Earlier quoted context omitted.
How on earth does this situation come about? Hypereffective advertising by the cable companies?
Related: Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs - nowadays LEDs have about 95-99% of the warmness profile of an incandescent and are relatively cheap (can result in Another related: NiMH slow-discharge batteries (Eneloop) are very good, last as long in a remote control, and have more consistent charge levels than an alkaline. Yet people (even enviro-conscious relatives) keep buying alkalines. Why?
The TV antenna is making a comeback
241–250 of 254 posts
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#242When 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.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling policy differences corruption is silly. The US made a choice to favor competition and low regulation over no competition and high regulation. It was probably a poor decision. But you can't just label it corruption. Plus backhaul capacity has virtually nothing to do with ISP costs. Almost all the costs is last mile network.
What completion? US has far less internet completion due to various local monopolies than the EU. In much of the US it's flat out illegal to try and compete with the incumbent. But if you want actual corruption: 200 billion was supposed to pay for high speed internet, but woops companies just pocketed the money. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... But, hey ignorance is bliss. If you want t…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556
Second, Europe has telecom monopolies and the US doesn't. What Europe does is force the monopoly to sell service to ISPs. But only one company owns the copper/fiber. There is one company in charge of building a fiber network and everybody has to use it. The ISP competition makes sure nobody is ripping you off, but it doesn't ensure network quality at all. Since there is one physical connection to your house. They have no incentive to keep their costs down. They have no incentive to build faster networks. And there is nothing the ISP can do.
So what they do is regulate the telecom. Make them do it.
In the USA, most areas have two competing telecom-ish companies. The telephone company (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Frontier, but never more than one of the above) and a cable company. In populated areas, both of these provided high(ish) speed internet. In some areas only one does, and in some areas none do. But these companies actually own their networks. But they don't have to resell their service like Europe enforces.
But that increased competition on the network to your house doesn't work very well. If Verizon makes a huge upgrade, there is no insurance that people will pay more for it. Which is exactly what happened. Verizon spent a ton of money on a nice fiber optic network and people mostly stuck with their old cable service. So in America you have two networks, with overlapping coverage, each delivering to roughly half the market. Competition actually causes less efficiency.
But in the end Europe and Americas ISPs aren't really that different. America has better ISPs than the France, Italy, Spain, etc. But countries who can more effectively regulate, have better outcomes.
I wish America regulated it better, but it's not corruption. Just a bad policy choice made in 1996.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Area of Norway: 148,718 mi² Area of Sweden: 173,732 mi² Area of USA: 3.806 million mi² Even if the densities are similar, infrastructure is harder at scale. It's also true that the places in the US with less density tend to have less economic engines.
Sure it's hard to do this at scale, but nobody is asking for it to be deployed everywhere at the same time. You could start in populous areas, where it would be cheap to do so, and gradually supply less populated areas.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
1. I suspect that offer isn't available in northern Norway. 2. They are only a couple hundred miles from the big internet exchanges in the Netherlands and Germany. Most of those miles can be covered with undersea cables, so you don't need to dig, which is expensive. 3. The U.S. regulatory environment for internet providers is horrible and everyone knows it.
2. Symbiote addressed this quite well. They're really not that close to the big exchanges.
3. That's not a technical problem though, and could be changed if there was a will to. Which is exactly what this discussion is about—in Scandinavia (in fact, most of Europe), there is competition and the broadband situation is fairly good.
Heck, I pay less than $50/month for 200/10 MBit/s and cable TV in Germany. There's no technical reason this wouldn't work in metropolitan areas in the US.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Why does Akami only report ~1/3rd of Sweden and Norway having above 15 Mbps? https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/downloads/pdfs/2015-q2-st... I've never been anywhere either country, but I suspect this uberInternet Meme about Scandinavia is not quite representative of average Scandinavian ISP speed.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Area of Norway: 148,718 mi² Area of Sweden: 173,732 mi² Area of USA: 3.806 million mi² Even if the densities are similar, infrastructure is harder at scale. It's also true that the places in the US with less density tend to have less economic engines.
Population density of Norway: 14 people per km². Population density of the USA: 35 people per km². Sure it's hard to do this at scale, but nobody is asking for it to be deployed everywhere at the same time. You could start in populous areas, where it would be cheap to do so, and gradually supply less populated areas.
It's never going to make economic sense to put gigabit fiber out to rural areas, unless it is heavily subsidized. If there were some business location that required high speed, people lucky enough to live along the trunk line to that location might get service - that's the only reason I had cable TV as a child.
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
What completion? US has far less internet completion due to various local monopolies than the EU. In much of the US it's flat out illegal to try and compete with the incumbent. But if you want actual corruption: 200 billion was supposed to pay for high speed internet, but woops companies just pocketed the money. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... But, hey ignorance is bliss. If you want t…
First, 200 billion number is total BS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556 Second, Europe has telecom monopolies and the US doesn't. What Europe does is force the monopoly to sell service to ISPs. But only one company owns the copper/fiber. There is one company in charge of building a fiber network and everybody has to use it. The ISP competition makes sure nobody is ripping you off, but it doesn't ensure ne…
Re: The TV antenna is making a comeback
#249OTA 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.
How do they ever know if you have an indoor antenna? Is this just a tax that everyone pays?
If an address doesn't have one, it gets regular threatening letters and after a few months, personal visits where they ask to come in and take a look round - this you can refuse unless they bring a police officer.
Someone scanned in all the letters he got:
I have been visited too. I have even been prosecuted because the man could see a tv operating but we were playing computer games - he never showed up in court so we were acquitted.