# Don't abandon OTA



## alexofindy (Apr 16, 2010)

The Roamio line pretty much abandons OTA recording; only the basic unit supports it, and then only in a practically useless way: if you configure the basic Roamio to do OTA, you lose the ability to record off cable.

I can't predict the future, but the TV world seems to be evolving in a way that will require both OTA and cable tuners. The biggest piece of evidence is the recent battle between CBS and TWC. Subscribers to TWC in several major cities (including NYC, Dallas, and LA) lost cable access to CBS for a month, and had to use OTA to receive CBS. I've even read that TWC provided free antennas to some subscribers!

That corporate battle is now over, but it was settled in CBS's favor; CBS is now charging TWC a high redistribution fee for the same channel CBS broadcasts over the air. Given this outcome, cable companies are likely to have to pay more and higher fees for broadcast stations, and may simply choose to stop carrying them. And many cable customers may choose to receive these stations via an OTA antenna.

The long and short of it is that there may well be a growing demand for a Tivo that does what my Premiere XL does: allow me to record both cable and OTA stations.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Actually, you are not asking them to avoid abandoning OTA, you are asking them to not abandon the ability to record both OTA and cable concurrently. This requires the Tivo to have double the tuners than is apparent to the user (or a weird sub-combination that would probably be confusing to consumers). Just an explanation, no opinions either way.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

This is more of a cost/marketing issue. The cost of building a unit that could do both cable and OTA, with 4+ tuners, would be expensive and the market for such a unit would be relatively small. The current unit was a compromise. They didn't want to abandon OTA completely but they also didn't want to raise the price of their entry level product for a feature the vast majority of their users wouldn't even use.


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## consumedsoul (Jan 13, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> This is more of a cost/marketing issue. The cost of building a unit that could do both cable and OTA, with 4+ tuners, would be expensive and the market for such a unit would be relatively small. The current unit was a compromise. They didn't want to abandon OTA completely but they also didn't want to raise the price of their entry level product for a feature the vast majority of their users wouldn't even use.


Well said, agree.


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## moedaman (Aug 21, 2012)

The solution for now would be to either keep your current Tivo or pick-up cheap a used 2-tuner premiere with lifetime for ota only and than have it and a Roamio connected to a cable provider stream between each other.


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## philhu (Apr 11, 2001)

Another thing about OTA. I got hit by this.

OTA recordings are MUCH LARGER than cable recordings. I've run into old SD shows taking 4-6G of space PER RECORDING, instead of 300-400M.

This is due to OTA encoding almost everything as 1920x1080 since they assume the user of OTA does not have processing eqpt (like a tivo/etc) to do the conversion.

It really can eat up a Tivo's recording space.

I do exactly what is said here. I took my old Premier and a TivoHD, and relegate them to OTA recording, each has a 1tb disk in it.


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## RusRus (Apr 8, 2013)

alexofindy said:


> The Roamio line pretty much abandons OTA recording; only the basic unit supports it, and then only in a practically useless way: if you configure the basic Roamio to do OTA, you lose the ability to record off cable.
> 
> I can't predict the future, but the TV world seems to be evolving in a way that will require both OTA and cable tuners. The biggest piece of evidence is the recent battle between CBS and TWC.  Subscribers to TWC in several major cities (including NYC, Dallas, and LA) lost cable access to CBS for a month, and had to use OTA to receive CBS. I've even read that TWC provided free antennas to some subscribers!
> 
> ...


Why would you want OTA if you can view with cable/sattelite?

I gave up Dish and then Directv and only have OTA. If it is not there I stream with my PC to my TV. Not quite HD quality but it's free!!!!


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

philhu said:


> Another thing about OTA. I got hit by this.
> 
> OTA recordings are MUCH LARGER than cable recordings. I've run into old SD shows taking 4-6G of space PER RECORDING, instead of 300-400M.
> 
> ...


That depends on your cable company. I have FiOS, and the recordings on FiOS from the local HD channels are the same size as the OTA recordings from the local HD channels.


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

RusRus said:


> Why would you want OTA if you can view with cable/sattelite?
> 
> I gave up Dish and then Directv and only have OTA. If it is not there I stream with my PC to my TV. Not quite HD quality but it's free!!!!


You posted the quote, but did you read it?


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## philhu (Apr 11, 2001)

aaronwt said:


> That depends on your cable company. I have FiOS, and the recordings on FiOS from the local HD channels are the same size as the OTA recordings from the local HD channels.


I have FIOS, my locals are running 4-7GB/hour
The same channel, sd, is about 1GB/hour

So HD might be the same, but SD channels aren't. We figured out that since the OTA doesnt have a box to 'decode', they send the SD channels is 1080P or 720P and just stick the picture in the middle. Hence, the much large SD sizes


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

philhu said:


> I have FIOS, my locals are running 4-7GB/hour
> The same channel, sd, is about 1GB/hour
> 
> So HD might be the same, but SD channels aren't. We figured out that since the OTA doesnt have a box to 'decode', they send the SD channels is 1080P or 720P and just stick the picture in the middle. Hence, the much large SD sizes


I guess it depends on the broadcaster then. They don't do that in my area for the local broadcasts.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

The good stuff is not available via OTA and in the future broadcasters might just dump the broadcast model. Direct streaming is rapidly becoming the delivery vehicle.

Why would somebody invest in a technology representing a media space that is not growing especially amongst the 18-49?


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