The TV antenna is making a comeback
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/798265-how-b...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unless you want to watch a lot of sports.
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.
http://m.mlb.com/postseason-schedule
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.
Check out all the disclaimers and fine print here
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp?&affiliateId=...
I suspect cable TV is actually on the rise here, but can't find stats to back that up.
Here's one recent report about Virgin Media (the main cable TV provider in the UK)...
"just 5,100 new TV customers were added as revenues fell by 3.3 percent to £234.7 million"
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/mobility/4g/virgin-media-say...
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.
On the other hand, they have to pay an annual government tax just for owning a TV.
The BBC is awesome, I happily pay my tv tax :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
[Edit: text formatting]
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.
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.
You can buy a tv tuner card that will connect to your laptop and allow you to plug in an antenna to watch TV.
Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1191-WinTV-HVR-955Q-Tuner-No...
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.
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.
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.
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.
It would be cool to see Roku or Apple TV combine this functionality.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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".
Technically.
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.
Commercials, same as radio.
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.
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.
https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dv...
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.
$50 box and $9.99 a month subscription. All the great tivo features, access to apps (netflix, youtube, etc) and a great FAST user interface.
They still seem to offer a lifetime plan, but now it costs $600. That's a bit harder to justify.
"$14.99 Monthly service with 1-year commitment"
Do you (or anyone else) know if the Tivo will work without an internet connection?
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.
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 recommend it.
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HW-150PVR-HomeWorx-Converte...
I bet you could get quite a ways with a 16 gig flash drive on there too, if you don't want to save recordings.
I might tolerate that shortcoming at that price, though.
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 haven't tried the pausing TV (or recording TV) yet. I think this coment will inspire me to try out the recording and pausing.
Add a HDHomerun tuner box (NOT the HDHomerun Prime, which is a CableCard tuner), and it works quite nicely.
Easiest setup is with Mythbuntu http://www.mythbuntu.org/
http://www.channelmaster.com/Antenna_DVR_s/336.htm
You should follow /r/cordcutters, they track this stuff obsessively.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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].
[0] - http://www.amazon.com/Tablo-HDTV-Antennas-2-Tuner-Wi-Fi/dp/B...
[1] - https://www.tablotv.com/tablo-products/tablo-guide-data-subs...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you get satellite / cable you still have to pay.
If you watch live on computer, pay up.
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).
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.
[1] http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/compact-tv-tuners-focu...
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.
Someone scanned in all the letters he got:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-t...
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.
1) Is over-the-air broadcast TV widely used anywhere? Very few even know about it where I live, but maybe there are places where it's more common.
2) Is it essential to any group of people?
3) Could we get more beneift from that spectrum by repurposing it for something else?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Got rid of cable when I moved away for college, not going back anytime soon.
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.
Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...
Area of Sweden: 173,732 mi²
Area of USA: 3.806 million mi²
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.
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.
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.
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] http://www.publictenders.net/node/1956874
[2] https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/...
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.
https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-st...
I've never been anywhere either country, but I suspect this uberInternet Meme about Scandinavia is not quite representative of average Scandinavian ISP speed.
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.
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.
But if you want actual corruption: 200 billion was supposed to pay for high speed internet, but woops companies just pocketed the money. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
But, hey ignorance is bliss. If you want to pretend the US is not ridiculously corrupt then have at it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556
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.
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.
https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-st...
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.