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Comment by christiangenco | Hacker News Reader

Television in particular seems ripe to be reallocated. Didn't we go through a whole analog-to-digital conversion over a decade ago that led to TV going through wires instead of through the air?

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Much of the TV spectrum has already been reallocated.

Channels 70 to 83 to 1G cellular in 1983.

Channels 52 to 69 to 4G cellular in 2008.

Channels 38 to 51 to 4G/5G cellular in 2017.

The current allocation is channels 2 through 36. Channel 37 is not used.

Huh I didn't realize that. I grew up watching Fox on channel 49, one slice of history gone.

Virtual Channel Numbers let a station pretend to be on a particular channel number. The actual RF channel number doesn't need to match. But the channel number you key in using your TV remote does need to match the virtual channel number.

If I'm not able to watch my "Creature Double Feature" on the real actual channel 56, I just don't want to live any more.

So does the TV have to scan all RF channels at startup to build a virtual->RF channel map?

Yes

In nearly all populated areas of the US, you can still receive broadcast TV for free over the air with an antenna.

Digital television stations state what "channel" they are in their signal's meta data. That allows them to change frequencies but keep their channel identity. Since TV when digital, many stations have changed frequencies, some several times. You may find the "repacking" of the broadcast TV frequencies an interesting read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_sp...

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, it would cost me quite a lot of money to view my local free-to-air TV stations over either cable or the Internet, so antenna it is (for the very few times I need it).

In the USA, over-the-air stations may require cable operators to carry their channel at no charge (to the operator) or they may negotiate a charge to the operator, which the operator may refuse. The major stations have chosen the latter. Part of a cable TV bill pays for this (though the stations would day they’re just getting their fair share of the high cable bill.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retransmission_consent

I don't know if it's true but someone told me this is the main reason why the likes of Home Shopping Network and QVC keep their over the air transmitters going in many places even though most of their viewers are on cable. It seems like a waste of spectrum space but it's so that they can force the cable operators to carry them.

That's generally not true. US cable and satellite operators are only required to carry the "primary" video feed [1], which is usually the xx.1 channel. In most markets, home shopping channels typically air on subchannels (xx.2, etc.). The exception, of course, would be if the TV station designates the home shopping channel as their primary channel.

Home shopping is usually used to monetize excess bandwidth.

[1] - https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C...

I've heard about that, but I wonder what the economics here are.

Are enough people really willing to pay for the convenience of, I guess, not having to switch between antenna and cable input, or are living outside of broadcast coverage of the stations they care about?

Weirdly, it's exactly the opposite in Germany: Supposedly the public broadcasters have to pay the cable companies to get them to carry their programs.

The average American barely knows how to turn their TV on and off. Switching inputs is a scary prospect. Having rabbit ears on your tv is also def a social status signaling thing.

> Having rabbit ears on your tv is also def a social status signaling thing.

That's what I've long suspected. No wonder it's a great opportunity to save/waste money :)

Supposedly in some social classes and age groups, broadcast TV is literally unheard of, with Best Buy promoting TV antennas accordingly ("free cable!") and people suspecting it's a scam or illegal.

to be fair, if you heard about a free tv online streaming service you might assume their business model is suspicious?

broadcast is kinda uniquely positioned.

Analog-vs-digital is entirely orthogonal to wires-vs-air. You can send either signal over either medium.

Broadcast TV still goes over the air, though it's digital now.

The digital signals are still radio-carried, but yes, that would technically allow condensing the spectrum some.

No, the analog tv sunsetting was just about the tx format. You can still broadcast digital signals OTA.

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