# Buying a TiVo Amidst Changing Technology



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

So I was contemplating cutting the cord the next time I move, and it got me thinking about getting a Roamio OTA. But then I remembered that ATSC 3.0 is coming down the pipe, and the Roamio is most likely not upgradable. I had, at one point, thought about getting another cable TiVo, and never ended up doing that, which I'm very glad about due to Comcast's quality degradation, and the amount of content that's now available without cable. I will probably just end up getting a basic cable/internet bundle from Comcast and keep my Premiere XL4 running for PBS and the occasional network show, but it got me thinking....

So what is a TiVo buyer to do?

If they are in a FiOS area, and have a great bundle, they're probably good for a while. But otherwise, how do you make a decision on a box that has to run for 26-48 months to pay for itself when the market is so rapidly evolving? On the OTA front, we have ATSC 3.0 coming down the line, and we don't know how quickly that will be adopted, or how long it will take TiVo to launch an ATSC 3.0 capable DVR. On the cable front, CableCard is in grave danger due to a move to IPTV, on Comcast and Cox more quickly than on Charter and Verizon. Meanwhile, a lot of content has moved away from cable over the past decade, and other services have added a lot of the hot new content, making it a lot less desirable, and for content still on cable channels, OTT V-MVPD services are popping up all over the place from SlingTV, PS Vue, and DirecTV Now, and soon Amazon, Google, Hulu, and others may enter the fray as well.

So what is a TiVo buyer to do?


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## osu1991 (Mar 6, 2015)

Lots of stuff in motion. 

The Incentive Auction still isn't complete for the repacking of the tv frequencies before the FCC even considers ATSC 3.0. I don't see ATSC being a concern for at least 3-4 years at the earliest. 

Currently as long as Cox continues to support QAM and gives me a substantial bundle discount for tv/Internet I will keep the TiVo and cable tv. Eventually I'll probably move to a basic online service or skinny package.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

Bigg said:


> So I was contemplating cutting the cord the next time I move, and it got me thinking about getting a Roamio OTA.


Seems a no-brainer with the current sale price for a renewed Roamio OTA.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

krkaufman said:


> Seems a no-brainer with the current sale price for a renewed Roamio OTA.


I'd second that, for most people ATSC 3.0 won't be a factor for close to a decade. You'll get your money's worth out of the Roamio before then


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## Barnstormer (Sep 23, 2015)

I guess if one has to have the latest and greatest technology, even if it means being on the bleeding edge, then getting a TIVO OTA may not make sense. Me? I purchased my first Tivo OTA about 14 months ago with lifetime subscription. In another three months I will have broken even with the monthly fee deal. And I have enjoyed the benefits of having my Tivo record shows while I am out, skipping commercials, useing the buffer to pause what I am watching, etc. 

The only negative is the new guide does not properly show one of the lesser stations in my area and Tivo's 'fix' did nothing to change that situation.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

I ended up getting one of the $199 Roamio OTAs. I'm going to spend more to upgrade it's hard drive, but still an incredible deal. I figure even if I keep cable or satellite, having the OTA as a supplemental DVR would be helpful for network content. I think ATSC 3.0 will be here a lot sooner than that, but we'll see. As far as I'm concerned, the Premiere XL4 and Roamio OTA aren't missing any features compared to the Bolt or Bolt+, except the hideously ugly case. I don't see a reason to have 4k streaming, as my Roku Ultra handles that just fine, and has a lot more apps available.

$200 for a Roamio OTA on this deal is a no-brainer at this point, but what I'm trying to figure out is how people are buying a Bolt or Bolt+ given the uncertainty in technology both on the cable and OTA sides of the world in a way that we haven't seen since CableCard and ATSC 1.0 came around in the early 2000's.


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## hooper (Sep 22, 2007)

I said the same thing when I bought a premiere and Verizon was talking about going IPTV and ditching QAM all together. Today they have abandoned IPTV totally. Turned out that it was a good thing I bought lifetime on that premiere. 

Some things are guaranteed in the TV world. Atsc and cable card will take many many years to iterate. Cable card may never have a successor. Atsc will be never catch up. 4k will be replaced by 8k next year. 

The bigger threat is OTT streaming eviscerating linear cable or satellite in quick fashion.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

hooper said:


> I said the same thing when I bought a premiere and Verizon was talking about going IPTV and ditching QAM all together. Today they have abandoned IPTV totally. Turned out that it was a good thing I bought lifetime on that premiere.


FiOS is an interesting situation, as they haven't made any substantive upgrades to the service in years. No IPTV, no gigabit internet, nothing. They've rolled out a few new pieces of hardware and done some minor plan tweaks, but that's it. They aren't leveraging the capabilities of their existing infrastructure, which ironically ends up being good for TiVo users.



> Some things are guaranteed in the TV world. Atsc and cable card will take many many years to iterate. Cable card may never have a successor. Atsc will be never catch up. 4k will be replaced by 8k next year.


I think that Comcast will phase out CableCard from a practical point of view within the next couple of years, by moving to IPTV. They will probably still have MPEG-2 locals available on CableCard in 5 or 10 years, but if you want cable channels, you'll have to have X1.



> The bigger threat is OTT streaming eviscerating linear cable or satellite in quick fashion.


Pay TV isn't going away overnight. QAM might, if Comcast and Cox push towards IPTV in a quick fashion (ok, even that will take years to transition). That being said, pay TV is in a death spiral right now. A couple of years ago, I thought that people talking about cord cutting were insane, and it was basically a minor right-sizing of the market, where people who don't watch much TV were cutting the cord when they probably should never have had it in the first place.

However, since then, we've seen show and personality after personality drop off of cable, with more and more streaming becoming available, and we're at a point now where it's no longer a right-sizing, but a full-fledged exodus. Cable lost Colbert, Stewart, and Oliver, Mythbusters, just to name a few. The reasons to keep cable keep disappearing. All that's left is sports, and there is a huge generational gap in enthusiasm for cable. My parents have the TV on a lot, and veg out in front of whatever is on. My dad is just figuring out Xfinity On Demand. Meanwhile, my cable viewing is way down, and I'm getting close to the point of cord cutting the next time I move (right now, I have a package deal, and I can't get good OTA).

Pay TV seems to be stuck in a death spiral of losing viewers and then increasing the price over and over again, and then wondering what happened. ESPN's massive bids on sports contracts were sort of the beginning of the end. Pay TV will still be around in 10 years, but it's going to look a lot different than it does today. What's also interesting to me, and not good for TiVo is that a lot of the people I know who have cut the cord do not have OTA, or if they do, they don't have a DVR and rarely actually watch it. A lot of people on this forum are either avid cord cutters who watch a lot of OTA, or they are very much attached to their cords and their big TiVos, but they are not typical users, and a lot of typical users out there have just lost interest in pay tv, and don't see it as a good value.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

hooper said:


> I said the same thing when I bought a premiere and Verizon was talking about going IPTV and ditching QAM all together. Today they have abandoned IPTV totally. Turned out that it was a good thing I bought lifetime on that premiere.
> 
> Some things are guaranteed in the TV world. Atsc and cable card will take many many years to iterate. Cable card may never have a successor. Atsc will be never catch up. 4k will be replaced by 8k next year.
> 
> The bigger threat is OTT streaming eviscerating linear cable or satellite in quick fashion.


 OTT still has a lot of hiccups, Internet streaming still has problems more than cable, streaming boxes stall, buffer and reset on their own. More than a few people have cable and the cable company DVR because it 'Turnkey', Push a button and it just works. It may be generational, but the people paying for turnkey seem to be the generation with the money.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Seems like you are putting the cart before the horse. Move first, run a TVFool.com report for the new location, then investigate options.

Seems like the whole auction/repacking process is losing steam...

_To recap, so far, broadcasters' stage one price for exiting 126 MHz was $86.4 billion, but bidders in the forward auction-wireless companies and others bidding on that reclaimed spectrum-only offered $22.4 billion.

The FCC intentionally set the opening broadcaster offers high and constructed the auction for multiple rounds to let the marketplace, TV station sellers and wireless carriers agree on an ultimate price point. So far, the first two stages of both the reverse and forward portions of the auction have seen the two sides far apart in price, and the FCC has now twice reduced the spectrum clearing target given that forward auction bidders have not met the asking price.

In stage two of the reverse auction, broadcasters' clearing price for 114 MHz was $56.5 billion, while forward auction bidders only offered $21.5 billion and that auction only went one two-hour round, with bidders simply lowering their demand rather than raising their price.

Stage three of the reverse began Nov. 1 and, with breaks for the long Thanksgiving Holiday-no bidding Nov. 23-25-will likely not be over until Dec. 1._​
Same for ATSC 3.0...

_But the panel of station group heads-Sinclair's David Smith, Fox's Jack Abernethy, Nexstar's Perry Sook and Raycom's Pat LaPlatney-stopped short of calling ATSC 3.0, which the FCC has yet to authorize, a panacea for local broadcasting.

Consumers rejecting a delivery system that requires them to buy new technology is one of the concerns, they said. So is making over-the-air delivery so appealing that it furthers cord-cutting-causing a drop in the retransmission consent money broadcasters get from pay-TV providers as a result._​
When and IF ATSC 3.0 arrives, it will supplement not replace ATSC 1.0, so your TiVo will continue to work for many years. Just the same, you will break even much faster with the $200 Roamio/OTAs than a Bolt and I recommend you start with one or two of those. In other words, do not get a box that breaks even in 26-48 months.

It sounds like you aren't really sure how much you want to spend or what you want to watch. Figure that out while you are waiting to move. If OTA is in your future, run that TVFool report before signing a lease or mortgage.



Bigg said:


> So I was contemplating cutting the cord the next time I move, and it got me thinking about getting a Roamio OTA. But then I remembered that ATSC 3.0 is coming down the pipe, and the Roamio is most likely not upgradable. I had, at one point, thought about getting another cable TiVo, and never ended up doing that, which I'm very glad about due to Comcast's quality degradation, and the amount of content that's now available without cable. I will probably just end up getting a basic cable/internet bundle from Comcast and keep my Premiere XL4 running for PBS and the occasional network show, but it got me thinking....
> 
> So what is a TiVo buyer to do?
> 
> ...


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> OTT still has a lot of hiccups, Internet streaming still has problems more than cable, streaming boxes stall, buffer and reset on their own. More than a few people have cable and the cable company DVR because it 'Turnkey', Push a button and it just works. It may be generational, but the people paying for turnkey seem to be the generation with the money.


I'm not sure what planet OTT has all those problems on. I stream most of my content through Roku, and it's incredibly reliable, the video quality is amazing compared to cable, and it's very easy to use. I think there is a mental block to going to streaming, however. I tried to show my parents how to use a Roku and FireTV stick that I gave them, but they still don't quite get it, and they are pre-programmed to flip on the TV and watch whatever garbage is on. I think younger viewers are becoming much more discerning about the quality of the content they are watching because there is so much more available, and it's available for less money and with more control over when and where they watch it.

DirecTV is going to start bleeding customers like crazy. They netted-out the sub losses last quarter from U-Verse switchovers, and that may carry over for another quarter or two, and bundling with AT&T will help for a while, but their pricing is completely insane. Their margins are massively bloated, and they are already fighting an uphill battle with ISPs charging more for unbundled internet.

I just wonder how much longer Comcast is going to keep aggressively pushing bundles on their customers.... at some point they will make the same amount of money or possibly more by raising internet prices again like Cox did, and getting rid of the bundle deals, and just watching their broadband monopoly rake it in with incredibly high margins while they shed millions of TV subs.



wizwor said:


> Seems like you are putting the cart before the horse. Move first, run a TVFool.com report for the new location, then investigate options.


Very interesting. It looks like the mobile industry has sort of run out of money to keep buying up more spectrum at ever increasing prices, which makes sense, as the current spectrum buy numbers are absolutely staggering when you break them out per sub.

The retrans fee stuff is interesting, although it seems silly to think that ATSC 3.0 will significantly accelerate cord cutting, or more accurately, that the lack of ATSC 3.0 will slow it down. Most people who are cord cutting have limited, if any OTA equipment set up, most are just streaming, and don't care about the networks. The ones who do are just fine with ATSC 1.0.



> When and IF ATSC 3.0 arrives, it will supplement not replace ATSC 1.0, so your TiVo will continue to work for many years. Just the same, you will break even much faster with the $200 Roamio/OTAs than a Bolt and I recommend you start with one or two of those. In other words, do not get a box that breaks even in 26-48 months.
> 
> It sounds like you aren't really sure how much you want to spend or what you want to watch. Figure that out while you are waiting to move. If OTA is in your future, run that TVFool report before signing a lease or mortgage.


I ordered the $200 Roamio OTA, as when is that going to be that cheap again? Plus, new tech toys are always good. I figure if I end up in a situation with cable or DirecTV, OTA can always supplement it, particularly when PyeongChang and Tokyo come around, as I'll either use OTA exclusively, or if I have cable at that point, the Roamio OTA with a 3TB upgrade drive will offload a tuner and significantly offload the space crunch from my 2TB Premiere XL4 or a future 1TB HR54. We'll have to see what the streaming landscape looks like at that point.

You can get OTA pretty much anywhere around here, it's just a matter of what antenna you need for a particular location, depending on local geography. The area I am currently in is on the edge of Hartford-New Haven, and so it's a bit of challenge to get Hartford-New Haven or Providence-New Bedford channels. Where I hope to be moving is much closer to the towers for Hartford-New Haven and possibly Springfield-Holyoke. I can live without my WGBH Boston that for some reason Comcast brings into parts of Hartford-New Haven (they bring in WNET New York or WGBY Springfield in others).

As for buying a house or renting an apartment, I'd be more concerned about the loop length from the VRAD serving it. It would be nice to have options for an ISP, and qualify for the 45/6 package from Frontier, as then at least there is an option, versus being trapped by Comcast or Cox and forced to pay whatever they charger. Where I am now, I have 3 ISPs that can provide 45/6, 155/20, or 150/10, but that's not the norm in CT. That being said, if I love a house, I'm not going to not buy it because there is a broadband monopoly. $20-$30/mo isn't much in the whole scheme of getting a mortgage for a hundred grand or more plus a down payment on a house.

For the next couple of basketball games, I'm going to demo streaming them through a VPN (they are only streaming out of market on ESPN3), and see how it looks compared to cable, and how reliable/easy to set up it is.

I may be able to set up the TiVo Roamio OTA now, although the cheap Wal-Mart antenna that I have right now isn't getting anything reliably, and for some reason isn't getting VHF at all (even though it has what look like the world's largest rabbit ears for VHF). At night, it will pick up 4 channels, but they cut in and out. I'd have to say though, that when they cut in, the quality is far better than anything Comcast has. I thought Comcast was passing the signals through without re-compression, but my eyes are telling me otherwise. If I can get a reliable signal for the Roamio OTA, the bitrate calculations will tell me for sure.

The questions in this thread that I was asking are more general in nature. It looks like the answer may be that ATSC 3.0 is going to be slow going and people should just go for ATSC 1.0 for now. Cable is another story, and looking at a 36-60 month payback for a Bolt or Bolt+, it's challenging to argue for an economic payback at this point. I guess you just have to take a leap of faith, and hope that enough stays on QAM for long enough to get some use out of it.

For me, I'll keep the Premiere XL4 so that I can start it up and hook cable up if I want to, and I can replace the drive if it fails at some point, so that makes sense economically. For me, it's less about the actual budget, I can afford cable or even DirecTV if I wanted to, but rather the value I'm getting out of it. If I'm only watching a few things every month, it's just not worth the price. If it's only a few bucks more in a bundle than internet-only, then maybe I'll keep it around for a while. The value proposition has also gone down now that Comcast is getting rid of most 1080i channels, and converting them to extremely compressed 720p that looks worse than streaming. If I'm going to stream because the quality is so bad, why have cable TV when I can stream for free (I have another login that has WatchESPN/ESPN3).

The Roamio OTA will also be a nice negotiation tool with a cable company in the future, as I can be like "extend my bundle deal or cancel my TV as I already have a TiVo and antenna set up". I really want DirecTV, but I can't justify $120/mo or more for a service that I know I won't use very much, and may not use at all in the summertime. At least with cable or V-MVPD services, there is usually no contract, and it can be added/dropped at any time.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Bigg said:


> Very interesting. It looks like the mobile industry has sort of run out of money to keep buying up more spectrum at ever increasing prices, which makes sense, as the current spectrum buy numbers are absolutely staggering when you break them out per sub.


I'm not sure it is that they have run out of money as much as it is that cell service is a commodity. The latest advertising campaigns claim that all networks are great so you might as well shop for price. It's tough to compete on price when you are spending billions on new bandwidth.



Bigg said:


> The retrans fee stuff is interesting, although it seems silly to think that ATSC 3.0 will significantly accelerate cord cutting, or more accurately, that the lack of ATSC 3.0 will slow it down. Most people who are cord cutting have limited, if any OTA equipment set up, most are just streaming, and don't care about the networks. The ones who do are just fine with ATSC 1.0.


I do not think this is true. Last stat I saw had 18% relying exclusively on an antenna. I can tell you that antennas are going up fast, so I suspect this is accelerating. Most people put up an antenna to save money. OTT does not save money. Neither does replacing your equipment every ten years. As you said, most who have an antenna are not craving HDR or pay tv.



Bigg said:


> I ordered the $200 Roamio OTA, as when is that going to be that cheap again? Plus, new tech toys are always good. I figure if I end up in a situation with cable or DirecTV, OTA can always supplement it, particularly when PyeongChang and Tokyo come around, as I'll either use OTA exclusively, or if I have cable at that point, the Roamio OTA with a 3TB upgrade drive will offload a tuner and significantly offload the space crunch from my 2TB Premiere XL4 or a future 1TB HR54. We'll have to see what the streaming landscape looks like at that point.


I'd spend $200 on an EPG and trick play. Great deal.



Bigg said:


> You can get OTA pretty much anywhere around here, it's just a matter of what antenna you need for a particular location, depending on local geography. The area I am currently in is on the edge of Hartford-New Haven, and so it's a bit of challenge to get Hartford-New Haven or Providence-New Bedford channels. Where I hope to be moving is much closer to the towers for Hartford-New Haven and possibly Springfield-Holyoke. I can live without my WGBH Boston that for some reason Comcast brings into parts of Hartford-New Haven (they bring in WNET New York or WGBY Springfield in others).


This is why OTA growth is accelerating. When your neighbor puts up an antenna, you ask questions. If you like the answers, you give it a go



Bigg said:


> I may be able to set up the TiVo Roamio OTA now, although the cheap Wal-Mart antenna that I have right now isn't getting anything reliably, and for some reason isn't getting VHF at all (even though it has what look like the world's largest rabbit ears for VHF). At night, it will pick up 4 channels, but they cut in and out. I'd have to say though, that when they cut in, the quality is far better than anything Comcast has. I thought Comcast was passing the signals through without re-compression, but my eyes are telling me otherwise. If I can get a reliable signal for the Roamio OTA, the bitrate calculations will tell me for sure.


PM me a TVFool.com report link and I'll try to help.



Bigg said:


> The Roamio OTA will also be a nice negotiation tool with a cable company in the future, as I can be like "extend my bundle deal or cancel my TV as I already have a TiVo and antenna set up". I really want DirecTV, but I can't justify $120/mo or more for a service that I know I won't use very much, and may not use at all in the summertime. At least with cable or V-MVPD services, there is usually no contract, and it can be added/dropped at any time.


I tell everyone this. You: "OK, come disconnect me. I have a smart phone and an antenna." Them: Let me connect you to our retention specialist."


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

wizwor said:


> I'm not sure it is that they have run out of money as much as it is that cell service is a commodity. The latest advertising campaigns claim that all networks are great so you might as well shop for price. It's tough to compete on price when you are spending billions on new bandwidth.


It's not that they have no money at all left, but their investors will only tolerate so much spending and debt to acquire more and more spectrum, and at this point, both AT&T and Verizon have pretty good spectrum positions, and I think that they've realized that out-bidding each other to try and get deeper and deeper spectrum positions was just becoming too expensive for their business models moving forward. Sprint's campaign is complete and total BS, their network is horrible, but T-Mobile has caught up to the big two in many markets, although there are plenty of rural areas where the big two, or sometimes just one of them, works well.



> I do not think this is true. Last stat I saw had 18% relying exclusively on an antenna. I can tell you that antennas are going up fast, so I suspect this is accelerating. Most people put up an antenna to save money. OTT does not save money. Neither does replacing your equipment every ten years. As you said, most who have an antenna are not craving HDR or pay tv.


Every ten years? That does save money versus the more typical 2-4 year hardware upgrade cycles. The cost of maintain DirecTV is outrageous when you factor in equipment upgrades on top of incredibly high monthly fees. Nationwide, I believe it's still about a 20/60/20 OTA/cable/satellite split, and i have seen more OTA antennas go up, but from my experience of younger people who are cut cutters or cord nevers, they either don't have OTA at all, or they rarely use it in lieu of streaming. If you're talking about PS Vue and SlingTV, then yeah, they don't save much over cable, but if you're talking about cable plus Amazon plus Netflix versus Amazon and Netflix without cable, well, you save the price of the cable (minus bundling discounts).

The cable market is artificially held up by bundling, if all providers did what TWC used to do before they ceased to exist, then I suspect we'd see several percent move from cable to OTA or nothing.



> I'd spend $200 on an EPG and trick play. Great deal.


Yeah, it's an insane deal.



> This is why OTA growth is accelerating. When your neighbor puts up an antenna, you ask questions. If you like the answers, you give it a go


True. I've heard a lot of people talking about cord shaving and cord cutting at work (we are in a bad location for OTA, and we have a local cable overbuilder that has a regular priced broadband plus basic cable package for $50/mo).



> PM me a TVFool.com report link and I'll try to help.


I can PM you my address. I've run TV Fool, and the usual suspects all show up. I'm not in a horrible spot for OTA reception, but it's not great either, kind of on the side of a hill but there's a lot of vegetation around, and I think I'm still blocked to the transmitters by the terrain.



> I tell everyone this. You: "OK, come disconnect me. I have a smart phone and an antenna." Them: Let me connect you to our retention specialist."


Yeah, at least it gives some leverage on the TV side. The internet is where it's tough.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

Bigg said:


> So I was contemplating cutting the cord the next time I move, and it got me thinking about getting a Roamio OTA. But then I remembered that ATSC 3.0 is coming down the pipe, and the Roamio is most likely not upgradable. I had, at one point, thought about getting another cable TiVo, and never ended up doing that, which I'm very glad about due to Comcast's quality degradation, and the amount of content that's now available without cable. I will probably just end up getting a basic cable/internet bundle from Comcast and keep my Premiere XL4 running for PBS and the occasional network show, but it got me thinking....
> 
> So what is a TiVo buyer to do?
> 
> ...


 cox is not doing iptv at all mpeg 4 and ipbackchannel allows cox ondemand on premiere and newer tivo's


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Bigg said:


> Every ten years? That does save money versus the more typical 2-4 year hardware upgrade cycles. The cost of maintain DirecTV is outrageous when you factor in equipment upgrades on top of incredibly high monthly fees. Nationwide, I believe it's still about a 20/60/20 OTA/cable/satellite split, and i have seen more OTA antennas go up, but from my experience of younger people who are cut cutters or cord nevers, they either don't have OTA at all, or they rarely use it in lieu of streaming. If you're talking about PS Vue and SlingTV, then yeah, they don't save much over cable, but if you're talking about cable plus Amazon plus Netflix versus Amazon and Netflix without cable, well, you save the price of the cable (minus bundling discounts).


A lot of cord cutters simply have an antenna and a television. Ten years after ATSC 1.0, the idea of upgrading to watch Mash at 4k is not exciting.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ajwees41 said:


> cox is not doing iptv at all mpeg 4 and ipbackchannel allows cox ondemand on premiere and newer tivo's


All cable companies will eventually be IPTV, Cox's use of SDV may slow that transition compared to Comcast though.



wizwor said:


> A lot of cord cutters simply have an antenna and a television. Ten years after ATSC 1.0, the idea of upgrading to watch Mash at 4k is not exciting.


The question though, is will ATSC 1.0 channels get re-packed onto shared channels with SD-only broadcasts, forcing upgrades? I guess we're a few years off from that. I do agree that most users would be perfectly happy if OTA TV stayed the way it is now indefinitely, maybe killed a few worthless subchannels to give the most bandwidth possible to the main feed, and let people who want 4k pay the big buckaroos to pull it off of satellite, where DirecTV has enough bandwidth sitting idle for 50 national 4k channels.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

Bigg said:


> The question though, is will ATSC 1.0 channels get re-packed onto shared channels with SD-only broadcasts, forcing upgrades? *I guess we're a few years off from that*. I do agree that most users would be perfectly happy if OTA TV stayed the way it is now indefinitely, maybe killed a few worthless subchannels to give the most bandwidth possible to the main feed, and let people who want 4k pay the big buckaroos to pull it off of satellite, where DirecTV has enough bandwidth sitting idle for 50 national 4k channels.


There's the key. It's all off in the future. It's not as imminent as it was last winter.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> The cable market is artificially held up by bundling, if all providers did what TWC used to do before they ceased to exist, then I suspect we'd see several percent move from cable to OTA or nothing.


Well yeah and it's been that way for years here w/Comcast - I'm on a 2 year $100 double play deal (Blast HSI + all channels + HBO) and it's going to expire next month. I'm sure I can get the same new customer bundle for $110 (current offer) when I call and get to retention, with a 2 year signup. Fine by me as long as I can keep Tivo w/cablecard.

Been doing this with them for at least 10 years now, TV cost is essentially no more than $40 or so a month and has been that way the entire time when you factor in HSI cost. Or split it half and half and it's $50 each, still a great deal for all the content you get.
DirectTV Now, PS TV, Sling etc. are not much less for TV but are a much worse experience compared to Tivo IMO, especially now that we have commercial AutoSkip w/kmttg. I've got to have sports so OTA alone is not going to cut it.


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## hooper (Sep 22, 2007)

slowbiscuit said:


> Well yeah and it's been that way for years here w/Comcast - I'm on a 2 year $100 double play deal (Blast HSI + all channels + HBO) and it's going to expire next month. I'm sure I can get the same new customer bundle for $110 (current offer) when I call and get to retention, with a 2 year signup. Fine by me as long as I can keep Tivo w/cablecard.
> 
> Been doing this with them for at least 10 years now, TV cost is essentially no more than $40 or so a month.


The problem with Comcast is the fees. I have the same bundle. Broadcast fee went from 1.5 to 6.5 and RSN fee did the same (forget the exact numbers). When I started my contract my bill was 104 a month. Now it is 114. So 110 becomes 124 with additional fee increases all but guaranteed.

Personally I have hit the tipping point with Comcast TV. OTA is next when my contract is up.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> Well yeah and it's been that way for years here w/Comcast - I'm on a 2 year $100 double play deal (Blast HSI + all channels + HBO) and it's going to expire next month. I'm sure I can get the same new customer bundle for $110 (current offer) when I call and get to retention, with a 2 year signup. Fine by me as long as I can keep Tivo w/cablecard.
> 
> Been doing this with them for at least 10 years now, TV cost is essentially no more than $40 or so a month and has been that way the entire time when you factor in HSI cost. Or split it half and half and it's $50 each, still a great deal for all the content you get.
> DirectTV Now, PS TV, Sling etc. are not much less for TV but are a much worse experience compared to Tivo IMO, especially now that we have commercial AutoSkip w/kmttg. I've got to have sports so OTA alone is not going to cut it.


Yeah, I've got a Double Play bundle for $89 now with XF Preferred, SHO, and Performance something-r-other (75/5). I dropped Blast! as my node is congested anyway, and now my total bill is around $108/mo (it changes every month). My future packages depend on whether I have Frontier available, and what speeds, as VDSL with OTA would get me entirely free from Comcast.

I'm borrowing my parents' logins for XFinity TvGo, WatchESPN, and ESPN3, so I would be more of a cord cheater than a cord cutter, but if I had to, I could get SlingTV to get WatchESPN and ESPN3 for $25/mo for basketball season, and then drop it when the season is over.

It is true that by aggressively bundling, Comcast is making it relatively unappealing to cut the cord. I'd have to imagine that at some point, they are going to give up on selling TV near cost, and double down on broadband as their profit center. Another factor for me is Comcast's picture quality. It is so bad that it's not worth paying for at this point. I was watching a free feed of Al Jazeera English last night, and it was gorgeous, I flip back to ESPNNews on Comcast, and it's half a mess, and that's not even converted to "HD Enhanced" yet.



hooper said:


> The problem with Comcast is the fees. I have the same bundle. Broadcast fee went from 1.5 to 6.5 and RSN fee did the same (forget the exact numbers). When I started my contract my bill was 104 a month. Now it is 114. So 110 becomes 124 with additional fee increases all but guaranteed.
> 
> Personally I have hit the tipping point with Comcast TV. OTA is next when my contract is up.


Wow, that's pretty bad. Here, they are charging $5 for broadcast and $3 for RSNs. Still, $8 that they're not advertising.


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## hooper (Sep 22, 2007)

slowbiscuit said:


> I've got to have sports so OTA alone is not going to cut it.


I am a huge sports fan as well. I am curious why OTA only wouldn't cut it? I subscribe to NHL.tv and NFL Gamepass and use a dns unlocator service for $2 a month. When I first moved in to my new place, I just had internet plus from Comcast which was a really good value back then. Internet Plus was essentially OTA, 2 superstations, HBO and performance 25 for like $50. I would sign up for that package again except for the ever increasing broadcast fee. Comcast internet also gets you ESPN3 for free!!

The only reason I got any TV package from Comcast was for the kids channels. Things have changed a lot since then.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

It depends on the sport. A lot of college stuff isn't available off of cable, so it depends on the team and sport that you're trying to follow. Here, SNY and CBSSN are two pesky channels that aren't available anywhere outside of traditional pay-tv. I'm just not sure it's worth it anymore for getting a few more games a year than what I could cobble together streaming, but it depends if you absolutely have to see all of your favorite team's games.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

about the only college sport not exclusively on cable is football


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Bigg said:


> I'm not sure what planet OTT has all those problems on. I stream most of my content through Roku, and it's incredibly reliable, the video quality is amazing compared to cable, and it's very easy to use. .


 Realtime streaming has problems/ hiccups, HBO Game of Thrones premieres, Sports, and some other realtime events, no one wants to make the investment in the infrastructure to get around that. Netflix and Amazon that stream after the fact can be massaged,compressed, and otherwise set up to have very few problems.
Streaming is getting there, but when it goes down, it goes down big.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Here, SNY and CBSSN are two pesky channels that aren't available anywhere outside of traditional pay-tv


We've followed UConn Women's Basketball for decades and it was a shame when the games became no longer available on public television but restricted mostly to SNY and ESPN2. But right now the games are pretty much up next day by magical means, so we just don't watch local sports news on game nights!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> Realtime streaming has problems/ hiccups,


True, I was referring to VOD streaming, which is virtually flawless and gorgeous for me. I tend not to watch anything really popular, so even the live streaming that I've done has worked great for me.



Wil said:


> We've followed UConn Women's Basketball for decades and it was a shame when the games became no longer available on public television but restricted mostly to SNY and ESPN2. But right now the games are pretty much up next day by magical means, so we just don't watch local sports news on game nights!


Well, to be fair, CPTV's 14:9 SD broadcasts were a total mess, and the begging sessions were very annoying. I think they did one in HDTV before the conference realignment put the broadcasts on ESPN (with spin-off to SNY and CBSSN). Magical means? That's interesting. If you have access to ESPN3, you can stream the SNY Women's games out of market. If you're in-market for SNY, just get a VPN and connect to Chicago or DC, and you'll be able to stream the SNY feed on ESPN3. ESPN2 requires a cable login, or a service like SlingTV to watch. CBSSN is the worst, it is not available streaming except in-home if you already have pay TV, which sort of completely defeats the point of it. The games are available in HD anywhere in the US through DirecTV with a sports package added on, but that's a tad pricey.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

I live in Newburyport, MA, on the NH border. I would love to know if any fellow members are in that area and using an HD antenna. Do any of you have an indoor/small antenna? Can you get ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/etc...?

Antennaweb seems to indicate I might only get PBS from north of me, but the other locals in the boston area are still within the 50mile radius. My lone window near my home theater where I could put an antenna (if not on the equipment stack) faces east.

We only subscribe to locals with comcast for $10/month. I've toyed with going antenna/OTA and getting a Roamio OTA, but my TiVoHD still is chugging along. I'm now looking at antenna as a possible thing for the future.....


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

hooper said:


> I am a huge sports fan as well. I am curious why OTA only wouldn't cut it?


Racing in all flavors (NASCAR, IndyCar, F1, etc.). If you don't have cable you ain't watching most of it.

And as others said, streaming as a substitute sucks if you can even get it (don't think so for NASCAR). No DVR capability, buffering issues and poor quality overall.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

1274 OTA stations will have to move to new channel assignments over the next 3 years. If they choose to adopt the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, the existing tuners in the Roamio OTA are not compatible.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

shwru980r said:


> 1274 OTA stations will have to move to new channel assignments over the next 3 years. If they choose to adopt the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, the existing tuners in the Roamio OTA are not compatible.


But I read 1000 OTA channels will be gone in 32 days: Tivo should go after the OTA market (but first understand those customers)

I'll wait.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

jlb said:


> I live in Newburyport, MA, on the NH border. I would love to know if any fellow members are in that area and using an HD antenna. Do any of you have an indoor/small antenna? Can you get ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/etc...?
> 
> Antennaweb seems to indicate I might only get PBS from north of me, but the other locals in the boston area are still within the 50mile radius. My lone window near my home theater where I could put an antenna (if not on the equipment stack) faces east.
> 
> We only subscribe to locals with comcast for $10/month. I've toyed with going antenna/OTA and getting a Roamio OTA, but my TiVoHD still is chugging along. I'm now looking at antenna as a possible thing for the future.....


Danville, NH -- just across the border. Use TVFool.com to see what you can watch. Visit freetvforme.wordpress.com for the rest.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

jlb said:


> I live in Newburyport, MA, on the NH border. I would love to know if any fellow members are in that area and using an HD antenna. Do any of you have an indoor/small antenna? Can you get ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/etc...?


Look on AVSForum for the Boston, MA OTA thread.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

shwru980r said:


> 1274 OTA stations will have to move to new channel assignments over the next 3 years. If they choose to adopt the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, the existing tuners in the Roamio OTA are not compatible.


I thought they had to retain ATSC 1.0, but that could end up being done through putting a bunch of channels in SD on one channel for ATSC 1.0, and each channel having their own ATSC 3.0? If the channels actually want the viewership, they are going to offer an ATSC 1.0 broadcast, it just depends on what quality and resolution you end up with versus ATSC 3.0. That's my big question.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

JoeKustra said:


> But I read 1000 OTA channels will be gone in 32 days: Tivo should go after the OTA market (but first understand those customers)
> 
> I'll wait.


Ya the sale of OTA spectrum isn't going like the FCC thought. They are on the third round and no where close to having anyone willing to pay what the OTA channels are willing to take to give up their spectrum. The whole thing may fail. ATSC 3.0 is still a pipe dream in my opinion, not ever FCC approved yet.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

I got a ClearStream 2v set up, and I've got a bunch of channels now on my Roamio OTA. They look pretty darn good. The TiVo's channel scan is pretty much worthless, since it skips a lot of channels that are actually pretty solid, but after manually trying a bunch, I got it set up.


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## spocko (Feb 4, 2009)

ajwees41 said:


> cox is not doing iptv at all mpeg 4 and ipbackchannel allows cox ondemand on premiere and newer tivo's


I wasn't aware of them moving towards an IP back channel. That would be great. Can you please point me to more info? I googled but didn't find anything.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

spocko said:


> I wasn't aware of them moving towards an IP back channel. That would be great. Can you please point me to more info? I googled but didn't find anything.


They are currently using it for control with their VOD on TiVo, the video is still delivered via QAM. It's more or less the same thing that Comcast does. It's one of the few times that Cox pretending to be mini-Comcast benefits users.


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## spocko (Feb 4, 2009)

I would be nice if they would also use it to control SDV, so we could eliminate the needs for tuning adapters.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

As Round IV of the Reverse Auction wraps up, The Rebel Alliance is alive and well...

_Bidding in stage four of the reverse auction began Dec. 13, only days after wireless bidders again failed to bid up their original price points, leaving the gap between ask and offer at $20 billion.

Stage three of the reverse auction ended with the broadcasters asking $40,313,164,425 for 108 MHz of spectrum (the "clearing target"), but bidders only offering $19,676,240,520. In stage two, the price was $55 billion for 114 MHz, but forward auction bidders, who had only ponied up $22 billion in stage one toward an opening price of $86 billion for 126 MHz, did not budge, simply reducing their demand rather than up the price, a strategy they repeated in round three.

The FCC has nine different spectrum targets. So there remains an opportunity for a meeting of the financial minds, but as each spectrum target drops, broadcasters continue to question the urgency of trying to transfer that spectrum from broadcasters to wireless companies._​









On the other front...

_In the United States, this also is expected to be a significant year with the expected FCC *adoption of rules to enable the voluntary implementation of ATSC 3.0 services and products*._​
Merry Christmas and a FreeTV New Year!


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## shibamare (Jan 4, 2017)

Hello all! I am a TiVo newbie, just got my Roamio set up, and checking out the forums. I cut the cord about 2 months ago, way too expensive for what I was getting. Since the title of this thread suggests TiVo may be soon obsolete, I just had to read it!

Since I am 70 years old I'm pretty sure I will be dead or won't care whenever my TiVo becomes obsolete, but this thread made for a very interesting read and I learned so much about the world of streaming and OTA and OTT and so on. Thanks everyone!


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

shibamare said:


> Hello all! I am a TiVo newbie, just got my Roamio set up, and checking out the forums. I cut the cord about 2 months ago, way too expensive for what I was getting. Since the title of this thread suggests TiVo may be soon obsolete, I just had to read it!
> 
> Since I am 70 years old I'm pretty sure I will be dead or won't care whenever my TiVo becomes obsolete, but this thread made for a very interesting read and I learned so much about the world of streaming and OTA and OTT and so on. Thanks everyone!


I understand your concern. It's the same concern, whether TiVo would be around in the future, that I had when I first decided to purchase my TiVo and then a lifetime subscription--11 years ago. (And, yes, that TiVo still is running, making its lifetime subscription a very nice deal, indeed.)

As you are coming from cable, another way to look at it, financially, is at what point the cost of your TiVo and subscription will have been paid off by your cable savings--anything after that is gravy. The "psychic" payoff point is different for each one of us--for me, it's probably around 3 years + (probably reflecting the payoff point for the earlier lifetime subscription cost), with my smile getting bigger each year thereafter.

Personally, I think that there is a certain amount of fear-mongering going on here, stoked by Rovi's acquisition of the old TiVo, Inc. (with Rovi not seen as an Apple-like caliber of company, based on its program guide issues as well as certain public statements by it and/or the old TiVo about wanting to exit the hardware world). But TiVo is a jewel in the DVR and related fields. Having said that, however, seemingly successful companies, and tech. companies, indeed do go under--witness the closing of one of the major fitness watch companies last year.

Let's all hope for the best and for the consumer-related success of the new TiVo Corp.--and, in the meantime, enjoy!


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## shibamare (Jan 4, 2017)

Mikeguy: Considering I was paying about $100/month for the TV part of cable, reaching the payoff point will be less than 5 months (I have the lifetime TiVo subscription in the Roamio price).


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

shibamare said:


> Hello all! I am a TiVo newbie, just got my Roamio set up, and checking out the forums. I cut the cord about 2 months ago, way too expensive for what I was getting. Since the title of this thread suggests TiVo may be soon obsolete, I just had to read it!
> 
> Since I am 70 years old I'm pretty sure I will be dead or won't care whenever my TiVo becomes obsolete, but this thread made for a very interesting read and I learned so much about the world of streaming and OTA and OTT and so on. Thanks everyone!


Welcome to TiVoLand! Although you're joining at a tempestuous time following the Rovi takeover, I'm sure that you will enjoy the experience and find that it was a good investment.

I'm at just about the same age as you and find that it's a lot easier to shrug off catastrophes small (DVR programming glitches) and large (the growing s#@t-storm that the last election has unleashed) when the sweet, sweet release of death beckons.


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## mickinct (Sep 14, 2015)

*The FCC Is Voting on Changing Broadcast TV Standards The FCC Is Voting on Changing Broadcast TV Standards*


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

mickinct said:


> *The FCC Is Voting on Changing Broadcast TV Standards The FCC Is Voting on Changing Broadcast TV Standards*


The sky is falling, the sky is falling


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> The sky is falling, the sky is falling


After reading some of the analysis over at AVSForum, I'm not convinced we're ever going to see widespread ATSC 3.0 adoption, at least not in the foreseeable future.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Bigg said:


> After reading some of the analysis over at AVSForum, I'm not convinced we're ever going to see widespread ATSC 3.0 adoption, at least not in the foreseeable future.


The least the FCC should do is force the OTA/cable stations to give us at least 80% of full HDTV, with everybody compressing TV what good will UHD be except for streaming.


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## BRiT wtfdotcom (Dec 17, 2015)

lessd said:


> The least the FCC should do is force the OTA/cable stations to give us at least 80% of full HDTV, with everybody compressing TV what good will UHD be except for streaming.


That won't happen when the FCC is now lead by a pro-company and anti-consumer chariman, Mr Pai.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

BRiT wtfdotcom said:


> That won't happen when the FCC is now lead by a pro-company and anti-consumer chariman, Mr Pai.


Sad, isn't it? Isn't consumer advocacy part of the FCC's role?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> Sad, isn't it? Isn't consumer advocacy part of the FCC's role?


What you didn't know that large Corporations are persons? and that they are the consumer the Government is protecting and working for .


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> After reading some of the analysis over at AVSForum, I'm not convinced we're ever going to see widespread ATSC 3.0 adoption, at least not in the foreseeable future.


What makes you say that? Pretty much all of the nation's largest station owners, including Sinclair, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Meredith, etc., are big proponents of ATSC 3.0 and I would think are now planning how they're going to make the move to start broadcasting in that format as they also take care of the repack over the next three years. I would bet there are at least a few stations around the country broadcasting in 3.0 two years from now. It will take time for it to spread but given the carrots of better picture quality and reception (and the stick of decreased picture quality on ATSC 1.0), I'm fairly optimistic that it will succeed.

There are still a lot of questions up in the air, including to what degree the big four broadcast nets will support it by offering content in UHD/HDR, whether the FCC will require new TVs at some point to include ATSC 3.0 tuners, and all the business details of MSOs passing those signals on to their subscribers. So I don't think it's a shoo-in by any means. But I'm optimistic.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> What you didn't know that large Corporations are persons? and that they are the consumer the Government is protecting and working for .


Sorry, you're right, I forgot. And isn't "Take a Corporation Out for Lunch" Day coming up soon?


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Mikeguy said:


> Sad, isn't it? Isn't consumer advocacy part of the FCC's role?


That was under Wheeler. Under Pai, that is no longer true.

The new FCC under Trump is to scale down consumer advocacy and instead concentrate on easing regulatory burdens.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> What you didn't know that large Corporations are persons? and that they are the consumer the Government is protecting and working for .


And money is free speech. 



NashGuy said:


> What makes you say that? Pretty much all of the nation's largest station owners, including Sinclair, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Meredith, etc., are big proponents of ATSC 3.0 and I would think are now planning how they're going to make the move to start broadcasting in that format as they also take care of the repack over the next three years. I would bet there are at least a few stations around the country broadcasting in 3.0 two years from now. It will take time for it to spread but given the carrots of better picture quality and reception (and the stick of decreased picture quality on ATSC 1.0), I'm fairly optimistic that it will succeed.
> 
> There are still a lot of questions up in the air, including to what degree the big four broadcast nets will support it by offering content in UHD/HDR, whether the FCC will require new TVs at some point to include ATSC 3.0 tuners, and all the business details of MSOs passing those signals on to their subscribers. So I don't think it's a shoo-in by any means. But I'm optimistic.


No one can figure out what the transition strategy is going to be. There isn't enough space left to set up a whole second set of transmitters for ATSC 3.0, and run them side-by-side with the ATSC 1.0 transmitters, and now they are talking about doing the repack (even though the auction for that failed), which leaves even _less_ room for duplicate channels. Most people who have HDTVs aren't going to upgrade to ATSC 3.0 sets, and stations aren't going to cut off ATSC 1.0 users, as they would lose ad dollars for some theoretical gain of ATSC 3.0. Further, they don't want their OTA signal to be significantly better than what they are giving to cable and satellite, or what cable and satellite can actually re-transmit, as they are making a crapton of money off of retrans fees. Some cable systems could put a few 4k channels on, but many cannot, and there is no way that satellite can do 210 markets of 4k LiL's. Just getting HD LiL's was a massive undertaking, and an impressive achievement for both providers.

The whole business model is aligned against widespread ATSC 3.0. Considering that there is currently one station broadcasting on ATSC 3.0, I'm sure there will be a few in markets that have the space to run second transmitters but have large cities. RDU is a perfect example of this, but it's not going to happen in a place like NYC, SF, LA, or DFW, where there just isn't any room left for more channels, unless it's done with low-power transmitters that have limited range, and use "gaps" from neighboring markets.

Considering what we've seen with the market demand for better picture quality, with Comcast compressing the crap out of their channels, and more and more subchannels going on OTA stations with varying degrees of main channel picture quality depending on the encoding, it's clear to me that the market doesn't really care about PQ. I'm extremely picky, and 12-13mbps MPEG-2 on ATSC 1.0 looks excellent to me, while most cable channels look like crap. The channels with 1 or 2 subchannels and good encoding equipment are doing fine, I'd much rather they drop the subchannels, but even with them, I'm pretty happy with the results.

There's enough hype around 4k that I think there will be some more linear channels launched beyond the 3 or 4 currently operating, but I don't think that the networks will go 4k anytime soon. My sense is that ESPN will launch a 4k channel or two, Fox Sports will launch a few, and we might see some RSNs go 4k for baseball. Cable isn't ready yet, but for the high end of the market, DirecTV is sitting on about 50 channels of 4k bandwidth that's ready to start broadcasting on CONUS beams in the RB. Since sports is the driver of pay tv right now, it would be a logical move to put some sports content up in 4k, both as a competitive advantage for those sports, as well as for DirecTV. There may be a movie channel or two launched in 4k as well, but only because there is a lot of content readily available to put on that channel, so it would be relatively cheap to do in order to crank up the 4k channel count.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> No one can figure out what the transition strategy is going to be. There isn't enough space left to set up a whole second set of transmitters for ATSC 3.0, and run them side-by-side with the ATSC 1.0 transmitters, and now they are talking about doing the repack (even though the auction for that failed), which leaves even _less_ room for duplicate channels. Most people who have HDTVs aren't going to upgrade to ATSC 3.0 sets, and stations aren't going to cut off ATSC 1.0 users, as they would lose ad dollars for some theoretical gain of ATSC 3.0. Further, they don't want their OTA signal to be significantly better than what they are giving to cable and satellite, or what cable and satellite can actually re-transmit, as they are making a crapton of money off of retrans fees. Some cable systems could put a few 4k channels on, but many cannot, and there is no way that satellite can do 210 markets of 4k LiL's. Just getting HD LiL's was a massive undertaking, and an impressive achievement for both providers.


Actually, there is a general idea of what the transition strategy will be: the lighthouse/nightlight approach. (See the sidebar here.) Of course, how that plays out will vary from market to market given the players and spectrum space involved. In more crowded markets (maybe even all markets), it will mean reduced bitrates for some ATSC 1.0 channels and some SD subchannels completely disappearing.

You're right that basically no one will buy a whole new TV just to get an ATSC 3.0 tuner but I suspect in the next couple years we'll see the FCC mandate that all new TVs (if they are sold as "TVs," not "monitors") must contain both 1.0 and 3.0 tuners. Meanwhile, for those who care, we'll be able to buy standalone 3.0 tuners (or 3.0/1.0 combo tuners) that plug into existing TVs. Yes, it would take several years for the viewership of 3.0 stations to build, which is why the transition will be a long one. No station owner is going to stop broadcasting NBC in 1.0 in the meantime. I doubt we'd see a 1.0 cutoff before 2025 at the earliest. (I believe the FCC will touch on the topics of required 3.0 tuners and a 1.0 signal cutoff at their next meeting.)

As for how ATSC 3.0 channels get incorporated into cable and satellite services, I think that's one of the big unanswered questions. There's obviously a lot to be resolved there, both in terms of economics and technology. I'm doubtful we'll ever see UHD linear channels flowing over QAM on cable systems. I'd say it will be over IP. As for satellite, who knows, maybe the UHD content will only be available on-demand. Hard to say. Given the direction that TV is moving -- away from linear and toward on-demand -- it's hard to imagine DirecTV or DISH putting tons of money in new satellites to accommodate UHD LiLs. But I think both companies know that the future of video is IP, which is part of the reason why DirecTV sold to AT&T.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Getting back to the title of this thread, it seems like technology has always been changing every time I've bought a Tivo.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Actually, there is a general idea of what the transition strategy will be: the lighthouse/nightlight approach. (See the sidebar here.) Of course, how that plays out will vary from market to market given the players and spectrum space involved. In more crowded markets (maybe even all markets), it will mean reduced bitrates for some ATSC 1.0 channels and some SD subchannels completely disappearing.


There are some markets that currently have shared transmitters, or one company owning multiple stations, where they might be able to light up another transmitter simulcasting the same sets of stations. But in markets where there aren't a lot of available frequencies, the stations aren't going to want to degrade their ATSC 1.0 feeds, as that's where the installed base of users is. Even if every TV next year had an ATSC 3.0 tuner, it would be decades before a large majority of TVs supported ATSC 3.0.



> You're right that basically no one will buy a whole new TV just to get an ATSC 3.0 tuner but I suspect in the next couple years we'll see the FCC mandate that all new TVs (if they are sold as "TVs," not "monitors") must contain both 1.0 and 3.0 tuners. Meanwhile, for those who care, we'll be able to buy standalone 3.0 tuners (or 3.0/1.0 combo tuners) that plug into existing TVs. Yes, it would take several years for the viewership of 3.0 stations to build, which is why the transition will be a long one. No station owner is going to stop broadcasting NBC in 1.0 in the meantime. I doubt we'd see a 1.0 cutoff before 2025 at the earliest. (I believe the FCC will touch on the topics of required 3.0 tuners and a 1.0 signal cutoff at their next meeting.)


Yeah, that's why I think 3.0 is basically DOA. I think there will be a few 3.0 transmitters up, but I doubt that we'll see any widespread conversion to 3.0. What's the financial incentive when the huge installed base of viewers doesn't have the equipment to receive 3.0? The money is in mass viewership and ad dollars, not reaching a few early adopters who bought 3.0-capable equipment.



> As for how ATSC 3.0 channels get incorporated into cable and satellite services, I think that's one of the big unanswered questions. There's obviously a lot to be resolved there, both in terms of economics and technology. I'm doubtful we'll ever see UHD linear channels flowing over QAM on cable systems. I'd say it will be over IP. As for satellite, who knows, maybe the UHD content will only be available on-demand. Hard to say. Given the direction that TV is moving -- away from linear and toward on-demand -- it's hard to imagine DirecTV or DISH putting tons of money in new satellites to accommodate UHD LiLs. But I think both companies know that the future of video is IP, which is part of the reason why DirecTV sold to AT&T.


If the big four went to UHD, we might see linear QAM delivery of them, simply because so many people watch them, although they will likely do all 4k as IP, including locals. I don't think there is enough bandwidth up there at the currently licensed slots to do UHD LiL. Now, they could, in the theory, but the big four up in the top 5 markets or something on CONUS, or use spot beams for the top dozen or two markets, but that would piss off a lot of small, rural markets. HD LiLs was a massive project, I don't think there's an appetite at this point to start doing UHD LiLs. DISH is in trouble, they need Sling TV to take off. DirecTV is in a better position, they have hotels, sports bars, sports nuts, and bundles with AT&T, so they are going to push the cord-cutting curve back by at least a couple of years, possibly more than that.

I'm not too optimistic about the networks doing 4k anytime in the forseeable future. HD was an obvious advantage, and most people saw a huge value add in it. I'm not convinced that many people see a big value add in UHD over HD. With cable and satellite providers compressing the crap out of TV as it is, it's clear that the general market doesn't care a whole lot about picture quality, and likes gimmicky crap like remotes you can talk to and sports scores. DirecTV could launch some national 4k, since they reach the entire CONUS with one set of satellites. A local station in some random DMA that's reaching a million or two potential viewers, with OTA at a 15% market share, and a relatively small number of them with 4k, I'm just not seeing it.

We're also seeing a market that is more and more cost conscious in terms of carriage and channel count, and I think we've peaked out in terms of the number of channels out there. Some smaller channels are going to disappear, and cable companies will be looking to trim their lineups. I'm not sure it's a good time to add a bunch of 4k channels in there. My prediction is that DirecTV gets anywhere from 5 to 50 UHD linear channels, and we see very limited UHD linear offerings, if any at all, from cable and telcoTV.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

NashGuy said:


> given the carrots of better picture quality and reception (and the stick of decreased picture quality on ATSC 1.0), I'm fairly optimistic that it will succeed.


Even if they don't transition to UHD the extra bandwidth and the addition of H.264 and H.265 support give it greater potential for _*increased*_ quality. Right now they're basically forced to use MPEG-2 for everything which means they're making the stations look like sh*t to cram more content into the limited bandwidth. If they could convert to H.264 or H.265 then they could actually get better quality at lower bitrates and everyone wins. Throw in another 10Mbps of bandwidth and they can cram 3+ HD stations on a single 6Mhz band and have it still look good. That should be a major improvement over what they're doing now in some markets.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> There are some markets that currently have shared transmitters, or one company owning multiple stations, where they might be able to light up another transmitter simulcasting the same sets of stations. But in markets where there aren't a lot of available frequencies, the stations aren't going to want to degrade their ATSC 1.0 feeds, as that's where the installed base of users is.


Why do you think station owners aren't willing to degrade their ATSC 1.0 feeds? They've been doing it for years by adding subchannels. As I see it, a minority of folks will be drawn to the ATSC 3.0 feeds (early adopters/techies who want better PQ, interactivity, free live TV on all their devices) while the majority who don't really care will stick with 1.0 until they upgrade to a new TV (or possibly a new network router) with a 3.0 tuner built in. But that majority also won't care too much about the fact that their local 1.0 signals are being degraded, and the station owners know that. For those few angry viewers who contact the station complaining about worse 1.0 PQ, the station's response will be to buy an inexpensive ATSC 3.0 tuner dongle to plug into their TV and enjoy the great new features of their Next Gen TV signal. (I bet we'll see built-in 3.0/1.0 combo tuners, with a nice integrated program guide, as a trend among streaming boxes and dongles like Roku, Fire TV, etc. in a couple years.)

One point that hasn't been raised about the economics of ATSC 3.0 is the potential for higher ad rates thanks to targeting. That has station owners excited and is a reason they want to see it succeed. Remember that 3.0 is all-IP and can integrate with content served up via the internet. In the same way that different people see different ads now when watching Hulu, based on the limited info they have about you, that will also be possible with 3.0. Maybe stations will offer some sort of incentive for users who provide lots of demographic info to better target ads -- opt in and get streaming on-demand access to that station's recent shows, for instance. Assuming that the 3.0 tuner is connected to the user's internet connection, that sort of stuff could be handled by on-screen graphics that are embedded in the 3.0 signal. Tune in late to a show? The station's info banner could have a Start Over button that, when clicked, switches the stream over from 3.0 broadcast to broadband and serves up the show from the beginning. Whether that sort of thing *will* happen, we don't know. But it will be possible.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> Even if they don't transition to UHD the extra bandwidth and the addition of H.264 and H.265 support give it greater potential for _*increased*_ quality. Right now they're basically forced to use MPEG-2 for everything which means they're making the stations look like sh*t to cram more content into the limited bandwidth. If they could convert to H.264 or H.265 then they could actually get better quality at lower bitrates and everyone wins. Throw in another 10Mbps of bandwidth and they can cram 3+ HD stations on a single 6Mhz band and have it still look good. That should be a major improvement over what they're doing now in some markets.


That's an interesting thought. You can get up to 57mbps in a 6mhz channel with ATSC 3.0, even if it was only 48mbps as you say, that's still a dozen or more HEVC-encoded HD channels at pretty decent quality, especially if you stat mux them. MPEG-2 needs ~12mbps stat muxed to look really good, H.264 ~6mbps, and HEVC 3 or 4mbps. Even with subchannels, you could fit most of a smaller market on a single transmitter. However, if you're going to do that, with no quality benefit, then they would the station bother to do 3.0 in the first place? They could just keep transmitting on 1.0 indefinitely.



NashGuy said:


> Why do you think station owners aren't willing to degrade their ATSC 1.0 feeds? They've been doing it for years by adding subchannels. As I see it, a minority of folks will be drawn to the ATSC 3.0 feeds (early adopters/techies who want better PQ, interactivity, free live TV on all their devices) while the majority who don't really care will stick with 1.0 until they upgrade to a new TV (or possibly a new network router) with a 3.0 tuner built in. But that majority also won't care too much about the fact that their local 1.0 signals are being degraded, and the station owners know that. For those few angry viewers who contact the station complaining about worse 1.0 PQ, the station's response will be to buy an inexpensive ATSC 3.0 tuner dongle to plug into their TV and enjoy the great new features of their Next Gen TV signal. (I bet we'll see built-in 3.0/1.0 combo tuners, with a nice integrated program guide, as a trend among streaming boxes and dongles like Roku, Fire TV, etc. in a couple years.)


The thing is, even if they cram two 720p channels and a pair of subchannels on a single 1.0 transmitter, they're still losing subchannels and ad dollars versus running their own 1.0 transmitter.



> One point that hasn't been raised about the economics of ATSC 3.0 is the potential for higher ad rates thanks to targeting. That has station owners excited and is a reason they want to see it succeed. Remember that 3.0 is all-IP and can integrate with content served up via the internet. In the same way that different people see different ads now when watching Hulu, based on the limited info they have about you, that will also be possible with 3.0. Maybe stations will offer some sort of incentive for users who provide lots of demographic info to better target ads -- opt in and get streaming on-demand access to that station's recent shows, for instance. Assuming that the 3.0 tuner is connected to the user's internet connection, that sort of stuff could be handled by on-screen graphics that are embedded in the 3.0 signal. Tune in late to a show? The station's info banner could have a Start Over button that, when clicked, switches the stream over from 3.0 broadcast to broadband and serves up the show from the beginning. Whether that sort of thing *will* happen, we don't know. But it will be possible.


Ugh, that is a nightmare scenario for the end user. Nonetheless, how would this work? It would require a lot of streaming bandwidth, and a very powerful processor on the tuner end in order to do local ad injection on a user by user basis. This is the future of where cable is going to cloud-connected platforms, since the MSO controls the whole system, and they already do it at a cable plant level, but for broadcast? It seems a bit far-fetched. There is already a lot of ad targeting by show, time of day, etc, and part of the appeal of broadcast is the ability to reach a wide audience, and build brands.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Ugh, that is a nightmare scenario for the end user. Nonetheless, how would this work? It would require a lot of streaming bandwidth, and a very powerful processor on the tuner end in order to do local ad injection on a user by user basis. This is the future of where cable is going to cloud-connected platforms, since the MSO controls the whole system, and they already do it at a cable plant level, but for broadcast? It seems a bit far-fetched. There is already a lot of ad targeting by show, time of day, etc, and part of the appeal of broadcast is the ability to reach a wide audience, and build brands.


Not sure why it would be a nightmare scenario for users (so long as it's permission-based). I also don't think it's that big of a stretch technologically. It's all just IP-based streaming video. I'm assuming the targeted ads would have to be inserted via a broadband connection rather than over-the-air. (One of the benefits of 3.0 is that it's purely IP-based and can interact with the internet.) Although given that ATSC 3.0 transmission streams _may_ be able to shift bandwidth on-the-fly, perhaps it's possible to take the bandwidth used by the program and divide it up over the ad break into narrower streams so that two or three different ads at lower res could be broadcast, with each ad targeted at a different demographic.

Anyhow, targeted -- or to use the industry lingo "programmatic" -- advertising is on the rise and is definitely part of the plan for ATSC 3.0. Sinclair, the nation's second-largest broadcast station owner and a big 3.0 proponent, is spearheading efforts to make it happen.

Local programmatic ad spending to reach $37.6B by 2021, BIA/Kelsey says | FierceCable


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Oh, another economic incentive for broadcasters to launch 3.0 is that they will apparently have the option of offering fee-based services. They'll still be required to offer free TV but can also offer pay content. I don't know if this means we could see something like AirBox (a failed pay service that broadcast encrypted Showtime and Starz signals OTA) or if the pay service would be internet-based streams that can be launched from within 3.0 OTA signals (think on-demand network content).


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

NashGuy said:


> Oh, another economic incentive for broadcasters to launch 3.0 is that they will apparently have the option of offering fee-based services. They'll still be required to offer free TV but can also offer pay content. I don't know if this means we could see something like AirBox (a failed pay service that broadcast encrypted Showtime and Starz signals OTA) or if the pay service would be internet-based streams that can be launched from within 3.0 OTA signals (think on-demand network content).


$ and potential profits are good motivators.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Not sure why it would be a nightmare scenario for users (so long as it's permission-based). I also don't think it's that big of a stretch technologically. It's all just IP-based streaming video. I'm assuming the targeted ads would have to be inserted via a broadband connection rather than over-the-air. (One of the benefits of 3.0 is that it's purely IP-based and can interact with the internet.) Although given that ATSC 3.0 transmission streams _may_ be able to shift bandwidth on-the-fly, perhaps it's possible to take the bandwidth used by the program and divide it up over the ad break into narrower streams so that two or three different ads at lower res could be broadcast, with each ad targeted at a different demographic.
> 
> Anyhow, targeted -- or to use the industry lingo "programmatic" -- advertising is on the rise and is definitely part of the plan for ATSC 3.0. Sinclair, the nation's second-largest broadcast station owner and a big 3.0 proponent, is spearheading efforts to make it happen.


Targeted ads are notoriously annoying an repetitive on the internet, and now they're thinking of bringing those to broadcast? This sounds like a horrible idea. It wouldn't be as bad if it's only a couple of ads, but it's still not the same experience for all viewers. I could see this type of thing happening on cable, since it's already going towards an all-IP system, and the MSO controls everything from the local box to the headend. They have done local injection advertising that can be different from one town to the next for years, so getting down to the granularity of the house level isn't far-fetched.



NashGuy said:


> Oh, another economic incentive for broadcasters to launch 3.0 is that they will apparently have the option of offering fee-based services. They'll still be required to offer free TV but can also offer pay content. I don't know if this means we could see something like AirBox (a failed pay service that broadcast encrypted Showtime and Starz signals OTA) or if the pay service would be internet-based streams that can be launched from within 3.0 OTA signals (think on-demand network content).


They're going to try to sell something to cord cutters? That's funny. The whole model of OTA is to get the most possible viewers to get eyeballs on the advertisements. Why would they charge for OTA content? Isn't that what cable and satellite are for? Or streaming packages?

I'm rather pessimistic about 3.0, as I don't see a good transition path, and I don't see wide user adoption. A lot of the 1.0 TVs that are out there today are going to be around for quite a long time, even if in a year or two new sets have to include 3.0.

If my market has 3.0 stations, and they are better quality than the 1.0 stations, then I'll look at DVR options for 3.0, but then again, I'm the guy posting on this forum with two TiVos and an HTPC with 7TB of hard drives in it, so I'm not exactly your average customer, or even your average cord cutter.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> They're going to try to sell something to cord cutters? That's funny. The whole model of OTA is to get the most possible viewers to get eyeballs on the advertisements. Why would they charge for OTA content? Isn't that what cable and satellite are for? Or streaming packages?


Well, who knows what will or won't actually happen in terms of pay TV via OTA. But lots of cord-cutters pay for Netflix and other streaming services, so I wouldn't discount the idea completely. Just because people reject traditional cable/sat pay TV packages doesn't mean they aren't willing to spend money on TV at all. Although I'm not sure why you'd want to pay to watch live streams of, say, ESPN or HBO via OTA if you could just access those channels as standalone internet services which also offer on-demand access (other than simply to reduce internet data usage).

At any rate, I agree that there are definitely challenges ahead for ATSC 3.0 adoption but it looks like there are some pretty powerful players, including all the major broadcast station owners, LG, Samsung and the new FCC chairman, who believe in it and plan to see it succeed. Maybe come 2025 we'll all agree that ATSC 3.0 failed as miserably as 3D TV did. But I wouldn't bet against it just yet.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Well, who knows what will or won't actually happen in terms of pay TV via OTA. But lots of cord-cutters pay for Netflix and other streaming services, so I wouldn't discount the idea completely. Just because people reject traditional cable/sat pay TV packages doesn't mean they aren't willing to spend money on TV at all. Although I'm not sure why you'd want to pay to watch live streams of, say, ESPN or HBO via OTA if you could just access those channels as standalone internet services which also offer on-demand access (other than simply to reduce internet data usage).
> 
> At any rate, I agree that there are definitely challenges ahead for ATSC 3.0 adoption but it looks like there are some pretty powerful players, including all the major broadcast station owners, LG, Samsung and the new FCC chairman, who believe in it and plan to see it succeed. Maybe come 2025 we'll all agree that ATSC 3.0 failed as miserably as 3D TV did. But I wouldn't bet against it just yet.


Not only could they just do it via IP, but there is a fairly limited amount of bandwidth available OTA, so putting out a bunch of specialty pay channels makes no sense, and on demand is pretty much the future anyway. It's not going to fail. Once they start using it, it will slowly gain adoption. The big question is whether they ever start in large numbers, or how many market can or do convert, or if we end up with a channel here and a channel there in 3.0, and a bunch of 1.0 channels too.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

I expect it will be a slow conversion. Maybe by 2021 (at which point the repack should be completed), half of the big four network affiliates across the country will be broadcasting in ATSC 3.0. But even that may be overly optimistic. We'll see. It's worth keeping in mind that the analog-to-digital switchover, originally mandated by Congress in 1996, wasn't completed until 2009. And in that case there was a mandate by law.


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## glugglug (Sep 8, 2010)

ATSC 2.0 still hasn't been widely adopted. Sure, almost all new TVs have supported it for years now, but I'm pretty sure you can count the # of ATSC 2.0 OTA broadcasts on one hand.

I'd bet good money that you won't see more than a handful of ATSC 3.0 stations by 2030.

P.S. ATSC *2.0* includes support for H.264. If they even moved to that there would be more bandwidth than any OTA station would need for 4KHD 3D.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

glugglug said:


> ATSC 2.0 still hasn't been widely adopted. Sure, almost all new TVs have supported it for years now, but I'm pretty sure you can count the # of ATSC 2.0 OTA broadcasts on one hand.
> 
> I'd bet good money that you won't see more than a handful of ATSC 3.0 stations by 2030.


ATSC 2.0 never really happened. It was really just a backwards-compatible revision of 1.0 and I think simply served as a testbed bridge toward the development of ATSC 3.0. There's simply no comparison between the level of industry support for adoption of 2.0 and 3.0.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

As I have said before I am hoping we get ATSC 3.0 because it will allow for UHD, or at least better quality HD, mostly because of the switch to H.265 from MPEG 2 and also because the standard allows more Mbps on each frequency.

However we need to understand that the broadcasters are not supporting ATSC 3.0 because of better quality video. The current ATSC 1.0 standard has allow for the use of H.264 video (as apposed to MPEG 2) since mid *2008 *which would have allowed for higher quality HD video including 1080p broadcasts*. *How many broadcasters took advantage of this? Ya you guessed it somewhere around *ZERO*.

In the end we need to remember if the broadcasters move to ATSC 3.0 without a government mandate then they are doing it for reasons that we likely do not care about and not for the reasons we likely want.

Personally I would be fine with ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, NBC, & PBS staying with ATSC 1.0 using a full frequency for one channel broadcasting in H.264 at 1080p, that would be amazing compared to what we are getting now. No need for new equipment at all. Of course this will never happen.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

The problem with using H.264 over 1.0 is that some older TVs wouldn't work with it, so they'd lose viewers, and lose ad dollars. I guess if they wanted to move to H.264, that's one potential solution for keeping 1.0 compatibility, at least for everything manufactured after H.264 decoders were required, as you can fit (with good quality) 3 HDs on an OTA broadcast with a stat mux.

I agree, the full channel for HD (although I would use 1080i MPEG-2), but they love cramming those subchannels in. Honestly, if they crush the subchannels down hard, and leave 13-14mbps for the main channel at 1080i, it would look amazing. Even 12-13mbps to me looks really good, which is not surprising considering the advances in encoding technology that we've seen over the past 18 years of HDTV. Some of the O&O stations are full bandwidth or one subchannels, it's when you get into smaller affiliate markets that the subchannels start multiplying.


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## delgadobb (Mar 6, 2004)

NashGuy said:


> I expect it will be a slow conversion. Maybe by 2021 (at which point the repack should be completed), half of the big four network affiliates across the country will be broadcasting in ATSC 3.0. But even that may be overly optimistic. We'll see. It's worth keeping in mind that the analog-to-digital switchover, originally mandated by Congress in 1996, wasn't completed until 2009. And in that case there was a mandate by law.


This.

For better or worse, as big a nation as we are any significant changes are going to have challenges. Imagine asking a cargo ship to turn on a dime; ain't happening. Remember the metric conversion? Nowadays everything is in millimeters, millilitres, kilograms & kilometers. It's not??? Wait ... well, at least the Obamacare transition happened smoothly 

As you mentioned, the analog-to-digital switchover was mandated by Congress & STILL took over a decade. Now that there's high-definition TV beyond the wants/needs of most of our nation, do we really expect a populous push for ATSC 3.0? It's gonna have to be mandated or else the broadcasters will have to have motivation in their own self-interests (read: $$$) to make it happen.

As a tech guy end-user, I'd love to see more advanced stuff out there. Realistically, it's gotta appeal to the lowest-common denominator. How is Joe Schlabotnik gonna react to having to buy another TV to replace that fancy-pants new HDTV he bought a few years ago? (Yes, there's always the external tuner - I still have one from the analog-to-digital switchover, sealed in the box. Doubt they get widespread acceptance.)

If ATSC 3.0 is going to see widespread acceptance, there's gonna have to be a LOT of infrastructure planning for a migration path from the existing setup. Barring a mandate along the lines of Obamacare, that's going to take time. If there IS a mandate, it may not be a pretty transition as Obamacare has shown us.

IMHO.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

I'm a liberal democrat, and I favor government mandates for anything important, like healthcare, or environmental laws, but why on earth would the government mandate an ATSC 3.0 transition? What would it achieve in the public interest that ATSC 1.0 doesn't? ATSC 1.0 isn't perfect, but we have a pretty decent and modern digital TV broadcasting system that serves the needs of most people who want to use it.


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## glugglug (Sep 8, 2010)

ATSC 2.0 allows H.264 encoding (1.0 is MPEG-2 only).
Even a transition to 2 would easily allow 5 HD channels per frequency at the current quality, or 2 UHD. 

Higher bandwidth with 3.0 is going to require higher SNR for OTA than you typically have if you are more than 2 blocks from the station. That's the reason digital cable has always had 38Mbps per frequency while OTA is 19Mbps -- better SNR when there is a cable carrying the signal instead of OTA.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Bigg said:


> I'm a liberal democrat, and I favor government mandates for anything important, like healthcare, or environmental laws, but why on earth would the government mandate an ATSC 3.0 transition? What would it achieve in the public interest that ATSC 1.0 doesn't? ATSC 1.0 isn't perfect, but we have a pretty decent and modern digital TV broadcasting system that serves the needs of most people who want to use it.


 Then we run into the problem where is PBS going to get conversion money. ABC,NBC,CBS, will fund their own conversion in the network end and with there owned and operated stations as they see fit. Public broadcasting will be left out in the cold.
Of course this may all be moot if other technologies make OTA irrelevant. The boomers are the only ones really keeping it alive at this point.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

glugglug said:


> ATSC 2.0 allows H.264 encoding (1.0 is MPEG-2 only).
> Even a transition to 2 would easily allow 5 HD channels per frequency at the current quality, or 2 UHD.


2.0 would allow 5 HD's per transmitter if you want them to look like garbage like on Comcast. That's the bitrate Comcast uses- 3.8mbps. Maybe you could make them look acceptable if you stat muxed unlike Comcast's CBR.



tenthplanet said:


> Then we run into the problem where is PBS going to get conversion money. ABC,NBC,CBS, will fund their own conversion in the network end and with there owned and operated stations as they see fit. Public broadcasting will be left out in the cold.
> Of course this may all be moot if other technologies make OTA irrelevant. The boomers are the only ones really keeping it alive at this point.


When it comes down to it, how many affiliates are going to want to switch? And a lot of O&O stations are in big markets with limited extra channels available to do the conversion. It's not boomers, it's younger viewers who are cutting the cord. Most of the boomers still have pay tv.


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## glugglug (Sep 8, 2010)

Bigg said:


> 2.0 would allow 5 HD's per transmitter if you want them to look like garbage like on Comcast. That's the bitrate Comcast uses- 3.8mbps. Maybe you could make them look acceptable if you stat muxed unlike Comcast's CBR.


Netflix switches to HD at 2.7Mbps. For most devices it still never goes above 4Mbps. The first gen Chromecast didn't support anything >= 5Mbps even for 1080p.

The difference in bandwidth needed for H.264 vs MPEG-2 is *HUGE*. Comcast looks like **** because they are trying to cram more channels in while keeping most of them MPEG-2, since older set top boxes don't support H.264.

FiOS has some frequencies that are getting 6 HDs using H.264. The image quality is actually *better *than the ones with only 2 MPEG-2 HDs.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Bigg said:


> The problem with using H.264 over 1.0 is that some older TVs wouldn't work with it, so they'd lose viewers, and lose ad dollars. I guess if they wanted to move to H.264, that's one potential solution for keeping 1.0 compatibility, at least for everything manufactured after H.264 decoders were required, as you can fit (with good quality) 3 HDs on an OTA broadcast with a stat mux.
> 
> I agree, the full channel for HD (although I would use 1080i MPEG-2), but they love cramming those subchannels in. Honestly, if they crush the subchannels down hard, and leave 13-14mbps for the main channel at 1080i, it would look amazing. Even 12-13mbps to me looks really good, which is not surprising considering the advances in encoding technology that we've seen over the past 18 years of HDTV. Some of the O&O stations are full bandwidth or one subchannels, it's when you get into smaller affiliate markets that the subchannels start multiplying.


Yes there are some older TVs that can not decode H.264, but at this point they are pretty old TVs and when you compare the installed user base of TVs/DVRs that can handle ATSC 1.0 H.264 broadcasts to those that can handle ATSC 3.0/H.265 (which is currently zero) a large number of consumers would benefit from H.264 broadcasts without any cost where as basically no one would benefit from H.265 broadcasts without buying something new.

If the broadcasters primary concern is an existing user base being available then ATSC 3.0 is at least a decade away and that assumes that TVs start adding ATSC 3.0 tuners right away.

What all this means to me is that for ATSC 3.0 to have any kind of role out now several things have to be true. First the broadcasters must expect to be able to make significantly more money than staying with ATSC 1.0. And Second the broadcasters expect they will be offering something so desirable with ATSC 3.0 that consumers will embrace it and buy new devices that can receive ATSC 3.0 in large numbers.

I guess we will see.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

While there may be a lot of TVs now in use that could decode h.264 OTA signals, I don't think it would make a lot of sense for broadcasters to switch to h.264 from the current MPEG-2 on their existing ATSC 1.0 frequencies. (First of all, would that even be allowed by the FCC?) The reason is that there are still a good number of TVs and converter boxes in use that can't decode h.264, so those people would suddenly lose OTA TV. To avoid that, broadcasters would have to have a long transition period (much like what's going to happen with the switchover to ATSC 3.0/h.265) in which they simulcast in MPEG-2 on one frequency and h.264 on another. If they're going to have that kind of dual-broadcast transition anyway, they may as well target the most modern codec already in use for their new signal, which is h.265. Plus, there are way more benefits to ATSC 3.0 than simply more efficient encoding. I don't think the primary concern of broadcasters (and certainly the FCC) is to roll out a new system that will quickly have a large user base. I think the primary concern is to roll out a new system in a way that won't immediately cut off a large number of viewers.

Whether the FCC mandates it or not, I expect a lot of TVs in the next couple of years will begin shipping with both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 tuners. (LG, the world's #2 TV brand, will begin selling TVs with 3.0 tuners in South Korea this year. Not sure about #1 Samsung, which is also Korean-based.) Broadcasters are hoping that future cell phone processor chips will have ATSC 3.0 capabilities baked in. We may also see whole-home TV systems (internet routers with ATSC 3.0 tuners built-in that can serve all wifi-connected devices in the house) on display at CES next year. Simple HDMI dongles with ATSC 3.0 tuners for connecting to single TVs may be subsidized by local broadcaster groups. We'll see. Assuming that ATSC 3.0 gets off the ground with a fair number of stations and viewers, I do expect that no later than the early 2020s, we'll see the FCC mandate a future cut-off date for ATSC 1.0 transmissions since simulcasting the same content on two different frequencies is obviously not an efficient use of the public airwaves. A mandated sunset would encourage further migration of viewers over to 3.0. The transition from analog NTSC to digital ATSC 1.0 took 13 years from the 1996 act of Congress to the 2009 analog cut-off. So even if ATSC 3.0 succeeds, it seems reasonable to expect that ATSC 1.0 "nightlight" signals wouldn't completely cease until 2030. So for those folks complaining about how we just had the hassle of a forced switchover in 2009, we may not be looking at a similar scenario until 2030 (or later). Two decades is a pretty long time when it comes to consumer technology.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

glugglug said:


> Netflix switches to HD at 2.7Mbps. For most devices it still never goes above 4Mbps. The first gen Chromecast didn't support anything >= 5Mbps even for 1080p.


You can't compare online and offline encoding. They are two different animals. Netflix does good looking HD at 2.7mbps, while Comcast's 720p looks like garbage at 3.8mbps.



> The difference in bandwidth needed for H.264 vs MPEG-2 is *HUGE*. Comcast looks like **** because they are trying to cram more channels in while keeping most of them MPEG-2, since older set top boxes don't support H.264.


WRONG. In some converted markets, everything except locals is H.264. Their H.264 is CBR and looks like garbage. You might be able to stat mux that many channels in with really powerful encoders/muxers, but they don't want to do that, as they would have to compress at a regional or system level, versus doing it nationally like they do now.



> FiOS has some frequencies that are getting 6 HDs using H.264. The image quality is actually *better *than the ones with only 2 MPEG-2 HDs.


Because they are on a VHO-based system, they are *probably* stat muxing. Even if they aren't, that's still about 6mbps per channel, not <4mbps.



NashGuy said:


> While there may be a lot of TVs now in use that could decode h.264 OTA signals, I don't think it would make a lot of sense for broadcasters to switch to h.264 from the current MPEG-2 on their existing ATSC 1.0 frequencies. (First of all, would that even be allowed by the FCC?) The reason is that there are still a good number of TVs and converter boxes in use that can't decode h.264, so those people would suddenly lose OTA TV.


They could put an MPEG-2 SD subchannel up that's a mirror of the main H.264 HD channel, but then you're only saving about 3mbps, or one more MPEG-2 subchannel. I suppose they could put other subchannels in on H.264 without MPEG-2 mirrors, but again, I'm not really sure what the gain is there.



> Assuming that ATSC 3.0 gets off the ground with a fair number of stations and viewers, I do expect that no later than the early 2020s, we'll see the FCC mandate a future cut-off date for ATSC 1.0 transmissions since simulcasting the same content on two different frequencies is obviously not an efficient use of the public airwaves.


Tell that to our local PBS. They run four mirrors of the same feed, and the one that's closest to me (WEDN Norwich) has very little reach, so I end up picking up their main transmitter up in Hartford (WEDH Avon) anyway. I get the one they have in the NYC market, WEDW, as that forces them onto satellite for the NYC DMA, which is 22M POPs and covers a chunk of CT, but beyond that, why they are running redundant transmissions, I'm not really sure. Meanwhile, our CBS and the NYC CBS broadcast on the same frequency, so there is a "dead zone" where the signals cancel each other out, and they have to hit a repeater of WCBS on Long Island. Bizarre.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Bigg said:


> 2.0 would allow 5 HD's per transmitter if you want them to look like garbage like on Comcast. That's the bitrate Comcast uses- 3.8mbps. Maybe you could make them look acceptable if you stat muxed unlike Comcast's CBR.
> 
> When it comes down to it, how many affiliates are going to want to switch? And a lot of O&O stations are in big markets with limited extra channels available to do the conversion. It's not boomers, it's younger viewers who are cutting the cord. Most of the boomers still have pay tv.


Older viewers are the ones propping up all of those sub-channels and buy OTA dvrs. Younger viewers are not recording OTA. There are people with OTA that don't do that much live viewing or record anything. Younger cord cutters are streamers.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> Older viewers are the ones propping up all of those sub-channels and buy OTA dvrs. Younger viewers are not recording OTA. There are people with OTA that don't do that much live viewing or record anything. Younger cord cutters are streamers.


I'd be interested to see the actual demographic breakdowns on this stuff. I would suspect that younger, tech-savvy people are buying OTA DVRs, but then again, there just aren't that many of them in the first place. I do see a lot of people who are streaming-only, and if they have OTA, it's just plugged into the TV for occasional use.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

tenthplanet said:


> Older viewers are the ones propping up all of those sub-channels and buy OTA dvrs. Younger viewers are not recording OTA. There are people with OTA that don't do that much live viewing or record anything. Younger cord cutters are streamers.


One of the features of atsc 3.0 is to be able to stream OTA on a mobile device without being charged for data. I think that alone would increase viewership significantly.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Bigg said:


> I'd be interested to see the actual demographic breakdowns on this stuff. I would suspect that younger, tech-savvy people are buying OTA DVRs, but then again, there just aren't that many of them in the first place. I do see a lot of people who are streaming-only, and if they have OTA, it's just plugged into the TV for occasional use.


I'd be interested in the demographics as well. That being said, I've never met a "younger" person that moved to OTA. Every single one that I've talked to, observed, etc - if anything - have moved to purely streaming and don't do anything with "regular" broadcast (OTA, Cable, Fios or DBS).


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

AT times, I think that OTA can be totally overlooked, esp. by those who never really grew up with it around.


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## mdcubsfan (Jul 28, 2006)

So I realized that I'm not watching as much TV anymore either, and was wondering what my options are. I've been a loyal Tivo customer with lifetime subs on Tivos starting from the HD on up through my current Roamio with 4 Tivo Minis.

I recently stopped my comcast cable internet to migrate to fiber with ATT, and looked at my options with TV. I love my Tivo more than any one of my other entertainment gadgets and that's why I've stuck with comcast cable TV all these years. 

What does the Roamio/Mini work with besides Comcast? I know in our area there is ATT/direct, but tey're not compatible with Tivo. I'm sorta thinking the only way to keep the Tivo is to stay with our comcast.....


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

I don't get the OTA thing as most of the buzz worthy shows are not available on broadcast. Most kids today do not discuss broadcast shows, its all about OTT and "cable" networks shows.
Even though its ratings are down now the simple fact that the Walking Dead on a cable channel pretty much destroyed all the other shows except for football (and even beat them at times) is a good indication that innovation has been in the cable and OTT arena for some time.

The demo numbers on broadcast have been circling the drain for years now.
Upfronts 2016: Numbers Show Millennials Abandoning Broadcast Networks | Broadcasting & Cable


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

mdcubsfan said:


> What does the Roamio/Mini work with besides Comcast? I know in our area there is ATT/direct, but tey're not compatible with Tivo. I'm sorta thinking the only way to keep the Tivo is to stay with our comcast.....


If it's a Roamio Basic you can do OTA. AT&T/DirecTV is a good bundle, but like you say, no TiVo (except the pathetic THR22 which barely counts as a TiVo).



zalusky said:


> I don't get the OTA thing as most of the buzz worthy shows are not available on broadcast. Most kids today do not discuss broadcast shows, its all about OTT and "cable" networks shows.


There are a few factors here. Some people just don't watch that much TV, and are willing to give up a few shows for the sake of not having a cable bill. Secondly, if you look at the ratings, CBS and NBC are still the two biggest channels by far, and FOX and ABC are also huge. PBS has some amazing shows on. A lot of people also watch the local news, again available OTA. Add in football, and the occasional basketball and baseball. I've found that most of what I watch (mostly PBS) is available OTA.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Bigg said:


> If it's a Roamio Basic you can do OTA. AT&T/DirecTV is a good bundle, but like you say, no TiVo (except the pathetic THR22 which barely counts as a TiVo).
> 
> There are a few factors here. Some people just don't watch that much TV, and are willing to give up a few shows for the sake of not having a cable bill. Secondly, if you look at the ratings, CBS and NBC are still the two biggest channels by far, and FOX and ABC are also huge. PBS has some amazing shows on. A lot of people also watch the local news, again available OTA. Add in football, and the occasional basketball and baseball. I've found that most of what I watch (mostly PBS) is available OTA.


I am suggesting that the demo is leaving the OTA market.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

zalusky said:


> I don't get the OTA thing as most of the buzz worthy shows are not available on broadcast. Most kids today do not discuss broadcast shows, its all about OTT and "cable" networks shows.
> Even though its ratings are down now the simple fact that the Walking Dead on a cable channel pretty much destroyed all the other shows except for football (and even beat them at times) is a good indication that innovation has been in the cable and OTT arena for some time.
> 
> The demo numbers on broadcast have been circling the drain for years now.
> Upfronts 2016: Numbers Show Millennials Abandoning Broadcast Networks | Broadcasting & Cable


I don't disagree with you, albeit I still find many "worthy" shows on OTA. Me, I'm on temporally-delayed cable: cable via DVD from my local library, when they come out.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

zalusky said:


> I am suggesting that the demo is leaving the OTA market.


Yes, some people are leaving the TV market entirely in favor of streaming. I think there is a big potential market for OTA, but someone has to push it, whether it is Best Buy or broadcasters themselves. They're in a weird position since they would rather you be in a skinny bundle where they get retrans fees, but if you're going to not have pay tv, they're better off with you receiving their ads via OTA.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Yes, some people are leaving the TV market entirely in favor of streaming. I think there is a big potential market for OTA, but someone has to push it, whether it is Best Buy or broadcasters themselves. They're in a weird position since they would rather you be in a skinny bundle where they get retrans fees, but if you're going to not have pay tv, they're better off with you receiving their ads via OTA.


Millennials are generally not interested in the programming on OTA imho which is shown by them leaving that market. Look at the ads they are going after older folks because they know kids are not watching.

The buzz is around things like Stranger Things etc. Broadcast seems to try to do bad clones after the fact.
Now this isn't a 100% rule but I think it's the norm.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Of the people I know who are my age (late 20's) and live on their own, a few have cable only for sports, a couple have OTA for occasional use or sports, and the rest are cord cutters/nevers. My exact area is very unfriendly to OTA, since we are far away from the broadcast towers, plus local news rarely covers us.

I'd agree that Netflix and HBO have a lot more buzz around their shows. I think that's why broadcast is trying to get more live events like sports. Sports are (sort of) holding up pay TV as we know it.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Personally I would guess that most young people have better things to do than spending their time watching scripted TV regardless if it is from a cable only channel or one of the major OTA networks. 

I didn't even own a TV until my late 20s and didn't have any kind of pay TV until my late 30s (I'll be 60 this year). Once a person gets into a career type job and has a family things change, but I am not sure if this up coming generation is every going to spend allot of time watching TV. With modern gaming, social media, and the Internet in general they have lots of things to spend time on along with all the time that raising a family and building a career has always taken. 

Add to that the unbelievable amount of content available now compared to when I was growing up and all the ways it can be accessed, it becomes pretty easy to believe that how people in general (not just the younger people) obtain and consume video is going to change.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> I didn't even own a TV until my late 20s and didn't have any kind of pay TV until my late 30s (I'll be 60 this year).


Well, you, sir, obviously are not a true, red-blooded A-mer-ee-can.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

*Give Me My NCIS (ala Dire Straits)*


zalusky said:


> I don't get the OTA thing as most of the buzz worthy shows are not available on broadcast. *Most kids today do not discuss broadcast shows, its all about OTT and "cable" networks shows.*
> Even though its ratings are down now the simple fact that the Walking Dead on a cable channel pretty much destroyed all the other shows except for football (and even beat them at times) is a good indication that innovation has been in the cable and OTT arena for some time.
> 
> The demo numbers on broadcast have been circling the drain for years now.
> Upfronts 2016: Numbers Show Millennials Abandoning Broadcast Networks | Broadcasting & Cable


It is my observation, as an "_Older Techie / Gentleman *FINALLY* on Medicare _" (that's enough of a hint  ), that Millennials are *BORN* with a SmartPhone attached to one hand. No matter what the conversation:
Cell Phone
MP3 Player
Camera
GPS
Web Browser
Viewing TV shows and / or movies
"_Fill-in-the-Blank_ " 
...a Millennial will "_*Argue-to-the-Death*_ " that THEIR SmartPhone does it better and "_Why-the-Hell / Are-You-Stupid_? " would you even consider buying / owning a separate (see list above).

When I was "_In Bed_ / _moping_ " the past ~3½ years (need Open-Heart surgery and self-insurance wouldn't cover the specialist out-of-state - Medicare will :thumbsup, I watched ~18+ hours of FiOS-provided material daily. Before I purchased my current TiVo Basic & OTA units, each Refurbed w/ Lifetime, I used several ReplayTV 5XXXs w/ Lifetime. Now that I've finally snapped out of my depression, I've had to stop watching Me-TV (re: the age-related commercials  ). In fact, I've had to change *MANY* Season Passes from KUID until "Space..." because I can no longer keep up.  The HDD in my laptop running kmttg died, so I'm using the built-in TiVo Web Server to download PS-format MPEGs to a Toshiba Canvio 3TB USB3 External HDD (1 of 3) until I get my new HP Z230 Workstation and "_Hardware-still-to-be-determined_ " RAID server up-and-running (@aaronwt - I never would have believed that I would have reached this stage after reading your Sig all these years!  ).

I've read about ATSC 3.x, read @wizwor's blog, *STILL* bought the OTA and I now have, in addition to 2 out of 4 WD30EFRX 3TB Red HDDs for the RAID Server, a WD40EFRX 4TB Red HDD waiting for the summer doldrums to get installed in the Basic.

From my *NEW* Point-of-View, life is good... 

P.S. As a former Programmer/Analyst and an OCD-Old Fart, I enjoy using the forum formatting options.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

tenthplanet said:


> *Older viewers are the ones propping up all of those sub-channels and buy OTA dvrs.* Younger viewers are not recording OTA. There are people with OTA that don't do that much live viewing or record anything. Younger cord cutters are streamers.


"Newest Post" brought me to @zalusky's post - "Submit" brought me to the top of the page and your February post, thus:
*+1*


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

Bigg said:


> If it's a Roamio Basic you can do OTA. AT&T/DirecTV is a good bundle, but like you say, no TiVo (except the pathetic THR22 which barely counts as a TiVo).
> 
> There are a few factors here. Some people just don't watch that much TV, and are willing to give up a few shows for the sake of not having a cable bill. Secondly, if you look at the ratings, *CBS and NBC are still the two biggest channels by far*, and FOX and ABC are also huge. PBS has some amazing shows on. A lot of people also watch the local news, again available OTA. Add in football, and the occasional basketball and baseball. I've found that most of what I watch (mostly PBS) is available OTA.


Just going my memory here, but, IMO, CBS shot themselves in the foot with this "All Acce$$" crap.

When I'm using the built-in TiVo Web Server to download programs to my Toshiba 3TB USB3 External HDD, I'm also logged into TiVo.Com to get "sNeN" data. I'm not sure right now if it was CBS, but *SOME* network wouldn't allow me to view "My Episodes" via a web browser on TiVo.Com, saying that (something to the effect of) "_These episodes are not available for online viewing_ " -BS! I didn't want to VIEW them; I just wanted the "sNeN" info.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

atmuscarella said:


> Personally I would guess that most young people have better things to do than spending their time watching scripted TV regardless if it is from a cable only channel or one of the major OTA networks.
> 
> *I didn't even own a TV until my late 20s and didn't have any kind of pay TV until my late 30s (I'll be 60 this year).* Once a person gets into a career type job and has a family things change, but I am not sure if this up coming generation is every going to spend allot of time watching TV. With modern gaming, social media, and the Internet in general they have lots of things to spend time on along with all the time that raising a family and building a career has always taken.
> 
> Add to that the unbelievable amount of content available now compared to when I was growing up and all the ways it can be accessed, it becomes pretty easy to believe that how people in general (not just the younger people) obtain and consume video is going to change.





Mikeguy said:


> *Well, you, sir, obviously are not a true, red-blooded A-mer-ee-can. *


@atmuscarella,

I'm utterly *SHOCKED* by this revelation!  

@Mikeguy,

IIRC, my parents allowed me to pick out a 19" B&W portable TV (Olympic?) for my bedroom when I was ~14yo. I remember 'Scotch-taping' a tri-color (Red / Green / Blue?) transparency over the B&W screen and watching the *ORIGINAL* episodes of Star Trek "In Color". :laughing: (Stupid forum doesn't have :lmao: )


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Mikeguy said:


> Well, you, sir, obviously are not a true, red-blooded A-mer-ee-can.




Isn't that part of life's lesson - that every person experiences are different and there is no such thing as "normal" or "average"? Statistically speaking I know that the current generation of young people are having a harder time than my generation supposedly did. But virtually no one experiences the "average" or what is considered "normal" at the moment.

My youth went as follows, graduated from high school, messed up a college attempt, lived with parents while working low paying hard labor jobs for several years. Went back to college, got degree from Cornell with lots of debt, economy was bad (early 1980s), finally started my career in my late 20s with car payment, student loan payment, and no money, within a year I had to move back in with my parents and wasn't able to move out unit I was 31.

Sound familiar? When I try and tell young people that everyone didn't have it great in the past either, they think I don't understand. Oh well. After I hit my 30s things went my way and now I am fairly well off so no complaints.

My whole point of this is that the only constant in life is that things change. There is no way of knowing what peoples video viewing habits will be as they get older, too many variables. What ever happens the video production and delivery industries will survive and adapt to future consumer demands.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> Personally I would guess that most young people have better things to do than spending their time watching scripted TV regardless if it is from a cable only channel or one of the major OTA networks.


A lot of younger people watch scripted TV shows, it just depends on where they come from. The whole market is fracturing, but Americans are not going to stop watching a ton of TV. "TV" might just be streaming though. I think OTA has a good position both through live events, and by being one of the few channels you get if you cut the cord, although they will have to adapt to changing markets too.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

One thing that I think has killed OTA is that New TVs don't include an antenna. It used to be that most every TV had an antenna included. I think there would be a significant percentage of viewers that would set up the TV initially with an included antenna and decide that was good enough and forgo pay-TV.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

shwru980r said:


> One thing that I think has killed OTA is that New TVs don't include an antenna. It used to be that most every TV had an antenna included. I think there would be a significant percentage of viewers that would set up the TV initially with an included antenna and decide that was good enough and forgo pay-TV.


Was not the days of *rabbit ears* ? I don't use OTA but I think you would need more than rabbit ears to see any good amount of OTA today.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

lessd said:


> Was not the days of *rabbit ears* ? I don't use OTA but I think you would more that rabbit ears to see any good amount of OTA today.


As an OTA guy in a large urban area, I've purchased and returned many tabletop antennas in the quest for improved reception, and I was surprised to see that many so-called advances in tabletop antenna design can be anything but, and that the old rabbit ears or other inexpensive antennas can do close to or as well as newer, more expensive designs. So much depends, in the words of the old adage, on location, location, location.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

lessd said:


> Was not the days of *rabbit ears* ? I don't use OTA but I think you would need more than rabbit ears to see any good amount of OTA today.


Very puzzling response because you are not exactly ignorant about this stuff. You know that rabbit ears today would see about the same amount of OTA as ever. A little more in that clean but relatively weak signals that would once have been seen with analog snow would in many cases look perfect as digital today. A little less in that there's more UHF these days, not the strength of the rabbit ears.

The point was quite valid. By no longer including the old rabbit ears (and by that I mean the state of the art when abandoned, including reasonable UHF sensitivity in their design), TV makers took a huge step in keeping viewers from even attempting to get local high definition OTA reception. Not saying their motivation was to help kill OTA, but that effect was there.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

shwru980r said:


> *One thing that I think has killed OTA is that New TVs don't include an antenna. It used to be that most every TV had an antenna included.* I think there would be a significant percentage of viewers that would set up the TV initially with an included antenna and decide that was good enough and forgo pay-TV.


"_Back in the old days..._", they sold *Console* (i.e. wood cabinet) and *Portable* (metal, then plastic cabinet) televisions. Only portable tvs came with a built in telescopic antenna for VHF and a loop for UHF.

For consoles, you had to spend the bucks and get a "Rembrant" or other big name rabbit-ear antenna. I grew up in NYC, a "_stone's throw_"  from the Empire State Building antenna tower. It was highly unusual for anyone to have anything but an indoor antenna, either in the neighbor or when visiting relatives.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

lessd said:


> Was not the days of *rabbit ears* ? I don't use OTA but I think you would need more than rabbit ears *to see any good amount of OTA today*.


Depends on how far you are from the transmitter antenna. :bulb: :thinking:

Basic transmitter / receiver laws of how things work didn't change



Mikeguy said:


> As an OTA guy in a large urban area, I've purchased and returned many tabletop antennas in the quest for improved reception, and *I was surprised to see that many so-called advances in tabletop antenna design can be anything but*, and that the old rabbit ears or other inexpensive antennas can do close to or as well as newer, more expensive designs. So much depends, in the words of the old adage, on location, location, location.


As happens everywhere someone can make a Fast Buck, _NEW HD-Ready_' antennas sprouted up to accompany HDTV. Lo-and-behold, that 40+ year old Winegard VHF/UHF antenna someone left behind on the chimney will work just as fine to day for HDTV as it originally did for analog.

GOOGLE: "Coat Hanger Antenna"

There's a very active thread on AVSForum that I used to follow - element lengths, angles, gain charts, etc... Then, my health soured, I got lazy and just ordered an outdoor VHF/UHF antenna w/ preamp from SolidSignal that I'm going to eventually install in my attic. I *HAD* installed a deep-fringe antenna w/ rotor & preamp attached to a 30 foot mast on the side of my garage (ranch house) when we first bought the house. Assembled on the ground and then pulled into place with a rope, pivoting on a mount anchored in a 1 sq ft concrete base I poured. When I had the house sided, since we've been on cable for years, the dear wife preferred that it be removed.

Remember that a preamp can only AMPLIFY the signal the antenna can already receive - it CANNOT strengthen a weak signal. Preamps compensate for the losses from splitters, long cable runs, etc...



Wil said:


> *Very puzzling response because you are not exactly ignorant about this stuff. You know that rabbit ears today would see about the same amount of OTA as ever.* A little more in that clean but relatively weak signals that would once have been seen with analog snow would in many cases look perfect as digital today. A little less in that there's more UHF these days, not the strength of the rabbit ears.
> 
> The point was quite valid. By no longer including the old rabbit ears (and by that I mean the state of the art when abandoned, including reasonable UHF sensitivity in their design), TV makers took a huge step in keeping viewers from even attempting to get local high definition OTA reception. Not saying their motivation was to help kill OTA, but that effect was there.


*+1*


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

ClearToLand said:


> Remember that a preamp can only AMPLIFY the signal the antenna can already receive - it CANNOT strengthen a weak signal. Preamps compensate for the losses from splitters, long cable runs, etc...


This should be stamped on the back of the hand of anybody who works in the business or who is presumptuous enough to offer amateur advice. So true.

But you know, hell of a thing, with digital it's _not_ always true! Damned if when troubleshooting for friends every once in awhile I've found amps and preamps installed at the end, just before the set, and found they sometimes _do_ help. First time, I made a fool out of myself, said "first thing we'll do is get this thing out of the way, it can only do harm (overload)" and a bunch of channels disappeared! Since then in some specific situations I've tried cutting in a local amp and it's helped; usually doesn't but occasionally does.

This is not my business strength of theory, but I'm guessing that a clean, no multipath digital OTA signal can be just below a threshold and not be seen by a specific tuner _at all_ but when you amp it up (adding all kinds of noise and crap of course) it crosses that threshold while still remaining clean enough to avoid artifacts or other problems. I don't know. Goes against everything I was taught and believe, but I do now try it sometimes just in case.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Old rabbit ears mostly won't work since most digital is on UHF- but yes, a good UHF antenna from decades ago will work just fine. Digital reception is harder than analog in my experience.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Digital reception is harder than analog in my experience.


In your area it's difficult to make long term comparisons because of transmitter bingo over the years (I think in some Secret Planning back room there's a diagram of the Farmington tower hung up on the wall and drunks throw darts at it).


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Bigg said:


> Old rabbit ears mostly won't work since most digital is on UHF- but yes, a good UHF antenna from decades ago will work just fine. Digital reception is harder than analog in my experience.


Were not the old UHF indoor antenna just a circle with curved ends that would let you screw them down with the TV's UHF input? Yes, I'm old and when I lived in Philly we had rabbit ears for a while.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

JoeKustra said:


> Were not the old UHF indoor antenna just a circle with curved ends that would let you screw them down with the TV's UHF input? Yes, I'm old and when I lived in Philly we had rabbit ears for a while.


Yep, or sometimes the loop could be clipped onto the rabbit ears--the configuration of my last rabbit ears (still around).


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

ClearToLand said:


> Remember that a preamp can only AMPLIFY the signal the antenna can already receive - it CANNOT strengthen a weak signal. Preamps compensate for the losses from splitters, long cable runs, etc...


This foolish statement is SOOOOO WRONG that no amount of disagreement, reasoning, or exclamation points could ever do enough justice to the effort to erase this type of ignorance from these forums. The statement starts correctly by saying you can only amplify a signal you can receive, but then it just goes off the deep end!

*Just by definition, ANY amplifier makes a signal stronger. Period.* That is not to say that all amplifiers are acceptable, nor does it say that there is always a usable signal for even a good amplifier to improve, but to say that an amplifier "CANNOT strengthen a weak signal" is absolutely one of the most ignorant things I have ever read.

Here is a FACT about OTA reception at my house: An amplifier not only works, but is an absolute requirement for reception of ANY channels.

I live in a remote rural mountain area with NO direct line of sight to any TV transmitter. There are 5 low-power translators about 30-40 miles away, with two tall ridges between my house and the transmitters. Using an outside UHF antenna, NO signals are strong enough to produce any video reception on ANY TiVo or TV I have tried. The strongest signals show up on my Bolt with about 16% signal strength, and the weakest are not registered at all. But by inserting a single-port 20dB amplifier in the incoming coax, ALL 16 available channels are now watchable without breakup or pixelation. Now the strongest signals show 72% on the Bolt, and the weakest (from a tiny little 0.1 KW translator) have clear reception with a signal level of 38% on the Bolt.

I simply wish that people who have absolutely no understanding of the facts would just STOP telling everyone that no amplifier can help them.

The various issues involved with good amps vs. junk, where and how to use them, etc., are sometimes complicated, and often beyond the comprehension of the typical couch potato. No point in trying to cover them here, other than to say that when you hear someone say no amp can work, you have just been informed that nothing else they could say on this subject can be trusted.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Wil said:


> Very puzzling response because you are not exactly ignorant about this stuff. You know that rabbit ears today would see about the same amount of OTA as ever. A little more in that clean but relatively weak signals that would once have been seen with analog snow would in many cases look perfect as digital today. A little less in that there's more UHF these days, not the strength of the rabbit ears.
> 
> The point was quite valid. By no longer including the old rabbit ears (and by that I mean the state of the art when abandoned, including reasonable UHF sensitivity in their design), TV makers took a huge step in keeping viewers from even attempting to get local high definition OTA reception. Not saying their motivation was to help kill OTA, but that effect was there.


I am somewhat ignorant about OTA as I have not played with it for over 35 years, and I thought most of the new OTA-digital were in the UHF band, again I don't follow OTA so I did not know how the old rabbit ears would work, when I was a kid we used an antenna rotor so we could get all the OTA stations, UHF and VHF.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

lessd said:


> I am somewhat ignorant about OTA as I have not played with it for over 35 years, and I thought most of the new OTA-digital were in the UHF band, again I don't follow OTA so I did not know how the old rabbit ears would work, when I was a kid we used an antenna rotor so we could get all the OTA stations, UHF and VHF.


Back in the day I also had a nice outdoor VHF antenna with a rotor. But OTA is impossible where I live now. My NBC channel is still VHF with a UHF virtual channel.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Wil said:


> In your area it's difficult to make long term comparisons because of transmitter bingo over the years (I think in some Secret Planning back room there's a diagram of the Farmington tower hung up on the wall and drunks throw darts at it).


It does depend on the market. But even WTNH-DT out of New Haven is much harder to get post-transition. I'm not sure where other channels are on the towers on Avon and Rattlesnake, and WFSB-DT has been problematic basically since day, one, plus it has the problem on the western side of the state of sharing RF 33 with WCBS-DT (who on earth figured that one out?!?). Some others are pretty good, but still not as easy as in the analog days.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Generally speaking, I think digital signals broadcast under the current ATSC 1.0 standard are more difficult to satisfactorily receive than were the old analog NTSC broadcast signals. But from what I've read, it would appear that digital signals using the next-gen ATSC 3.0 standard will be more robust and easier to receive, thanks to a different modulation method in the signals' physical layer (OFDM in 3.0 vs. 8VSB in 1.0). Also, ATSC 3.0 allows for SFNs (single-frequency networks), wherein multiple towers in a given area broadcast on the same frequency, helping to fill in weak spots on the map that aren't reached very well using ATSC 1.0's lone-tower model. That kind of multi-tower network wouldn't work with ATSC 1.0 because 8VSB is very susceptible to multi-path interference but OFDM is not.

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/74105/ofdm-seen-key-to-blanket-ota-coverage


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

The improved coverage is definitely a promising prospect. However, for SFNs... you seriously think anyone is going to build an SFN? Why would they bother to PAY to build a wider broadcast network, versus getting PAID by Comcast or Charter or whomever to distribute to those areas that have weak OTA reception? Broadcast is inherently in a strange market position, I hope they at least maintain the same effective coverage levels from their main transmitters, but I wouldn't count on anything more.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> The improved coverage is definitely a promising prospect. However, for SFNs... you seriously think anyone is going to build an SFN? Why would they bother to PAY to build a wider broadcast network, versus getting PAID by Comcast or Charter or whomever to distribute to those areas that have weak OTA reception? Broadcast is inherently in a strange market position, I hope they at least maintain the same effective coverage levels from their main transmitters, but I wouldn't count on anything more.


I expect we'll see some instances of high-power stations partnering up with one or more existing low-power stations to create SFNs. There's an experimental trial of that happening right now out in Oregon. And we may also see competing high-power stations in a given market build out new shared towers to create SFNs. That said, I don't expect to see a lot of SFN formation, at least in the next few years. We'll see.

And by your logic, why aren't all stations putting out the weakest/hardest-to-receive signal possible in order to nudge more people over to pay TV? Retransmission fees are important to local broadcasters but I think the industry knows that the trend is away from pay TV packages. If there's going to be disruption to their current economic model, broadcasters may as well play into it and embrace a new system (ATSC 3.0) that helps them better exploit a direct relationship to their viewers through more targeted ads (charged at higher rates), mobile device viewing, and two-way interaction thanks to integration with the internet.


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## foghorn2 (May 4, 2004)

Yeah, lets see pictures of huge UHD TV sets with antenna and bow-ties sticking out the top!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I expect we'll see some instances of high-power stations partnering up with one or more existing low-power stations to create SFNs. There's an experimental trial of that happening right now out in Oregon. And we may also see competing high-power stations in a given market build out new shared towers to create SFNs. That said, I don't expect to see a lot of SFN formation, at least in the next few years. We'll see.
> 
> And by your logic, why aren't all stations putting out the weakest/hardest-to-receive signal possible in order to nudge more people over to pay TV? Retransmission fees are important to local broadcasters but I think the industry knows that the trend is away from pay TV packages. If there's going to be disruption to their current economic model, broadcasters may as well play into it and embrace a new system (ATSC 3.0) that helps them better exploit a direct relationship to their viewers through more targeted ads (charged at higher rates), mobile device viewing, and two-way interaction thanks to integration with the internet.


I think we're going to have to see a huge cord-cutting shift towards OTA or streaming before we see stations investing in stuff like SFNs. As it is, I don't see much coverage benefits from them in most markets, unless you have particularly challenging terrain, and for areas that are marginal, I'd expect them to want people on cable paying retrans fees. Existing ATSC-8VSB, and presumably ATSC 3.0 can go about 70 miles reliably.

A few stations are lousy, although I'm not sure if it's by design or by incompetence. I'm actually surprised more stations aren't running at the minimum for full power just to get themselves into the must-carry/retransmission consent options. Hopefully the broadcast industry realizes at some point that they have very valuable "real estate" so to speak and they need to aggregate more eyeballs back on the networks in the age of cord cutting, and really promote OTA viewership.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I think we're going to have to see a huge cord-cutting shift towards OTA or streaming before we see stations investing in stuff like SFNs.


Yeah, maybe. As I say, I wouldn't expect SFNs to be a major development, at least in the early years of the ATSC 3.0 rollout, but I imagine we'll see them used a bit here and there. If ATSC 3.0 adoption eventually takes off among mobile devices (which I'm a bit skeptical of), then SFNs may become more common, as I think one of their main advantages is in providing a more robust "mesh" of signals in a given area that increases the chances of good reception on mobile devices with tiny internal antennas.

At any rate, just having the option of deploying SFNs (which are already widely used in some European countries on DVB-T, which, like ATSC 3.0, is OFDM-based) is a good thing for broadcasters. It's one of many improvements in ATSC 3.0 over 1.0 that will hopefully give free OTA broadcasting a fighting chance in the 2020s.


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

ClearToLand said:


> Depends on how far you are from the transmitter antenna. :bulb: :thinking:
> 
> Basic transmitter / receiver laws of how things work didn't change
> 
> ...






Wil said:


> *This should be stamped on the back of the hand of anybody who works in the business or who is presumptuous enough to offer amateur advice. So true.*
> 
> *But you know, hell of a thing, with digital it's not always true! Damned if when troubleshooting for friends every once in awhile I've found amps and preamps installed at the end, just before the set, and found they sometimes do help. First time, I made a fool out of myself, said "first thing we'll do is get this thing out of the way, it can only do harm (overload)" and a bunch of channels disappeared! Since then in some specific situations I've tried cutting in a local amp and it's helped; usually doesn't but occasionally does.*
> 
> This is not my business strength of theory, but I'm guessing that a clean, no multipath digital OTA signal can be just below a threshold and not be seen by a specific tuner _at all_ but when you amp it up (adding all kinds of noise and crap of course) it crosses that threshold while still remaining clean enough to avoid artifacts or other problems. I don't know. Goes against everything I was taught and believe, but I do now try it sometimes just in case.






V7Goose said:


> *This foolish statement is SOOOOO WRONG that no amount of disagreement, reasoning, or exclamation points could ever do enough justice to the effort to erase this type of ignorance from these forums. The statement starts correctly by saying you can only amplify a signal you can receive, but then it just goes off the deep end!*
> 
> *Just by definition, ANY amplifier makes a signal stronger. Period.* That is not to say that all amplifiers are acceptable, nor does it say that there is always a usable signal for even a good amplifier to improve, but to say that an amplifier "CANNOT strengthen a weak signal" is absolutely one of the most ignorant things I have ever read.
> 
> ...



Well, I've waited a few days to see what happens and it appears that you've INTIMIDATED / SCARED AWAY *ANYONE* willing to challenge you (sorry @Wil ).

I hope that your RANT and CHEST POUNDING has given you the satisfaction you feel you deserve - now, let's get back to talking to the '*Average Joe*' and:
WHERE to insert any kind of amplifier
WHAT kind of benefits they may, or may not, provide
Technical things like *"Signal-to-Noise" Ratio*
You, my dear sir, are a RUDE person.

*IF* you are so indeed knowledgeable on this topic, *PLEASE* educate the rest of us peons.

Otherwise, please crawl back into your hole and keep quiet.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

ClearToLand said:


> let's get back to talking to the '*Average Joe*' and:
> 
> WHERE to insert any kind of amplifier
> WHAT kind of benefits they may, or may not, provide
> Technical things like *"Signal-to-Noise" Ratio*


• No question the best place to put an amp OR preamp is as close to the antenna as possible. It's an old cliche that the best preamp to install on the antenna mast is a better antenna.
• Benefit is that the signal will be amplified, and that will ameliorate subsequent cable loss, splitter loss and insertion loss of anything down the line. Noise will be amplified proportionately and additional noise will be added by the amplifier itself, in an amount determined by the characteristics of the amp (i.e. "low noise" amp is better). It is impossible (without processing tech beyond what is available in reasonably-priced home gear) for the signal to noise ratio provided by the antenna to improve as a result of the amplifier. More noise is the price you pay. The amplifier also risks signal overload and further may increase artifacts from signal bounce, echo, and other unclean signal characteristics. Again the price you pay to get the signal up to compensate for cable length, etc. I'd say on average a good low noise preamp with a gain sized to compensate for loss down the line and NO MORE, helps reception 75% of the time. 15% of the time it helps some channels but degrades others; sometimes in those cases you can fix with range-tuned attenuators to ratchet down overload.
• Signal-to-noise ratio, the higher the better (a good amp will have the noise expressed as a LOWER dB). Noise in analog reception was usually seen as snow. In digital reception with good modern tuners the noise is frequently invisible at levels that would have been heavy analog snow. To a great extent the picture is either there or it isn't. Pixelization or momentary blackouts are cause by high noise and signal reflection, etc.

Despite all that, and I've guessed at the reasons in a previous post, inserting an amp or preamp further down the line, even at the set, occasionally does help some specific digital channels and is something that can be tried with low expectations.

EDITED to clarify amplifier noise "LOWER dB" rating


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

Wil said:


> • Signal-to-noise ratio, the higher the better (expressed as a LOWER dB).


While the information in the above post is mostly accurate and useful, there is one major error that needs correcting to keep the "average Joe" from wasting time trying to make his reception WORSE when he really wants to make it better. The SNR of a signal is often more important than the raw strength of the signal, but a better SNR is absolutely NOT expressed as a "LOWER" dB". No matter what the overall signal strength may be, you want the highest possible SNR.

The most simple definition of a Signal to Noise Ratio is simply the average power level of the useful and WANTED signal divided by the average power level of any unwanted signal (AKA noise), and the result of that very simple formula is expressed as decibels or dB. The better the ratio, the HIGHER the number.

I will further state that this quote from the same reply is dead wrong:


Wil said:


> It is impossible (without processing tech beyond what is available in reasonably-priced home gear) for the signal to noise ratio to improve as a result of the amplifier.


 The reality of how to improve the SNR for the home user is based simply on WHERE the noise is being generated. If the unwanted noise in the signal is being received by the antenna, along with the wanted part of the signal, then it is true that any amplifier, placed anywhere in the signal path below the antenna, will amplify both the wanted and unwanted parts of the signal equally, resulting in a stronger overall signal with an unchanged SNR (ignoring for the moment any additional noise that the amplifier itself will inject into the signal - a very minor amount from a good amp). HOWEVER, if any of that unwanted noise is being generated by cheap coax, poor cable connections, poor ground or damaged cable connectors (all are common problems in the home), then placing an amplifier near the antenna and before the source of the added noise will ABSOLUTELY improve the final SNR because it is only amplifying the wanted part of the signal and not the added noise. Of course, the best long term solution is to find the source of the added noise and fix it, if possible, instead of just hoping to overpower it with an amplifier or better antenna.

So the bottom line for a home user who thinks they have a weak signal situation that might be helped by an amplifier is to test with a good single-port amp, and compare the results with the amp connected right at the antenna along with the same amp connected right before the final receiving equipment (TV or TiVo). This comparison not only tests the capability of the amplifier to improve the reception, but if the results (both overall signal strength AND SNR number) are different when the amplifier is connected at different places in the cable run, it will clearly indicate that at least part of the problems are being caused within the house after the antenna has received the available OTA signal.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

ClearToLand said:


> You, my dear sir, are a RUDE person.


Maybe so, but he's not wrong.


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