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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Broadcast TV after the digital rollout was so bad many people just stopped watching TV. Picking it up is such a hassle it's simply not worth the effort for some ad laden TV.

At the time of the switchover in the early 2000s I lived about 40 miles from a major metropolitan area, Minneapolis, which is pretty close in US terms. We spent hundreds of dollars on different antennas (indoor and outdoor) and signal boosters and what not and it was simply never reliability.

In 2008 I moved to my current location, three miles outside of downtown Minneapolis. Again I tried a number of antennas and still found operation to be anything but reliable. I gave up and began just watching Netflix.

The people who live close enough to the broadcasts to pick it up have easy access to cable TV. The people who live in the countryside who used to depend on it can't pick it up. There's just no place for the TV system we were given.

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> Broadcast TV after the digital rollout was so bad many people just stopped watching TV.

That is the first time I've heard that. Everything I've heard has been positive - people amazed that others aren't doing it. Are there any numbers on user satisfaction?

I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap (<$50 iirc). Maybe there was a problem in Minneapolis?

> The people who live close enough to the broadcasts to pick it up have easy access to cable TV.

Cable is expensive for many people and broadcast is free, of course. (Also, Broadcast is more private, for now.)

> I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap (<$50 iirc). Maybe there was a problem in Minneapolis?

I don’t know about Minneapolis is particular, but 40 miles is far enough that it gets tricky, and in my Canadian city, I’m close to the towers as the crow flies, but in the RF shadow of a huge hill - so I’d actually get better reception if I was further away from the broadcast towers.

Minneapolis is in a river valley (the Mississippi River). From an airplane at cruising altitude the area will look fairly flat, but down at ground level there is a ton of 50-100 foot undulation. The elevation of your antenna is probably far more important than the quality of your antenna.

Fun: if you’ve got Apple Maps (I’m sure Android has this as well), ask for walking directions from Minneapolis to something 35-40 miles away. I chose “Elko New Market” - 36 miles from downtown. Click on the walking details and you can see the elevation change. You’re going from around 800 feet above sea level to 1100 feet above sea level, a difference of ~300 feet. But the total change over the course of the walk is nearly 4000 feet!

I live in downtown Chicago and get tons of channels, despite no line of sight due to buildings in the way. Though they tend to go out when the El passes by.

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