15 ms·

The TV antenna is making a comeback

153 points by rbc 11y ago

rubidium 11y ago
My experience was almost exactly that in the OP. 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.
smoorman1024 11y ago
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.
- LordKano 11y ago
  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.
blantonl 11y ago
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.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  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.
  - nandhp 11y ago
    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.
- drewg123 11y ago
  There are multiple levels of compression. 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.
crazcarl 11y ago
You don't even need a TV to take advantage of this if you have a computer. 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-Notebook/dp/B001DEYVXO/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1191-WinTV-HVR-955Q-Tuner-No...
- pjc50 11y ago
  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.
  - kchoudhu 11y ago
    Don't upgrade to 10. They killed WMC...
  - mzs 11y ago
    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.
- Paul-ish 11y ago
  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.
edward 11y ago
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.
- gbarnes 11y ago
  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.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    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.
  - mosburger 11y ago
    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.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  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.
  - zaroth 11y ago
    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.
pidg 11y ago
This kind of TV is the 'default' here in the UK (Freeview) - we get about 50-60 digital channels and 10 HD channels. I suspect cable TV is actually on the rise here, but can't find stats to back that up.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "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-says-quad-play-strategy-paying-revenues-rise-155013 http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/mobility/4g/virgin-media-say...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Isn't satellite more common here than cable? Americans get cable, we get Sky.
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    Cable and Satellite split the market in the U.S. 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.
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  The Brits really have us beat here. For Americans, take a look at this list: http://www.ukfree.tv/channels/all http://www.ukfree.tv/channels/all On the other hand, they have to pay an annual government tax just for owning a TV.
SixSigma 11y ago
OTA TV is $250 per year in the UK, before equipment. If you get satellite / cable you still have to pay. If you watch live on computer, pay up.
- imglorp 11y ago
  Heh, they used to drive around in the UK with an EM locator, looking for unlicensed TV's to tax. Craziness.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    You mean unlicensed TV broadcasters? How could they track a receiver?
    - chiph 11y ago
      In the CRT days, from the HF section or the flyback transformer leaking signals. Not sure how they'd do it today with LCDs.
      - ibmthrowaway271 11y ago
        Sound could be an option. 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).
    - Animats 11y ago
      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. [1] http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/compact-tv-tuners-focus-digital-terrestrial-and-analog-broadcast-demands.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222907421 http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/compact-tv-tuners-focu...
kome 11y ago
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.
- wil421 11y ago
  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.
  - timthorn 11y ago
    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.
- douche 11y ago
  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.
  - dangerlibrary 11y ago
    This is the correct answer. Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_population_density_1994.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...
ThinkingGuy 11y ago
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?" [Edit: text formatting]
- ghaff 11y ago
  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.
  - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
    That's a bit misleading. Most NFL games are only available on network channels, not ESPN/Fox Sports/Univision. I'd hardly call that minor.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      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.
AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
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.
- gk_brown 11y ago
  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.
- flyinghamster 11y ago
  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.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  Building I'm in has no cable, phones lines, etc. The ladies above just use their phones for whatever. We get our internet via a microwave link.
maresca 11y ago
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.
techbullets 11y ago
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.
- wnevets 11y ago
  This is my current setup, I have a chromecast on each floor with an antenna.
- ddingus 11y ago
  Me too. This works very well.
- lettergram 11y ago
  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.
  - deckerdoes 11y ago
    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.
- twblalock 11y ago
  > With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else. Unless you want to watch a lot of sports.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
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.
nsxwolf 11y ago
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.
- analyticsjam 11y ago
  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. https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dvr/ https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dv...
  - McGlockenshire 11y ago
    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.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  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.
- hbosch 11y ago
  Unfortunately, we are not allowed to have Aereo.
  - Yhippa 11y ago
    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.
pbnjay 11y ago
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.
umsm 11y ago
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.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  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.
  - umsm 11y ago
    I completely agree. But I feel like in the very near future, content providers will start selling subscriptions to their service.
chiph 11y ago
If you're using an OTA antenna to get HDTV, this site can help you point it in the right direction to get the best signal. Just enter your ZIP code. http://www.antennaweb.org/ http://www.antennaweb.org/
- drmpeg 11y ago
  A much more advanced tool here. http://tvfool.com/ http://tvfool.com/
  - chiph 11y ago
    Nice. 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.
    - dtparr 11y ago
      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.
  - upofadown 11y ago
    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.
nobleach 11y ago
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.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Aereo was the anti-competitive one, I'm sorry. They were a cable company, just not paying the same fees that the other cable companies were.
shanecleveland 11y ago
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.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  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.
  - shanecleveland 11y ago
    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.
- kxr 11y ago
  Interesting. What's your cable provider?
  - shanecleveland 11y ago
    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.
ilamont 11y ago
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.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  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.
  - andyhnj 11y ago
    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!
    - ars 11y ago
      > 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.
ddingus 11y ago
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.
- falsestprophet 11y ago
  PDX is the airport code for the Portland airport just in case you don't keep up with the airport code for the 19th largest US metro area.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    Ha, thanks! Like my multiplication tables, I have only memorized the codes for the top 12 metro areas.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    I am admittedly too willing to use airport codes in common expression. Nice catch.
  - brewdad 11y ago
    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. :)
mariodiana 11y ago
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.
- Spoom 11y ago
  Did you upgrade your antenna with the digital switch?
- jccooper 11y ago
  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.
  - deckerdoes 11y ago
    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!
w8rbt 11y ago
Winegard makes nice affordable OTA TV antennas. They are made in America too. http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair
- darmok 11y ago
  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!
urda 11y ago
If I can't watch a show or movie on my Apple TV (or other streaming devices), I just don't watch it. Got rid of cable when I moved away for college, not going back anytime soon.
PretzelFisch 11y ago
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.
hwstar 11y ago
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.
- jpollock 11y ago
  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.
jxav 11y ago
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.
z2 11y ago
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.
- JTon 11y ago
  Awesome. Care to share the resources you used for this project?
  - z2 11y ago
    It may have been this page, though I'm pretty sure the resource I used told me what length to cut it. http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php 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.
  - PretzelFisch 11y ago
    This is the typical design I see offered in most how tutorials. http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/ http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/
- Animats 11y ago
  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. [1] http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna
dyeje 11y ago
I don't get it. Who's broadcasting the signal? How do they get paid?
- csbrooks 11y ago
  This is a joke, right? :) Commercials, same as radio.
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  You must be young. 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.
- abtinf 11y ago
  This must be one of my favorite comments ever on HN. The more I look at it, the more I can't decide if its serious or satire.
- EdwardMSmith 11y ago
  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.
hackuser 11y ago
As much as I like the idea of free broadcast TV and not being dependent on cable/satellite companies ... 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?
- abtinf 11y ago
  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.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    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.
- intopieces 11y ago
  >2) Is it essential to any group of people? 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.
legitster 11y ago
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.
- pjc50 11y ago
  How on earth does this situation come about? Hypereffective advertising by the cable companies?
  - ghaff 11y ago
    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.
  - derefr 11y ago
    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.
pgrote 11y ago
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.
deckerdoes 11y ago
What worries me is how long will it take for lobbyists or the government to mess this great free HD over OTA thing up in the US. Let's hope never.
deckerdoes 11y ago
I think Netflix and ironically the government (in the US) deserve credit for enabling the cord cutting revolution.
scholia 11y ago
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.
- njharman 11y ago
  The internet is not as simple as you imagine it to be.
  - scholia 11y ago
    I'm not as simple as you imagine me to be.
upofadown 11y ago
Forums about TV antennas: * http://forum.tvfool.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10 http://forum.tvfool.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10 * http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/ http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/ * http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/81-over-air-ota-digital-television/ http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/81-over-air-ota-digital-tele... * https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/
voltagex_ 11y ago
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. [1]: http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-tuner-server-with-mumudvb/ http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-t...
the_watcher 11y ago
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.
GigabyteCoin 11y ago
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.
JoblessWonder 11y ago
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.

153 points by rbc 11y ago

My experience was almost exactly that in the OP. 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.

smoorman1024 11y ago

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.

LordKano 11y ago
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.

blantonl 11y ago

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.

joezydeco 11y ago
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.
- nandhp 11y ago
  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.
drewg123 11y ago
There are multiple levels of compression. 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.

crazcarl 11y ago

You don't even need a TV to take advantage of this if you have a computer. 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-Notebook/dp/B001DEYVXO/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1191-WinTV-HVR-955Q-Tuner-No...

pjc50 11y ago
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.
- kchoudhu 11y ago
  Don't upgrade to 10. They killed WMC...
- mzs 11y ago
  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.
Paul-ish 11y ago
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.

edward 11y ago

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.

gbarnes 11y ago
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.
- baldfat 11y ago
  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.
- mosburger 11y ago
  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.
joezydeco 11y ago
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.
- zaroth 11y ago
  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.

pidg 11y ago

This kind of TV is the 'default' here in the UK (Freeview) - we get about 50-60 digital channels and 10 HD channels. I suspect cable TV is actually on the rise here, but can't find stats to back that up.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "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-says-quad-play-strategy-paying-revenues-rise-155013 http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/mobility/4g/virgin-media-say...
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Isn't satellite more common here than cable? Americans get cable, we get Sky.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  Cable and Satellite split the market in the U.S. 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.
ForHackernews 11y ago
The Brits really have us beat here. For Americans, take a look at this list: http://www.ukfree.tv/channels/all http://www.ukfree.tv/channels/all On the other hand, they have to pay an annual government tax just for owning a TV.

SixSigma 11y ago

OTA TV is $250 per year in the UK, before equipment. If you get satellite / cable you still have to pay. If you watch live on computer, pay up.

imglorp 11y ago
Heh, they used to drive around in the UK with an EM locator, looking for unlicensed TV's to tax. Craziness.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  You mean unlicensed TV broadcasters? How could they track a receiver?
  - chiph 11y ago
    In the CRT days, from the HF section or the flyback transformer leaking signals. Not sure how they'd do it today with LCDs.
    - ibmthrowaway271 11y ago
      Sound could be an option. 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).
  - Animats 11y ago
    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. [1] http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/compact-tv-tuners-focus-digital-terrestrial-and-analog-broadcast-demands.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222907421 http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/compact-tv-tuners-focu...

kome 11y ago

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.

wil421 11y ago
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.
- timthorn 11y ago
  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.
douche 11y ago
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.
- dangerlibrary 11y ago
  This is the correct answer. Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_population_density_1994.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...

ThinkingGuy 11y ago

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?" [Edit: text formatting]

ghaff 11y ago
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.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
  That's a bit misleading. Most NFL games are only available on network channels, not ESPN/Fox Sports/Univision. I'd hardly call that minor.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    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.

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago

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.

gk_brown 11y ago
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.
flyinghamster 11y ago
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.
Gibbon1 11y ago
Building I'm in has no cable, phones lines, etc. The ladies above just use their phones for whatever. We get our internet via a microwave link.

maresca 11y ago

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.

techbullets 11y ago

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.

wnevets 11y ago
This is my current setup, I have a chromecast on each floor with an antenna.
ddingus 11y ago
Me too. This works very well.
lettergram 11y ago
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.
- deckerdoes 11y ago
  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.
twblalock 11y ago
> With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else. Unless you want to watch a lot of sports.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago

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.

nsxwolf 11y ago

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.

analyticsjam 11y ago
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. https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dvr/ https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dv...
- McGlockenshire 11y ago
  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.
lucaspiller 11y ago
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.
hbosch 11y ago
Unfortunately, we are not allowed to have Aereo.
- Yhippa 11y ago
  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.

pbnjay 11y ago

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.

umsm 11y ago

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.

s73v3r 11y ago
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.
- umsm 11y ago
  I completely agree. But I feel like in the very near future, content providers will start selling subscriptions to their service.

chiph 11y ago

If you're using an OTA antenna to get HDTV, this site can help you point it in the right direction to get the best signal. Just enter your ZIP code. http://www.antennaweb.org/ http://www.antennaweb.org/

drmpeg 11y ago
A much more advanced tool here. http://tvfool.com/ http://tvfool.com/
- chiph 11y ago
  Nice. 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.
  - dtparr 11y ago
    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.
- upofadown 11y ago
  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.

nobleach 11y ago

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.

s73v3r 11y ago
Aereo was the anti-competitive one, I'm sorry. They were a cable company, just not paying the same fees that the other cable companies were.

shanecleveland 11y ago

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.

PaulHoule 11y ago
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.
- shanecleveland 11y ago
  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.
kxr 11y ago
Interesting. What's your cable provider?
- shanecleveland 11y ago
  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.

ilamont 11y ago

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.

dexterdog 11y ago
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.
- andyhnj 11y ago
  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!
  - ars 11y ago
    > 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.

ddingus 11y ago

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.

falsestprophet 11y ago
PDX is the airport code for the Portland airport just in case you don't keep up with the airport code for the 19th largest US metro area.
- function_seven 11y ago
  Ha, thanks! Like my multiplication tables, I have only memorized the codes for the top 12 metro areas.
- ddingus 11y ago
  I am admittedly too willing to use airport codes in common expression. Nice catch.
- brewdad 11y ago
  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. :)

mariodiana 11y ago

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.

Spoom 11y ago
Did you upgrade your antenna with the digital switch?
jccooper 11y ago
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.
- deckerdoes 11y ago
  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!

w8rbt 11y ago

Winegard makes nice affordable OTA TV antennas. They are made in America too. http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair

darmok 11y ago
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!

urda 11y ago

If I can't watch a show or movie on my Apple TV (or other streaming devices), I just don't watch it. Got rid of cable when I moved away for college, not going back anytime soon.

PretzelFisch 11y ago

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.

hwstar 11y ago

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.

jpollock 11y ago
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.

jxav 11y ago

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.

z2 11y ago

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.

JTon 11y ago
Awesome. Care to share the resources you used for this project?
- z2 11y ago
  It may have been this page, though I'm pretty sure the resource I used told me what length to cut it. http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php 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.
- PretzelFisch 11y ago
  This is the typical design I see offered in most how tutorials. http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/ http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/
Animats 11y ago
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. [1] http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna

dyeje 11y ago

I don't get it. Who's broadcasting the signal? How do they get paid?

csbrooks 11y ago
This is a joke, right? :) Commercials, same as radio.
ForHackernews 11y ago
You must be young. 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.
abtinf 11y ago
This must be one of my favorite comments ever on HN. The more I look at it, the more I can't decide if its serious or satire.
EdwardMSmith 11y ago
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.

hackuser 11y ago

As much as I like the idea of free broadcast TV and not being dependent on cable/satellite companies ... 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?

abtinf 11y ago
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.
- ghaff 11y ago
  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.
intopieces 11y ago
>2) Is it essential to any group of people? 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.

legitster 11y ago

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.

pjc50 11y ago
How on earth does this situation come about? Hypereffective advertising by the cable companies?
- ghaff 11y ago
  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.
- derefr 11y ago
  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.

pgrote 11y ago

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.

deckerdoes 11y ago

What worries me is how long will it take for lobbyists or the government to mess this great free HD over OTA thing up in the US. Let's hope never.

deckerdoes 11y ago

I think Netflix and ironically the government (in the US) deserve credit for enabling the cord cutting revolution.

scholia 11y ago

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.

njharman 11y ago
The internet is not as simple as you imagine it to be.
- scholia 11y ago
  I'm not as simple as you imagine me to be.

upofadown 11y ago

Forums about TV antennas: * http://forum.tvfool.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10 http://forum.tvfool.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10 * http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/ http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/ * http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/81-over-air-ota-digital-television/ http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/81-over-air-ota-digital-tele... * https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters/

voltagex_ 11y ago

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. [1]: http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-tuner-server-with-mumudvb/ http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-t...

the_watcher 11y ago

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.

GigabyteCoin 11y ago

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.

JoblessWonder 11y ago

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.