The TV antenna is making a comeback • Hacker News Board

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#41

Post by nsxwolf » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

SSilver2k2 wrote: post #39

nsxwolf wrote: post #25

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.

TiVo Roamio OTA edition. $50 box and $9.99 a month subscription. All the great tivo features, access to apps (netflix, youtube, etc) and a great FAST user interface.

Subscription is a deal breaker. I just want to be able to pause and rewind free TV signals. I'm willing to pay once for a device to do that but not a subscription.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#42

Post by chiph » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

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/

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#43

Post by dangerlibrary » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #34

douche wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's more an issue if your looking at land vs where people actually live. More people live in DC than Wyoming. The population of Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Alaska , North and South Dakota put together is significantly less than the number of people living in New York City.

Agreed. But the people living in those states have 14 senators representing them, to NY's 2 and DC's 0. Also, 23 electoral votes to NY's 32.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#44

Post by kbenson » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #35

greg5green wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was technically stealing.

There's precedent for things that get delivered to you being yours to use, even if you didn't order or pay for them. While I am aware that it is absolutely not the same thing, there is a law that anything sent unsolicited to you in postal mail is yours to keep, no questions asked. This is to prevent a type of now-dead fraud that involved doing that, then billing people for it. It's really the responsibility of the ca…

I understand your point, but I think there's a difference between the cable company "correctly filtering service" and a person getting additional hardware to bypass the cable modem demarcation. It does get muddied by them allowing customer cable modems, which means there's not a clear a demarcation point anymore.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#45

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #24

SixSigma wrote: post #8

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.

Heh, they used to drive around in the UK with an EM locator, looking for unlicensed TV's to tax. Craziness.

You mean unlicensed TV broadcasters? How could they track a receiver?

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#46

Post by nsxwolf » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

LVB wrote: post #40

nsxwolf wrote: post #25

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.

I guess $250-400 isn't "cheap", but for easy: http://www.channelmaster.com/Antenna_DVR_s/336.htm Our family has used their previous model for years with great success. Dual tuners, program guide (picked up OTA as well), and no fees or subscription.

That looks nice, but is a bit steep especially if you still have to provide your own storage. Still, best I've seen so far, thanks.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#47

Post by lfowles » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #25

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.

I use a Homeworx dvr. Have to supply my own USB hard drive and deal with a goofy interface (not that you'll see it just for pausing live TV), but otherwise it works well. It can buffer live TV for a decent amount of time too.

http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HW-150PVR-HomeWorx-Converte...

I bet you could get quite a ways with a 16 gig flash drive on there too, if you don't want to save recordings.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#48

Post by mosburger » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

gbarnes wrote: post #9

edward wrote: post #6

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.

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.

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.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#49

Post by drewg123 » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback

#50

Post by lorenzhs » Thu, Oct 15, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

dangerlibrary wrote: post #27

douche wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the correct answer. Old, but still relevant density map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...

Norway and Sweden have excellent Fiber-to-the-Home and very low population density. You can get 1GBit/s symmetrical quite cheaply (I don't remember how much, one Swedish offer I found just now is $120/month).