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.
assuming you are referring to the license fee: GBP145.50 is closer to $225 is it not?
$225 is approx $250
The TV antenna is making a comeback
61–70 of 254 posts
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#62I 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.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#63OTA 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.
I think that those van were (are?) mainly for show - http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detector%20vans.htm
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When I got my TiVo a few years ago, you could buy a lifetime subscription. I think it was about $300, which seemed pretty reasonable. I've had the unit for almost 4 years so I've definitely broken even on it.
They still seem to offer a lifetime plan, but now it costs $600. That's a bit harder to justify.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#65This 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.
> "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-say...
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#66Cordcutter 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 o…
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.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#67Earlier 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...
Nope, population density is only important outside of cities. Circa 2000 the US had a lot of unused backhaul capacity between cities. So, the real reason why most people in the US don't have cheap high speed internet is simply corruption at the local, state, and federal levels.
PS: This is also why for example Florida lags in solar adoption. When you dig a little into politics you find US politicians are horribly corrupt at all levels which has deeply infected US law.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#68In 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.
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.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#69What 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.
Is it true that you have to remember to proactively put it into a special mode to pause live TV?
I might tolerate that shortcoming at that price, though.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#70In 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.
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.
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.