• Re: OTA TV

    From Warpslide@VERT/NRBBS to Ogg on Fri Jan 29 15:39:00 2021
    On 28 Jan 2021, Ogg said the following...

    I believe that was Aereo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

    Whereas TiVo did the reverse - requiring the subscriber to have
    set-top boxes to manage the programming.

    What's interesting is that TiVo acquired Aereo's assets after they filed for bankruptcy. I wonder if they did anything with those assets, or basically just

    bought them to shut them down.

    I only get Global OTA (and it's not the HD digital version),
    from my antenna facing east - the signal is never consistant
    quality. I barely get CTV2 (Barrie) - it's the snowyiest, but
    with the antenna "stuck" in the East position, that is to be
    expected.

    We have two antennas stacked. One facing the CN Tower and the other facing the

    US. CTV is the hardest to get & keep whereas the other channels almost always work. That's the beauty of digital TV, it's usually "all or nothing" but there

    are sometimes where the picture with pixelate, but usually few & far between.

    Many years ago I purchased a DVR-HDD tuner/machine. Its tuner
    turned out to be better than the default one in the tv at the
    time. Its "live" time-shifting feature was/is very cool.

    We almost never watch live TV anymore, the Tablo records the shows we want to watch and and then we can skip the commercials. You can subscribe to a service

    that will automatically skip the commercials for you for CA$30/US$20 per year, but I can do that myself for free & the Apple TV makes it easy enough to do.

    Plus, that price bothers me because Tablo is a Canadian company and at today's exchange rate US$20 = CA$25.44, so why are they charging us CA$30?

    https://www.tablotv.com/tablo-premium-service/


    Jay

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/01/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: Northern Realms
  • From Warpslide@VERT/NRBBS to Ogg on Sun Jan 31 17:42:00 2021
    On 31 Jan 2021, Ogg said the following...

    I remember visiting tvfool.com years ago. What a great resource!
    It is amazing how they can aggregate all the antenna locations,
    the topology info and produce a list based on any location you
    give it.

    Here is my result: URL: https://susepaste.org/86100197

    Being closer to Toronto & Buffalo my list is a touch longer... ;)

    https://susepaste.org/32fed849

    I have this baby parked outside next to the house:

    URL: https://susepaste.org/37169065

    A family I knew when I was a teenager moved to North Bay & their house came with one of these. This was before the days of StarChoice & ExpressVu. I remember being fascinated with the receiver & how the dish actually moved when tuning to different stations.

    It worked quit well. But the receiver sucked a lot of juice and
    ran fairly hot even when off.

    Our Tablo DVR is actually uncomfortably to touch. There must be something about TV tuners that generates a lot of heat. When we first got it we contacted support asking if it was supposed to be that way, and indeed it is.

    There's a lot of free OTA out there - a mix of analog and
    digital. I think people seemed to give up on traditional VHF/
    UHF antennas too soon IMHO, swayed by the seduction of greater
    things from satellite TV and cable.

    We're not into sports at all, so I'm not missing out on any specialty channels for that. I know a few people at work who have cable solely for sports content.

    It did seem a lot of people just gave up on antennas after the conversion from analogue to digital.


    Jay

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/01/30 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: Northern Realms
  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Warpslide on Sun Jan 31 19:48:00 2021
    Hello Warpslide!

    ** On Friday 29.01.21 - 15:39, Warpslide wrote to Ogg:

    I believe that was Aereo - https://en.wikipedia.org/
    wiki/Aereo

    Whereas TiVo did the reverse - requiring the subscriber to
    have set-top boxes to manage the programming.

    What's interesting is that TiVo acquired Aereo's assets
    after they filed for bankruptcy. I wonder if they did
    anything with those assets, or basically just bought them to
    shut them down.

    I'm not sure how those things work out, but the options depend
    on whether the outgoing company is LLC, or incorporated, or any
    number of other things. Maybe TiVo agreed to pay off the debts
    if they could get some of Aereo's equiment or other assets.

    We have two antennas stacked. One facing the CN Tower and
    the other facing the US. CTV is the hardest to get & keep
    whereas the other channels almost always work. That's the
    beauty of digital TV, it's usually "all or nothing" but
    there are sometimes where the picture with pixelate, but
    usually few & far between.

    Yeah.. there is no middle-ground for digital. When it's good,
    it's really good! When there is not enough signal, it's dark.

    I was under the impression that the Global-TV CIII-2 (channel 2)
    station not far from my location was phasing over to digital, or
    that it was already partially digital, but it does not seem to
    be the case. I wouldn't be able to get it anyway since the OTA
    digital stuff resides in the UHF bands, and my outdoor tower
    antenna has never picked up anything in that band.

    Many years ago I purchased a DVR-HDD tuner/machine.. ..Its
    "live" time-shifting feature was/is very cool.

    We almost never watch live TV anymore, the Tablo records the
    shows we want to watch and and then we can skip the
    commercials.

    It was very liberating to just zip through the commercials on
    OTA recorded programs.

    I never heard of the Tablo before. Sounds impressive, since it
    acts as a kind of server to feed the different programs it has
    recorded to *any* device in the household.

    Can you record multiple shows that are broadcasting in the same
    time-slot?

    Plus, that price bothers me because Tablo is a Canadian
    company and at today's exchange rate US$20 = CA$25.44, so
    why are they charging us CA$30?

    The exchange rate is so fickle. Around this time of year last
    year the CDN exchange rate was more than 1.5 times the USD.
    It's hovering at about 1.35 for a long time now. Companies just
    want to simplify those charges.


    --- OpenXP 5.0.48
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  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Warpslide on Sun Jan 31 20:16:00 2021
    Hello Warpslide!

    ** On Sunday 31.01.21 - 17:42, Warpslide wrote to Ogg:

    Being closer to Toronto & Buffalo my list is a touch longer... ;)

    https://susepaste.org/32fed849

    Only 4 analog (VHF), and the rest digital (UHF). Just as I
    thought.

    That is a tonne of channels to flip through! You have no excuse
    to be bored. Or.. there's a popular rock song that goes
    something like "200 channels and nothing on".

    I have this baby parked outside next to the house:

    URL: https://susepaste.org/37169065

    ...I remember being fascinated with the receiver & how the
    dish actually moved when tuning to different stations.

    It's just a simple arc that follows the row of satellites in the
    geo synchronus orbit line. I found it interesting to watch
    too. During a storm, we found it useful to turn the dish so as
    to minimize getting pulled out of alignment too much. The
    mechanism and attachments were rock solid for the most part,
    but sometimes it stuggled to stay steady during especially high
    winds. I think over time, the alignment just got worse and
    worse - by then, all the satellites were feeding scrambled
    signals. I ripped out the cables going into the house, and
    plugged up the hole, as some wasps seemed to be enjoying the
    open access.

    Our Tablo DVR is actually uncomfortably to touch. There
    must be something about TV tuners that generates a lot of
    heat. When we first got it we contacted support asking if
    it was supposed to be that way, and indeed it is.

    Hmmm.. is there a fan inside?

    ..I think people seemed to give up on traditional VHF/UHF
    antennas too soon IMHO, swayed by the seduction of greater
    things from satellite TV and cable.

    We're not into sports at all, so I'm not missing out on any
    specialty channels for that. I know a few people at work
    who have cable solely for sports content.

    Yes.. sports seems to be a party/gathering favourite.


    It did seem a lot of people just gave up on antennas after
    the conversion from analogue to digital.

    And imagine all the people who could be enjoying completely free
    OTA HDTV if they held on to their UHF antennas.

    There was this whole media bliz about OTA analog tv going dead
    (which was partially true), but they did not report that the
    digital versions could be obtained with existing UHF.

    --- OpenXP 5.0.48
    * Origin: Ogg's Dovenet Point (723:320/1.9)
    ■ Synchronet ■ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Warpslide@VERT/NRBBS to Ogg on Mon Feb 1 08:31:00 2021
    On 31 Jan 2021, Ogg said the following...

    I never heard of the Tablo before. Sounds impressive, since it
    acts as a kind of server to feed the different programs it has
    recorded to *any* device in the household.

    That was the initial appeal of it to us. We really didn't want to have yet another HDMI device connected to the TV. With the Tablo we only use the Apple TV to watch anything & everything we want. OTA TV? Tablo App. The Mandalorian? Disney+. Stranger Things? Netflix.

    Can you record multiple shows that are broadcasting in the same time-slot?

    Yup, they have 2 & 4 tuner models. We have the 4 tuner model because at the time we had 3 shows that were on at the same time.


    Jay

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/01/30 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: Northern Realms