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FCC To Allow Cable Companies To Encrypt Over-the-Air Channels
alen writes "The FCC is now allowing cable companies to encrypt free OTA channels that they also rebroadcast over their networks. 'The days of plugging a TV into the wall and getting cable are coming to an end. After a lengthy review process, the FCC has granted cable operators permission to encrypt their most basic cable programming.' Soon the only way to receive free OTA channels via your cable company will involve renting yet another box or buying something like Boxee."
well there goes my HTPC build. For those that like to build their own media centers, dvr's, etc this is utter crap. Of course I can spend $200 to get a tuner card that will accept a M-type cable card but then that is yet another piece of equipment that I have to rent from said cable company.
who wants to bet said FCC people have coushy jobs lined up at some major cable company.
Wait, 99% of TVs sold today don't bother supporting it... Shit!
will also work for many people. I recently cut my cable TV service when I realized that almost everything I was actually watching was programming being broadcast over-the-air. A $50 antenna and I'm all set
Seriously, +1 Internets to the first person who can put a positive spin on this one. Wow. Just wow.
There are many places in this country that the OTA signal is not reliable unless you have a massive antenna due to LOS issues.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'll get cable when they make good on their original promise: Pay for TV, so no ads. Part (most) of the money you pay goes to the show to replace their ad income.
For all you young-lings, TV used to be completely free. To get people to pay for cable, their sales pitch was that you wouldn't get any ads.
They can pry my torrents from my cold dead heads or stop being lying, greedy assholes. Their choice.
You can digitize without encrypting. That is what clear QAM is for.
What this is really about is that they won't have to roll a truck for a cable install. Heck, they can fire all the techs too, or at least most of them. They will leave all the cables live all the time and make you come get a box to do the decryption. When you leave you give the box back, or if you don't pay they deauthorize it on their end.
You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.
Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.
Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
This move will only make pirating television more appealing.
Thanks for nothing, FCC. I'm tired of every last fucking thing on Earth being monetized for no reason other than greed, and the so-called "regulators" doing nothing as the are getting huge sums of money from the parties behind the changes.
Digitize for Clear QAM takes no more bandwidth than Encrypted QAM. Most areas have not had analog at all for 2 years now.
I used to work for Comcast in the headends and OTN locations, I know more about this than the CSR's or installers ever hope to know.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most comcast locations already fired all the techs. They use independent contractors. Most of the guys did dish installs, Direct TV installs and Comcast installs all in the same day.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That is all.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The way this was agreed was if the cable company is encrypting their channels, they have to make them available unencrypted over IP, so devices like Boxee and others can still receive them, or work with PVR makers to make "Software updates" available so they can decrypt the streams.
Given that the daddy of all open-source PVR projects, MythTV, already supports IPTV systems (after a little careful setup), this is actually a good thing. And while it is basic channels only for now, hopefully the practise will expand into premium channels later on.
Look! TV just killed itself!
I have two tween kids. They don't know what Cable, satellite or OTA are...
There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.
They also know some suckers who pay for HuluPlus, to watch the unwatchable.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I know it's not an option for some, but I live where I can get New York OTA channels, and even Philly stations if I want, with my roof antenna and rotor. I record everything we watch on a MythTV system with a TB of disk space. I haven't had pay TV in 25 years.
I have cable for internet only. Every time the cable company calls me trying to sell me a TV package, I tell them exactly what I'm currently using, and exactly why I want no part of their any-consumer bull shit. I wish more people would do the same thing.
What sucks of course is that, because all the available internet providers are TV providers, you pay a premium for internet when it's not part of some fucking package. The whole situation just blows to put it mildly...and the fucking FCC, whose supposed to be working for us, can go straight to fucking hell too.
Making money off the elderly and out of touch, the way God intended.
These so-called "HDTV" antennas were sold for years with the incorrect assumption that digital TV would stay on UHF and it most assuredly did not!
In the New York area for example, several of the UHF digital networks moved their digital signal to their original VHF frequency when the switch over occurred.
Don't buy one of those unless you're sure that all the digital networks in your area are on UHF. If any are, you'll need a combination UHF/VHF antenna.
My folks still do this, and it's what we had the entire time I was growing up (personally, I rely on Netflix, Hulu, etc. these days exclusively). They work great most of the time and can save a load of money on a medium where no one with sense should be investing big bucks at this point. I was surprised how clear the reception was with the relatively small, indoor antenna my parents had directly above the TV last time I visited them.
Strangely, it seems that many people are unaware that it's even an option. My folks told me about a husband and wife in their early-to-mid 40s that came over for dinner awhile back. The wife made some comment about how she only watches the major U.S. networks yet cable TV is so expensive. When my parents pointed out that they get those channels for free with an antenna, the wife was dumbstruck. Apparently she started insisting that it was illegal to watch TV without a cable subscription. After several minutes of reassurances from both my parents and her husband that it was perfectly legal and had been around since television was introduced, she was left feeling a bit sheepish. Even more so after her husband pointed out that most of the homes she grew up in didn't even have access to cable TV since it wasn't in widespread use at the time.
I have this http://www.antennasdirect.com/store/ClearStream-C2-VHF-Combo.html in my second story attic at 47 miles out from the transmitters, roughly 50 feet above sea level. Mounted it to an attic cross beam, aimed it with my iphone compass and was good to go. Works like a champ.
Go here http://www.antennaweb.org/Address.aspx to evaluate how your location in relation to your local transmitters.
Good-bye
WE should get the IP streaming without being forced to agree they can DMCA lock signals that are being broadcast over the air for free. WE own the right of way these companies operate under, we should be demanding more from infrastructure, not less.
Good-bye
There's YouTube, NetFlix, Amazon and PutLocker.
Do these services have live sports or political talk shows? In my survey sample, one head of household, would rather go back to dial-up than drop ESPN and NBCSN (formerly Versus), and the other would be lost without MSNBC.
First you should go to http://tvfool.com/ and check your address for OTA digital signals.
Note the "Real" channel on the tvfool chart. If it's 7-13, you'd need a VHF-high antenna, if it's 14-51 a UHF antenna will pick it up. If it's 2-6, you're probably in Alaska, and sadly will need an old, full-range VHF-lo/hi antenna.
Any channels that are Green or Yellow will likely work with a simple, cheap, indoor antenna (preferably in your window, facing towards the transmitter). The simplest old indoor antennas seem to work the best... better than more expensive indoor antennas that are tunable or have a useless (for short cable runs) amplifier. Nice long "rabbit-ears" at a 45 degree angle will do a good job for VHF (real: 2-13) channels, while a nice big "loop" antenna will do very well picking up UHF channels.
If you're in the red, or worse, you MIGHT be lucky and receive the station(s) with an indoor antenna with minimal dropout, but at this point, you're probably at the point that you should invest in a roof-top antenna.
VHF is pretty simple, and easier to receive over longer ranges, and around obstacles like mountains, buildings or trees. For antennas, you have a couple choices which are both about equivalent in reception and price (about $40):
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=Y10-7-13&sku=716079000994">Antennacraft Y10-7-13 100mi 120" VHF-high
or
Winegard YA 1713 100mi 100" VHF-high
For UHF channels, reception is a bit tougher, as curvature of the earth, and any obstacles cause more issues. There's some debate over how the top 8-bay antennas should be ranked, but it's an easy choice when you see one of the contenders costs nearly half as much as the rest:
Winegard HD 8800 8-Bay 60mi UHF
Now, if you need both UHF and VHF-high antennas, connecting them with a splitter will cause you to lose a significant amount of signal strength. Instead, a purpose-built VHF/UHF splitter/combiner will perform much better. Just about any one will do, but here's a link for an in-stock $2 model:
Pico Macom UHF/VHF Band Separator/Combiner
And finally, if you're going to run the coax a non-trivial length, or if you are going to connect the antenna(s) to a splitter to serve multiple TVs or just multiple tuners (eg. TV+DVR) then you'll get a big benefit out of a mast-mounted pre-amp. The key is to get the lowest "noise" figure you can. There are a range of ridiculously expensive options that will get you a just-slightly lower-noise signal, but once again Winegard is much cheaper, and close enough:
Winegard AP-8700 VHF/UHF Pre Amplifier
Thanks to FCC regulations, you can put this all up on a mast as high as 12' above your roof line, without anyone being able to require you to get a permit or similar (unless you're in a historic area, or there's serious safety issues like overhead power lines). And if you happen to NEED to go higher to get reception of local stations, they MUST grant your permit request for minimal cost and in a timely fashion.
To deal with the risk of lighting starting fires or blowing up your TV, you need to ground your mast and the coax. A coax grounding block costs about $1, and like your mast, just needs to be wired to metal water pipes, or a grounding rod. Some more advanced coax surge suppressors exist, but I would never forego the simple task of grounding everything first.
That should be all the equipment you need, and the information on tvfool will tell you EXACTLY which d
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I can certainly understand why the cable companies want this. They have too many Internet-only customers who are getting local TV access without paying for it, and they don't want to have to send out trucks to install and remove filters. This is a perfect solution for them.
As a consumer, I don't terribly mind, as long as I can decrypt the signals. (Yes, it's a bit frustrating that my QAM tuners are now junk.) I don't want to pay a monthly fee for a cable card, along with expensive tuners that accept them. What would be much more reasonable is a software-only cable card, and there's no reason we can't have that. This would allow any QAM tuner to still be useful. The FCC should require cable companies to support this, and toss out any copy restrictions--if we are paying for it, we should get the raw digital stream to record as we see fit.
Well, in this case an understanding of the laws of physics would have taken care of it. Anybody claiming 150mi reception of TV signals is a bald-faced liar. The curvature of the earth, and the propagation of the frequencies involved simply makes that impossible in the general case. The standard numbers are 60mi for UHF and 100mi for VHF. It's along the same lines as all those 12v air compressors that claim to produce 250psi... twice what high-end shop compressors are able to produce. They're lying, and once they're lying to you, who knows how many other nasty things they're doing, like cutting corners on build quality.
But to answer your question, we did a few things... First, we shopped at stores we could trust. These days retailers will stock any PoS they think they can make money on, and take no responsibilty for the items they stock, but it doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't the norm, even just 20 years ago. I personally avoid Walmart, because they intentionally stock inordinant amounts of crap, because they want to advertise a lower price, and don't care that they're screwing their own customers for the sake of a few cents price difference. My favorite retailer is Sears. While they're not perfect, they still have some traditional values and try to stock products that aren't complete junk, and they usually do so at about the same price as the junk dealers like Walmart and Home Depot. Kenmore appliances are nearly as cheap, and put the low-end brands at Home Depot and other to shame in a big way, but for some reason, people haven't wised-up.
Second, there were brands we could trust... It was only 10 years ago or so that well-known brands decided to cash-in their reputation and start selling complete crap. You can see this in cheap HP printers, Levi's, Sony branding on DVD Burners and other devices they don't make, and much, much more. The brands used-to mean something, and people were caught off-guard when things suddenly changed.
These days, I've adopted a dual strategy. I still believe paying more for a good product is eminently good strategy, but I no longer just trust that a given brand is selling high quality products.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
They are required to because cable companies use public rights of way for their cables. The rights of way are typically controlled by the city, and the city generally requires that the company serve the general public interest if they are going to get to use the rights of way.
Serving the general public interest included providing the over-the-air channels that they get FREE and that they are allowed to rebroadcast for FREE in order to make sure that people don't have to have cable AND rabbit ears. Cable companies WANTED to include local channels, and they generally don't PAY for them.
So they don't get to CHARGE for them since the originator of the programming gets nothing from them.
Satellite companies use public airwaves for their transmissions.
The commons is rapidly (and immorally) becoming privatized.
Rights-of-way, eminent domain being used to give property to private companies, increasingly intrusive IP laws and the weakening of fair use, etc.
If the cable company doesn't want to feel like the owe the community something, then they can tear out and take down the cables that they run through the community's property.
This space available.
Cable companies...generally don't PAY for [local channels]. So they don't get to CHARGE for them since the originator of the programming gets nothing from them.
For what it's worth, this used to be the case, but is not any more. Many local channels have switched from "must-carry", where the cable company has to carry them, but doesn't have to pay, to "retransmission consent" where they can charge the cable company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry#United_States