4 ms·
Second, over-the-air broadcasts are becoming a nearly obsolete technology. Already, 91 percent of American households get their television via cable or satellit
by bm98 17y ago
Second, over-the-air broadcasts are becoming a nearly obsolete technology. Already, 91 percent of American households get their television via cable or satellite. So we are using all of this beachfront property to serve a small and shrinking segment of the population.
I doubt it's shrinking anymore. Over-the-air HDTV is superior to (compressed) cable and satellite feeds. Plenty of people who never considered broadcast TV when it was analog are now buying antennas replace or supplement their pay-TV.
As more people decide that their TV needs can be met by OTA HDTV and Internet video, it may be cable TV that soon becomes obsolete.
- pkulak 17y agoOTA gets 13 MB/s, and I'm pretty sure that's what Cable uses. That's not really enough for 1080i. I know that DirecTV moved to MPEG4. Not sure if it helped at all. And FiOS using more bandwidth than OTA, I believe.
- joezydeco 17y agoATSC in the USA is 19.28 Mbit/sec.
- look_lookatme 17y agoNot sure if this is what the author implied, but it's important to remember the reason why so many people have cable and satellite are programming options. When you ask yourself, do I want The Office or The Office AND Hannah Montana, quality (of compression, anyway) isn't important at all.