw network feed, which was reportedly awesome.
(1) That is, you win if the equipment doing the MPEG4 -> MPEG2 transcoding doesn't suck. I've consistently seen stations that have a lower bitrate but better quality due to newer encoders doing things like adding repeat field flags to telecined film content, so your mileage may vary.
I bought my first TV used off craigslist 6 months ago (I'm 30, lived past 12 years w/o a television), mainly intending to use it as a big monitor to watch movies/tv shows from my laptop via HDMI.
I started to get into local sports, but wasn't willing to pay for cable. I suffered through a few poor quality (aka "was that a touchdown or interception?") internet streams of the games.
Then one day I recalled that had a TV, not just a big monitor. $15 dollars later I had an antennae and was getting the local football games over-the-air in great HD.
A TV license is required to watch broadcast television, so the number of channels they could be watching is finite. Even a muffled signal detected from a vibrating window (via laser microphone) could be compared to what is currently being broadcast by each of the channels (give or take a short processing delay) and any match found.
Nowadays it's mostly database enforcement. You obviously don't have to care about addresses that do have TV licenses so you just go looking for people with various TV subscriptions (Sky, Virgin Media) that don't have a TV license. It used to be done by the retailers submitting addresses of people who bought/rented TV equipment (TV, VCR, etc), any that didn't get (or already have) a TV license would get a visit shortly afterwards. Also people who watch programmes 'live' on-line (IP -> address conversion thanks to the DSL providers).
The local oscillator in the tuner emits some RF. This not only indicates that there's a TV receiver present, but indicates what channel is selected.
This was more of an issue with older tuners, because standards have tightened on emitting unwanted RF signals. Tube era tuners emitted a lot of RF, since the tubes themselves were out in the open, not behind shielding. Modern tuners are in small metal cans [1], which both shield them from nearby RF sources and prevent them from emitting. They also operate at much lower power levels than older tuners, so they don't emit much RF.
One of the unsung victories of regulation is that electromagnetic compatibility is quite good today. In the early days of consumer electronics, personal computers emitted so much junk RF that they'd interfere with TVs and crash other devices. A Radio Shack TRS-80 and a Milton Bradley Big Trak toy would both crash if nearby. Today, cell phones have four radios (cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS) going at the same time without interference. When the FCC clamped down back in the 1980s, there was a lot of bitching, but the FCC was right. Now, it Just Works.
Everyone who watches Tv is liable. When you buy a new TV shops must ask for your address which is sent to the licensing agency. Ditto when you subscribe to cable/satellite.
If an address doesn't have one, it gets regular threatening letters and after a few months, personal visits where they ask to come in and take a look round - this you can refuse unless they bring a police officer.
I have been visited too. I have even been prosecuted because the man could see a tv operating but we were playing computer games - he never showed up in court so we were acquitted.
One advantage of OTA TV is that it can be a very efficient use of spectrum. It costs the same to broadcast a TV signal to 5 million users as it does to broadcast it to 5 users. This is not the case with video (or radio) transmitted over the internet or via cellular networks, where every additional user consumes additional bandwidth.
I had cable for one year after college (U-Verse had just come to my city and it was actually cheaper to get cable + internet than just internet for the first year), then cancelled. Only reason I have it now is that my roommate is locked into a contract for a few more months (cancellation fee is greater than just playing out the string, and there are some small convenience benefits, particularly for sports). However, we'll be cutting that cord in December for good. I've had a Mohu Leaf, Roku, and a Chromecast for 3 years (OTA, apps, mirroring), and to be honest, the only things missing for me are Pac-12 Network and TNT (which only matters for select NBA games, anyway). Now that SlingTV offers TNT, Pac-12 Network is really the only thing I'm aware of that isn't legally available without cable.
I'm a little confused here as a Canadian, and was wondering if anybody could help me out?
When searching for TV antennas on Canada Computers (my go-to electronics store in the GTA) I am met with cheap iCan (Canada Computer in-house brand which is quite good usually) digital antennas which claim they have UHF/VHF reception for about $10.
Then there are ATSC antennae which are all more expensive (~$20) and anything I read about ATSC [0] on wikipedia sounds like that's the one I need.
So basically my question is will the cheaper antenna work? They have thousands of them in stock across the country so it must do something... I'm planning on picking up one tomorrow to watch the Jays.
I would ask them in store but I somehow doubt that their salesmen (who are usually great) will know much about TV antennae.
The tech is great. I bought a "COLOR TV ANTENNA" from Radio Shack, when they were still open a few years back. Amazingly, it came in the same looking box I recall from the late 70's. (upgrading mom 'n pops old antenna as a kid to get UHF channels)
Took an hour to get a good orientation. Mostly problem free, and there are some 30 channels here in PDX, maybe 10 of them offer something I might watch.
And that's the only real problem area. Commercial AD loads are HIGH. Higher than I remember in the past. Quite frankly brutal, and there are very few things I'll watch, given that high load.
Mostly, I use a Chromcast to stream things to the nice smart tv and call it good.
PDX is just what the locals tend to say when mentioning Portland. It saves the confusion over whether you are referring to Maine or Oregon. Assuming the person you are communicating with knows their airport codes. :)
In my experience a lot of people don't realize you can get network TV in HD with an antenna. The cost of cable is just way too high to stomach given other available options, the best option being watching less TV.
Do people in your area skew towards a younger demographic?
Here, widespread cable tv became dominant in the early 80s. A lot of us had to use antennas to watch local tv on the main or secondary television sets in our homes.
I haven't polled anyone but I can't imagine that most people aren't aware that network tv can still be watched over the air.
My digital TV (MPEG2 DVB-T, I'm in Australia) antenna recently broke and I'm replacing it in the next few weeks.
Once it's back up and running I'll be using MumuDVB [1] to stream channels over my network. Even a Raspberry Pi 1 should be able to act as a "receiver" this way.
Cordcutter here as well. My experience with HD antennae hasn't been great, although it seems to be more due to my basement location than anything else. I still get enough channels to keep it, but they periodically cut in and out, which is a bit annoying.
I've spent a good bit of time experimenting with Kodi add-ons and Chromecast-compatible apps. Those have worked pretty well for supplementing my substantial amount of local media.
I've been antenna-only for 6+ years now. My first antenna cost $60 and was OK. After a couple of years, I replaced it with a $100 version that is much better. I rarely ever have any issues with it.
Getting a good antenna is critical. At home, my family has a 1970s-era antenna that worked very well in the analog era, and still works very well for HD in the far Chicago suburbs.
I have a similar setup. I live in San Jose, and with a digital antenna and an amplifier, I get more than 60 channels, with 20+ in flawless HD. The farthest I think is in Napa. A not insubstantial number of them are in Vietnamese, but still. Sometimes it's nice to just turn on the TV and watch whatever's on in the background instead of having to choose something on Netflix or Hulu.
1) In the US, its everywhere. Usually, the more urban the location, the more channels you can get.
2) It used to be the only way to get TV. And it costs a tiny fraction of any other type of content provider. So you could say its essential to low income people or people who think its immoral to support comcast.
Everywhere is a bit of an overstatement. Most, if not all, urban and suburban locations with reception rapidly falling off in exurban and, especially, rural locations (i.e. the vast bulk of the land area of the US). Obviously on a population basis, the OTA situation is a lot better but there's still a pretty rapid falloff as you get 30 miles or so away from urban centers with TV stations.
Over the air TV is used by the Emergency Broadcast System to alert residents of natural disaters and inclement weather. For low-income families, this is essential. The town I'm from was hit by a tornado in 2005. The NOAA weather radio transmitter did not work properly, leaving only OTA broadcasts to alert residents of dangerous areas like mobile homes.
I didn't have cable tv in college back in 2005. We used rabbit ears. I went without cable tv for 8 or 9 years and subscribed a year or two ago. I look back and I'm glad at the money I saved. I was blown away when HD antenna was introduced. The antenna is really underrated nowadays. I'd love to see it make a comeback.
On a home we purchased, the house antenna that was mounted on the chimney picks up clear HD channels of the local stations that look wonderful.
Paying for TV doesn't make sense nowadays. If a home doesn't have an antenna on the roof, I would recommend it as an upgrade for anyone interested in the local channels.
Paying for TV can make perfect sense depending on someone's viewing habits and what they watch. If they're into live sports, for instance, an antenna might not meet their needs.
I haven't paid for cable TV in a long time. We've got netflix and amazon prime, and pay the $20/mo for sling during college football season (I would gladly pay less for an NCAA streaming channel..). Everything we watch is covered by those.
Costco carries a few different TV antennas including Winegard models. They're only about $40, they are flat and inconspicuous (basically look like a paper towel) and they work great!
What blows my mind is how many people I know who watch football on Sunday on broadcast stations in SD because their cable box isn't HD. When I tell them they could get HD with a $20 antennae their minds are blown.
I love the idea of using an antenna. HDTV with 5.1 surround for no cost other than a rooftop or set top antenna? This is the future! (or the past) Only one problem, what if we live in an area where we are blocked from a signal? Could a community pool their money and buy a shared antenna? (as was done in the 1970s - this is how the cable companies go their start) No. We could not. The cable companies (and others) would sue. This is what happened with Aereo. Brilliant business model that made cable companies successful, is sued out of existence. TiVo bought their assets, so perhaps there's still hope. But it's sickening how much power we've given these anti-competitive companies.
Is there a reason the publisher links to a Google search of the Antennas Direct link instead of to the direct site? It was the only link that went to a Google search.
With the exception of sports and news, linear TV is dead. It doesn't matter if it comes from the cable company or an antenna. Once users get a taste of watching things on their schedule, they don't want to adhere to the broadcaster's schedule.
Also, I am going to predict that the advertising model used by current cable and broadcast networks won't ever work with on-demand programming. This is probably why Hulu now offers the ad-free option. Getting rid of advertising will improve the quality of the programming by removing the redundant parts.
Broadcast TV doesn't place any more restrictions or limitations on linearity of watching than any other transmission medium. If anything, broadcast TV places fewer restrictions since it's open access - anyone can connect and receive.
It's the devices used to receive the information, as well as the viewer's desire to be WATCH IT NOW which force the linearity.
The U.S. switch over to digital transmission killed my reception. The analog signal had no problem with the mountain ranges between me and the nearest metropolitan areas, but the digital signal can't make it through. I was using a rabbit ear antennae up until then.
I get the NYC stations. It's perhaps a horrible thing to say, but Osama Bin Laden's boys knocked out only one of my channels and only temporarily; the FCC, however, killed them all.
ATSC (well, 8-VSB) is pretty terrible at handling multipath. I live 12 miles from the antenna farm and ought to be able to get great reception with a bit of aluminium foil, but because I have a tree (who would have trees, right?) any one antenna position gets only about 2 channels well.
If the FCC hadn't succumbed to NIH and used the European version (COFDM), which handles multipath better, people might actually see the very nice picture available over digital broadcast.
Odd, we have trees and are 30 miles LOS from downtown. We get Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, 3 PBS, the hmm forgot the name, CB? something. We get all we want which is main networks and in beautiful HD. I think Fox is in HD not sure, it looks nice though. If we spoke Spanish we'd have more choices. A few times a year in the early evenings Fox sometimes has issues but overall I'd pay for the quality we get if it wasn't free, not much maybe $10 most per month. Don't get any ideas US government!
Cable to expensive? It's a 10 dollar addon(digital starter) if you have internet with comcast. It used to be cheaper to have internet and limited basic than just internet alone.
I am always stunned of how USA are both forerunners of new technologies, and very backward as well... for credit cards with chip, digital television, gsm diffusion, etc etc... Also, in most of United States you can not get an european level ADSL.
The US is very, very big, and very, very empty compared to Europe. Outside of the I-95 corridor on the East Coast, some islands of density in the midwest, and the coastal zone of California, Oregon, Washington, it's overwhelmingly rural or uninhabited.
Nope, population density is only important outside of cities. Circa 2000 the US had a lot of unused backhaul capacity between cities. So, the real reason why most people in the US don't have cheap high speed internet is simply corruption at the local, state, and federal levels.
PS: This is also why for example Florida lags in solar adoption. When you dig a little into politics you find US politicians are horribly corrupt at all levels which has deeply infected US law.
Calling policy differences corruption is silly. The US made a choice to favor competition and low regulation over no competition and high regulation. It was probably a poor decision.
But you can't just label it corruption.
Plus backhaul capacity has virtually nothing to do with ISP costs. Almost all the costs is last mile network.
What completion? US has far less internet completion due to various local monopolies than the EU. In much of the US it's flat out illegal to try and compete with the incumbent.
Second, Europe has telecom monopolies and the US doesn't. What Europe does is force the monopoly to sell service to ISPs. But only one company owns the copper/fiber. There is one company in charge of building a fiber network and everybody has to use it. The ISP competition makes sure nobody is ripping you off, but it doesn't ensure network quality at all. Since there is one physical connection to your house. They have no incentive to keep their costs down. They have no incentive to build faster networks. And there is nothing the ISP can do.
So what they do is regulate the telecom. Make them do it.
In the USA, most areas have two competing telecom-ish companies. The telephone company (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Frontier, but never more than one of the above) and a cable company. In populated areas, both of these provided high(ish) speed internet. In some areas only one does, and in some areas none do. But these companies actually own their networks. But they don't have to resell their service like Europe enforces.
But that increased competition on the network to your house doesn't work very well. If Verizon makes a huge upgrade, there is no insurance that people will pay more for it. Which is exactly what happened. Verizon spent a ton of money on a nice fiber optic network and people mostly stuck with their old cable service. So in America you have two networks, with overlapping coverage, each delivering to roughly half the market. Competition actually causes less efficiency.
But in the end Europe and Americas ISPs aren't really that different. America has better ISPs than the France, Italy, Spain, etc. But countries who can more effectively regulate, have better outcomes.
I wish America regulated it better, but it's not corruption. Just a bad policy choice made in 1996.
Norway and Sweden have excellent Fiber-to-the-Home and very low population density. You can get 1GBit/s symmetrical quite cheaply (I don't remember how much, one Swedish offer I found just now is $120/month).
I've never been anywhere either country, but I suspect this uberInternet Meme about Scandinavia is not quite representative of average Scandinavian ISP speed.
Sweden is globally ranked 4th in that report, and Norway 7th. Just because GBit fiber is availabe to many doesn't mean that everybody wants to have (or pay for) it.
1. I suspect that offer isn't available in northern Norway.
2. They are only a couple hundred miles from the big internet exchanges in the Netherlands and Germany. Most of those miles can be covered with undersea cables, so you don't need to dig, which is expensive.
3. The U.S. regulatory environment for internet providers is horrible and everyone knows it.
See [1], which is a request to tender: "Tromsø Municipality will contribute to the initiation of construction of a powerful and progressive fibre-based broadband network in the outskirts of the municipality of Tromsø". I assume that means the town itself already has it.
Or [2], a press statement from Luleå's largest fibre broadband provider, back in 2012.
Both places are in the Arctic, Tromsø is 3000km from Amsterdam. NYC to London is only 5,500km...
1. Many regional providers exist all over the country that provide similar services in fairly remote towns.
2. Symbiote addressed this quite well. They're really not that close to the big exchanges.
3. That's not a technical problem though, and could be changed if there was a will to. Which is exactly what this discussion is about—in Scandinavia (in fact, most of Europe), there is competition and the broadband situation is fairly good.
Heck, I pay less than $50/month for 200/10 MBit/s and cable TV in Germany. There's no technical reason this wouldn't work in metropolitan areas in the US.
Even if the densities are similar, infrastructure is harder at scale. It's also true that the places in the US with less density tend to have less economic engines.
Population density of Norway: 14 people per km².
Population density of the USA: 35 people per km².
Sure it's hard to do this at scale, but nobody is asking for it to be deployed everywhere at the same time. You could start in populous areas, where it would be cheap to do so, and gradually supply less populated areas.
It's never going to make economic sense to put gigabit fiber out to rural areas, unless it is heavily subsidized. If there were some business location that required high speed, people lucky enough to live along the trunk line to that location might get service - that's the only reason I had cable TV as a child.
That's more an issue if your looking at land vs where people actually live. More people live in DC than Wyoming.
The population of Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Alaska , North and South Dakota put together is significantly less than the number of people living in New York City.
That's not a good comparison - when Congress was set up the massive debate between the founders was over how to do representation. Which is why we have a bicameral legislature. When doing population comparisons, you should use the numbers from the House of Representatives (population based, which is why we have a 10 year census) instead of the Senate (2 per state, regardless of size).
Huh? I was pointing out that population is not necessarily correlated with decision making authority. The thing you think I overlooked is exactly the point I was making.
If low population density is the reason the USA overall doesn't have fast, cheap broadband and is behind in mobile technology, then why aren't very dense areas within the USA (or dense states like New Jersey) up to the standards of Europe and East Asia?
They are up to European standards. In fact US has more people over 10 Mpbs than the big European countries like France, UK and Germany. Only 34% of people in Sweden do better than 15 Mpbs. I get 75/75Mpbs in DC. Comcast offers 105Mpbs. We pay more, but that's probably because competition lowers install rates.
Several East Asian countries--namely Japan and Korea--have placed great important on ISP speed. It's heavily subsided. America could do that, but it's a policy priority.
I dont think ADSL can compare to what you can get in most metro areas in the US. I have basic internet and get 18mbps but most of the time its more than 20. Google fiber will be coming to my area soon so I can expect this to go way up even if I dont switch.
As far as CC chips almost all of my cards have a chip in them with the exception of a credit union debit card. Larger retailers that had security breaches are now using this tech such as Home Depot and Target. It will take a very long time to get smaller retailers or even gas pumps to update their card swipers.
G.fast can offer ~1Gbps of bandwidth over a standard copper pair and BT OpenReach is currently trialing services at 330Mbps down with the expectation of rolling out nationally within the next few years. You can do quite a bit with a copper pair, though the distances involved are quite short.
Its when corporations get into the business and extra every cent from a technology. Expensive cable subscriptions, expensive cell subscriptions, etc... They all add up quickly.
Lord knows why. It's basically a tool to pick up non-stop advertising. If you're lucky, there's some horrible Big Bang Theory rerun displayed in one quadrant of the video signal, sped up to 210% normal framerate, so they can fit more commercials in. Plex is the new tv antenna.
I remember at superbowl some of my friends were amazed that I was able to watch the football game without cable. I was floored. They didn't even know that channels came in over the air. I showed them the antenna, where it installs in the TV, how cheap they are. I got HD video without having to pay anything.
These weren't dumb people either. They worked for tech companies. They legitimately did not know it was an option.
A lot of people cut their cables after that party.