Slashdot Mirror
It's the Beginning of the End of Satellite TV in the US (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: "We've launched our last satellite," John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, said in a meeting with analysts on Nov. 29. The AT&T executive effectively declared the end of the satellite-TV era with that statement. AT&T owns DirecTV, the US's largest satellite company -- and second largest TV provider overall, behind Comcast. DirecTV will continue offering satellite-TV service -- it had nearly 20 million satellite video subscribers as of September, per company filings. But the company will focus on growing its online video business instead, Donovan said.
It has a new set-top box, where people can get the same TV service they'd get with satellite, through an internet-connected box they can install themselves. It expects that box to become a greater share of its new premium-TV service installations in the first half of 2019. It also sells cheaper, TV packages with fewer channels through its DirecTV Now and WatchTV streaming services, which work with many smart TVs and streaming media players like Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. The practice of getting TV through satellite dishes propped up in backyards and perched on rooftops first took hold in the US in the last 1970s and early 1980s, after TV networks like HBO and Turner Broadcasting System started sending TV signals to cable providers via satellites. People in areas without cable or broadcast TV began putting up their own dishes to receive the TV signals, and that grew into a TV business of its own.
It has a new set-top box, where people can get the same TV service they'd get with satellite, through an internet-connected box they can install themselves. It expects that box to become a greater share of its new premium-TV service installations in the first half of 2019. It also sells cheaper, TV packages with fewer channels through its DirecTV Now and WatchTV streaming services, which work with many smart TVs and streaming media players like Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. The practice of getting TV through satellite dishes propped up in backyards and perched on rooftops first took hold in the US in the last 1970s and early 1980s, after TV networks like HBO and Turner Broadcasting System started sending TV signals to cable providers via satellites. People in areas without cable or broadcast TV began putting up their own dishes to receive the TV signals, and that grew into a TV business of its own.
Just like internet basically replaced broadcast TV, the reason why satellite TV will decline is in part because of the rise of wireless internet options (including satellite internet, like the satellites SpaceX plans to put up).
My mother lives fairly far out of a major city, to the point where cable is not offered - in the past few years she has gotten all internet and video options from a cellular wireless hotspot.
So why would she want to get an expensive satellite TV option when she can do anything over a fairly decent wireless internet connection?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Few more lines and the /. summary would contain TFA whole.
Let me save you some time and some ad views by pasting them here:
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Just like internet basically replaced broadcast TV, the reason why satellite TV will decline is in part because of the rise of wireless internet options (including satellite internet, like the satellites SpaceX plans to put up).
My mother lives fairly far out of a major city, to the point where cable is not offered - in the past few years she has gotten all internet and video options from a cellular wireless hotspot.
So why would she want to get an expensive satellite TV option when she can do anything over a fairly decent wireless internet connection?
Why indeed? Traditional TV is an overpriced pile of crap that cannot die quickly enough and I will not be crying any rivers when it does.
Yup. With the ISP's effectively winning the war to do whatever they want...you'll soon be forced to subscribe to TV from your monopoly or suffer consequences.
I really miss when there were consumer protection laws and things in place to prevent bullshit like this from happening. I'd rather pay taxes than pay unregulated extortion rates to a private corporation.
2018: "Hey! We can cancel that expensive satellite service and force users to buy our shitty DSL service! It's brilliant!"
2021: "SpaceX's new StarLink service starts bundling cable TV channels as part of its new Internet service."
...should be illegal.
The fine they would pay is a lot less than the money they spent overpaying for DirectTV just as DirectTV's main business started circling the drain.
Because at some point her wireless provider will either add a super high data cap or be able to throttle video traffic.
Relying on the internet when the providers are hell-bent on acting like an unregulated monopoly is a problem. People like you just rolling over and accepting it is a problem.
Plenty of sat tv is coming. However, it will be broadcast over the net, including over starlink and 1-web.
What will NOT be done, is a sat system that is devoted to TV, esp. at these prices with the lousy service.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
LOL -- and I can't get Satellite Internet. DirectTV, DiSH, et al were not a good option for me (price vs bandwidth caps).
I tried ViaSAT. Tried. *COULD NOT GET IT INSTALLED*
After two months of trying -- I just gave up.
They INSIST on installing on the roof. I won't allow it.
Right next to the roof and where I wanted the install to happen is a three point 60ft tower. It's rock solid. Install there. They simply refused -- and offered putting a pole in the middle of the yard and trenching a line in would work. Except there's a septic tank right there.
New steel roof is still going on next year. No SAT I guess.
If you already have broadband, you could just run a directv app on your existing devices or buy an inexpensive one.
Though I did get such an app (att watch tv) bundled with my phone service and itâ(TM)s terrible... so maybe their capacity to write one is limited.
Now I'm supposed to stream all my live tv too? I thought Netflix was already crushing the internet's "pipes." There are single weekends where I record 7 or 8 college and pro football games, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time. Tell me how that's gonna be possible over the internet?
confused ... how do you cut a cable when you have sattelite tv?
sat tv, like cable tv, IS going away. Customers are dropping off each.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Honestly, I have cable, but only for the internet. There's really nothing on television anymore making me want to sit down for an hour or more to watch.
Though I understood satellite and satellite internet are currently the only way to communicate in very rural areas.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Traditional TV requires a tuner and an antenna and const nothing other than the equipment.
I used to have satellite tv. Now I have an antenna, Netflix and Prime. I'm thinking about dropping the streaming services as I've more or less stoped using them. It will cost nothing to keep my antenna on the roof.
I hate fat people.
Satellite TV is already in decline (read the article). Not "will decline".
Internet has not replaced broadcast TV. There will be broadcast channels long after we're gone. But internet TV will be far more popular over time.
Nobody is suggesting anyone purchase satellite TV if you have decent internet (wireless or not). The reason for selecting DBS was they were independent from terrible cable systems and for rural customers who had few if any options. That reason may no longer exist for many.
But television over IP (especially wireless) is not ready for primetime still. Crappy picture, slow broadband speeds, reliance on ISPs will hamper it for some time.
nope.
IPTV is multicasted, which is fairly efficient. Even today, Europe makes heavy use of this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I guess I am doomed, we have lousy internet, only one cable carrier available and they won't or can't deliver better than 25 Mbps. We can get a DSL signal but it never gets better than 12-16 Mbps. With me working from the house, the GF watching Amazon and her kid streaming music the net connection is choppy and unreliable. Spectrum cable SUCKS, they advertise starting at 60 Mbps and up to 100 Mbps but no one in the rural area I live in gets better than 25 Mbps.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Rural users tend to have satellite TV in part because no cable or fiber-to-the-home provider serves their address. Streaming video over satellite Internet at $5 per GB is unlikely to prove economic as a substitute.
I think Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime/YouTube had already opened that door. Besides with current video/audio compression methods, and how we get faster bandwidth, with home users exceed 100mbs streaming video isn't that big of an issue anymore. Even with 4k.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sounds great... if you have a wide enough pipe with which to receive.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
What do you get from your antenna that is worth the while? I tried that a couple of years ago, and the only thing I could get were channels with preachers and soaps - plus a boatload of ads. I couldn't care less for preachers and soaps, and I just plain refuse to watch any ads. So, what material are you getting?
Subscribers to cassette rental would still need an information service in order to request cassettes from a distributor. (Source: DVD.Netflix.com) In addition, several types of live events would not be as appealing in a cassette model, such as sport matches, political announcements, and entertainment industry awards shows.
Pair it with a DVR if you want something other than soaps in the daytime. Broadcast TV still has some good stuff in the primetime hours.
Single digit megabits per second is all you need for standard-definition video streaming, so long as the monthly cap isn't also oppressive. A decade and a half ago, the warez scene was using DivX (MPEG-4 Part 2 + MP3 in AVI) to transcode a 97-minute movie to fill one 700 MB CD at an average rate of 1 Mbps. Nowadays, WebM (VP9 + Opus in MKV) achieves comparable picture quality at an even lower rate.
On the other hand, you probably won't see acceptable streaming performance with 768 kbps DSL, or 1.5 Mbps DSL with multiple TVs.
I doubt Dish will announce similar. They're looking at a potential bonanza of former DirecTV subscribers coming to them as new customers. There are literally millions of people for whom getting their TV over the internet is simply not an option.
... as long as your ISP doesn't impose any kind of severe usage caps.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I set up an antenna indoors, soon hope to get a slightly larger one outdoors to improve on a couple channels' reception....
But I get all the 3 major networks, and Fox...and local PBS.
Each of those channels have extra content on their .1 .2, .3..etc. channels....PBS is really good for lots of content.
There are a lot of other channels, some in SD, but most HD, that play old reruns of shows from days gone past.
But the HD of the main channels is really about the best you can get quality wise, as you don't deal with the compression from someone sending it over a wire.
I paired the antenna with the Tivo Roamio OTA they had out, that came with lifetime guide service baked in...I think you can still get a few left on their website if you search refurbs or specials, as that it appears they now have a new OTA option that costs extra to have the lifetime guide service included.
I have that and the TIvo minis's throughout the house so I can watch that content anywhere I have a TV. I also have Amazon Fire TV units (not the usb drives) on each TV, and I run Netflix, and PS VUE to get my "cable channels"...basically covers everything I used to watch while on cable. PS VUE also had DVR capability, so I can pretty much watch anything I want any time.
But the OTA stuff is worthwhile.....
An antenna doesn't cost that much, and most TVs have digital tuners in them...do a little research on what's available in your area, get the appropriate antenna and hook to your tv just to see what's out there.
It's better than it used to be.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I get like a dozen+ HD channels, including all major networks, typical sportsing coverage, et al.
But I live in a downtown area on an International border.
100mbps? Divide that by 12 in my area and those are the speeds, and I don't even live out in the boonies.
Just think of all the channels they have coming off those birds, I would not be surprised if there is currently a few gigabits per second of raw data falling onto each ATT/DTV dish. Of course your satellite box does not handle that whole fire hose of data at once, only handling the data in the chunk of spectrum that it is tuned to
I don't see how it'll scale, as satellite TV has far more viewers per channel than satellite Internet. Spread all those Gbps over the whole countryside, and how many kbps will each subscriber end up with?
Because at some point her wireless provider will either add a super high data cap or be able to throttle video traffic.
She used to have a 10GB data cap (T-Mobile) which I found I could increase to 22GB, but then I found a wireless business reseller that still uses T-Mobile's network, but provides unlimited bandwidth for a lower fee than the 22GB capped service. It has a slower uplink for some reason but faster download speeds - perfect for what she is doing anyway.
or be able to throttle video traffic.
I'm not sure if they do but guess what? It turns out 720P video looks a lot better than 0p video. Also have you SEEN satellite TV?
Relying on the internet when the providers are hell-bent on acting like an unregulated monopoly is a problem
Even with all of that possible downside, way better than relying on satellite TV providers.
What I am telling you in practice is that this is already feasible and has few downsides, and is way more flexible. It will only get better over time as wireless networks are improving constantly (the speed she can achieve is already better than it was just a year ago).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
HoAs ought to be illegal....
A large percentage of the homes in my neighborhood have satellite TV, because when it was built, the cable company waited almost a year to connect the neighborhood (I think they wanted 80% of the development occupied). Once people got satellite TV, they realized the quality and customer services were MUCH better than the cable companies. Cable has definitely surpassed DSL for internet (we were stuck with DSL for that time, too), but I still prefer satellite to cable for TV. Using internet for TV really doesn't compare at this point - there really aren't any good plug-and-play solutions (i.e., not a PC, and not an ad-driven streaming box) with the same consistent quality.
That's just another Musk pipe dream. Will never happen......As with anything Musk says, run it through a reality check before saying 'what if'
A) None of what I said relies on the Musk satellites working, wireless cellular will cover enough areas to have the same effect.
B) It sure seems like Starlink will happen, why wouldn't it? The plan seems sound and they can basically piggyback a lot of launches on top of other deliveries or test launches. They already have FCC approval for 7500 satellites, it's not like you can submit a napkin with crayon drawings for that. I think at this point you have to provide some pretty solid evidence they are NOT going to launch Starlink because it's obviously going ahead.
It's also not like there are not other companies trying to do something similar (read same link above) so obviously a lot of people are seeing money where you do not.
The last point is that even you do not really believe it's not going to happen - any prediction posted as an AC means the predictor has zero confidence and is usually dead wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
StarLink will mean they can get all the streaming they want.
Until SpaceX launches Starlink service, it's vapor. Another Elon Musk venture recently canceled a planned tunnel dig after discovering that the locals demanded a work-to-rule on the environmental impact assessment.
This is why I wish low-bandwidth protocols came back for simple information sharing services. Gopher NEXT when?
Send HTML over HTTPS with no images or script, and you'll have a fairly close approximation.
i bought their basic package, but what they dont tell you is that peppered throughout the channel line up is every other channel is 24/7 infomertals peddling crap, and channel surfing is slow so when you switch a channel you have to wait a few seconds for each channel to display on the TV, i promptly canceled after a very short time, i did not pay them to load my TV with all those spammy infomertals,
i just dont watch TV anymore, its just not worth the annoyances to watch
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I looked into Channel Master, and actually looked at a set up a friend of mine opted for.
At that time, it didn't seem to offer the capabilities that Tivo offered me...I didn't like the guide, and ability to stream from internet also seemed lacking on the channel master AND...the main thing is, that you could not seem to DVR all the local channels on the CM, or at least I recall there were a lot of things you could not DVR off the channel master.
Of course, this was a few years ago, so if getting a new system, by all means....research and see what fits you best.
But I compared them head to head and at the time with the Tivo Roamio OTA system, like only about $299 and included lifetime menu/guide service, it was a much better deal for me to hook to my antenna for all my OTA/DVR needs.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Just use satellite internet with M-Bone IPs duh!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seriously although, I could bet that they aren't going to use multicasting even if the technology exists since the 1990. I bet that they will prefer to bill each customer for the bandwidth they use individually, multiplying the profits.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
That is how cable companies started. They were on the outskirts of large cities, where people were too far away to get the signal directly. Someone would put up a large antennae, maybe on a hill, and run wire to people's houses. They would then charge for the service. Broadcasting over the air would let any old TV pickup the signal.
There is. It's called "Free-to-Air" of FTA Satellite. You can get started in it for a couple of hundred dollars, maybe less depending. You might want to read a little on it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and then check out what's being broadcast at http://www.ftalist.com/ and finally, if this is interesting to you go have a look at the equipment you will need at http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Chan... to figure out how you want to do it and to get an idea of how much it will cost. Search out "Free to Air" and FTA satellite for lots more info and other sources of equipment.
Sports bars / books need it or very good internet with no caps
Will Att run fiber to an bar at the same cost as they pay for TV? and that fee has free internet at least 50-100 down (no caps). Or with give them LTE / 5G with no caps, no deprioritization and no Throttling.
Guess they are just screwed. I know you city dwellers that never leave the city, don't get why people live in "flyover country", but there are a TON of potential customers that will be out of all television. Most live too far away for over the air, now that all the signals are digital and their power to reach is very limited. I do a lot of traveling in the midwest. Satellite dishes are EVERYWHERE. Someone will come along to take over that market.
Only thing I found on FTA was obscure religious channels and channels of languages I don't understand (which these looked like QVC). Even with paid feeds, these didn't seem to be much unless you want 50 hockey channels and content like that. NASA TV is pretty boring, PBS is good but don't need a dish. It would be nice if there was CSPAN from FTA which is very interesting on the weekends, https://www.c-span.org/history as compared during the week the live feeds are mainly staged speeches of senate and congress (generally not much content).
mfwright@batnet.com
Back in early 2000 I made bucket loads of cash when I made a bootloader to re-enable their h-card.
People sent me cash and blank post office checks through the snail mail
TV is a drug more powerful than fentanyl
Divide by 8 and change for me. AT&T keeps trying to upsell me to 18 megabit service, and I keep explaining to them that they're not even able to provide the 12 megabit service I already am paying for.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
IPTV is multicasted
Only if your ISP is also your IPTV provider.
Multicast on the public Internet isn't a thing.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
nope. IPTV is multicasted, which is fairly efficient. Even today, Europe makes heavy use of this.
Oh don't worry, I'm sure AT&T will find a way to fuck it up. I'm sure they'll force you to rent some shitty proprietary box from them and limit any support they provide to the absolute minimum required by law, sorry I mean whatever they can get away with through forced arbitration. Want to use your own box? Hahaha not with AT&T, peasant!
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Just because AT&T says they are going to move away form Satellite TV doesn't mean its the end for it. Not unless Dish Network also exits the market (something I have seen no signs they intend doing)
that tunnel was sued out of existence.
Exactly why I mentioned they already had FCC clearance, the only external force that was going to possibly delay them - with that cleared, just what do you think will happen to stop them? Are the Moon-Men going to sue them?
Nothing like constantly shifting your argument to ever more stupid positions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That and it doesn't prevent someone else from starting a satellite television company in the future, which would only absorb all of the customers who still prefer to have it. If the demand is still there, it's an even bigger waste of their money.
On the other hand, you probably won't see acceptable streaming performance with [...] 1.5 Mbps DSL with multiple TVs.
good luck if someone in your home wants to do something else at the same time.
Exactly. But in a situation like this, you could try quality of service (QoS). When the connection is congested, set your router to give each device a 1.5 Mbps slice of the downstream. With current congestion control policies that U.S. cellular ISPs are implementing, such as T-Mobile's Binge On, streaming providers will recognize this and not try to send any HD video. If your router does not support QoS, replace its firmware with a third-party firmware that does, or purchase a router that supports third-party firmware.
Spread all those Gbps over the whole countryside, and how many kbps will each subscriber end up with?
The same way HughesNet already does it.
In other words, harsh monthly caps for all bytes sent or received outside a window from 01:00 through 04:59 local time.
The regularly scheduled programming on FTA satellite is certainly not everyone's cup of tea unless there is a channel you are particularly into in which case it may be worth it just for that. It may be the only way for you to see some International programming. On the other hand, the unscheduled unannounced stuff can be both rewarding to find and sometimes very interesting. You may find broadcast shows being fed to stations hours or even days before public release, one side of an interview being fed to be put inside another broadcast (sometimes with the interviewee picking his nose waiting), or live news feeds. What can be interesting here is that you get to watch what goes on during breaks and commercials and hear what the news reporters are talking about before and sometimes after they go live. You have to have the time and patience to search that stuff out, though.
I could try a pole with an antenna on top, which worked great at my last home, except my current HOA won't allow that.
It looks like your HOA is imposing rules about TV antenna mast height that "preclude reception of an acceptable quality signal". If the mast required for NBC affiliate reception is less than 12 feet tall, put it up anyway and tell your HOA to forward its complaint against you to the FCC.
As others said already on here, many of the people who live in rural areas are interested in satellite television, at least until the day comes when they're all able to get broadband fiber or cable. Judging by the lack of interest in the monopolies in the U.S. to roll out service to new areas, I'd say satellite still provides a viable alternative for people for a LONG time.
AT&T is probably just not so interested in hanging onto the DirecTV service in its long-term plans. That hardly means satellite TV is dead, though. It just indicates they'll sell it off to somebody else. Right now, people still have Dish Network as an alternative option, even if DirecTV went offline tomorrow.
If the cable providers don't stop with the greed about capping monthly bandwidth usage, too? People will find it more economical to keep a cheap satellite subscription vs. chewing through their data allotment with nothing but streaming.
But in any case, satellite TV has the mobility advantage. You can slap a dish on your RV and roam around the country, and always have TV service wherever you go. That doesn't work with cable TV and is only spotty with an LTE cellular service.
What do you get from your antenna that is worth the while?
Well let's see. For me it's: local news, some sporting events, and re-runs of shows I enjoy (Frasier, That '70s Show, etc). Paired with a MythTV backend and several Raspberry Pi front-ends running Kodi as the PVR front-end, it's a really enjoyable setup for free, over-the-air content.
I thought the problem in Seattle was Director's Rules, where both the owner of the property adjacent to the node and 60 percent of other nearby property owners need to vote yes for any utility improvements, and not voting (such as an absentee landlord or a vacant property) was counted as a "no" vote. (Source: "What Happened to Seattle's Gigabit Network?" by Colin Wood)
So why would she want to get an expensive satellite TV option when she can do anything over a fairly decent wireless internet connection?
She wouldn't, but there are an awful lot of parts of the country where wireless is minimal or absent, and satellite is pretty much it. Not very many people in them, of course, but services like this have been a huge boon to RV'ers and hunting camps across the country. They will be sorely missed.
dish network does not have NFL ticket, MSG, yes, ESPN College Extra.
Is there any public, free, satellite TV? It sound like it would be a fun hobby and hopefully PBS / NASA / public government feeds/research-feeds/etc is out there as content
If you are living in the US, English only speaker and not a Jesus freak there is absolutely nothing.
Paper insulated wireline will support one old "TV" image on adsl. Not great HD. Not 4K.
That will remove the need to use profit on the next satellite.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Guess they are just screwed. I know you city dwellers that never leave the city, don't get why people live in "flyover country", but there are a TON of potential customers that will be out of all television. Most live too far away for over the air, now that all the signals are digital and their power to reach is very limited. I do a lot of traveling in the midwest. Satellite dishes are EVERYWHERE. Someone will come along to take over that market.
Dish, no doubt. In addition, as 5G rolls out it will be a viable option as well; and a lot cheaper to run than ghaving a satelite option. I think satelite TV will be dead in 5 years or so. As oteh roptions become more readily available compaiies will look to dump the costs assocuiated with satellite and won't care about the small fraction that lose TV all together. They'll wait until it is small enough to avoid a political backlash when people compalin the their representatives.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
But I compared them head to head and at the time with the Tivo Roamio OTA system, like only about $299 and included lifetime menu/guide service, it was a much better deal for me to hook to my antenna for all my OTA/DVR needs.
Program guide data is transmitted over the air for free. For $300 you could buy a four tuner home run and three separate 4k SBCs running Kodi.
Unless the TV provider encrypts all video on demand with HDCP/DTCP and the "copy never" flag.
I'm thinking a little of both but more the latter. Without the satellite service, nothing DirecTV did can't be handled by AT&T's existing infrastructure except "last mile" coverage and the ability to transparently scale to an infinite amount of clients.
See if you can get someone to come out and examine the actual phone pole. That was happening to me and they found out the Time Warner guy sabotaged the pole and clamped the entire neighborhood to 12 megabit shared.
Pay more to burn up your bandwidth. Can always upgrade to gigabit internet so that 4K is smooth like puddin'... oh, but that's also paying more to burn up your bandwidth. Cox does let you pay an extra $50/mo for unlimited tho!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Satellite TV doesn't run up against some ISP's bandwidth cap.
If I wanted to watch shit TV 24/7, 365 days a year I can do that.
This isn't an option for broadband connected streaming services.
Your local ISP ( via your wallet ) gets to determine just how much you get to watch.
If they find some competing service is cutting into their own revenue, they'll just lower the caps and exempt their own.
One of the reasons 4K hasn't taken off is because of how fast you'll hit your data caps.
8K ? Riiiiiiight. . . . Don't make me laugh. Never happen in the US.
TBH though, there really isn't much worth watching anymore anyway.
Maybe I'll go outside. Into the sunlight and see if I catch fire or not.
Self-imposed death though. There were better solutions available to cater to their core customers, and they decided to not rock the boat.
It's ok... competitors are bracing to take over. Great waste of money, ATT.
It's not inaccurate. Cable/Satellite providers don't recompress an uncompressed feed. They get the OTA-ready MPEG-2 transport stream. They may not add much in the way of additional compression artifacts, but it's inevitable.
I liked my DirecTV when I had it. It was digital and so much better than the crappy analog cable I could get by default, and half the price of the digital cable option. Then after a couple years it integrated with Tivo and was awesome, vastly better to any other set top box DVR I've seen. I only got rid of it because over time I was watching less and less television while the price had slowly been creeping up.
You almost do need a DVR with it. I haven't tried it because when I got rid of my satellite it meant that the DVR went with it. I was watching so little television on broadcast channels that it wasn't worth buying a brand new DVR just for that purpose.
The problem with broadcast is that you just don't get a lot of stuff, and what you do get is on fixed times and without repeats at alternate times. So if you get stuck in traffic then you miss your show. Even back in the 90s I was using a VHS to automatically record stuff. Ie, if you want to see the Big Bang Theory, example only, then tbhe new episodes are only on for one hour on one day of the week. Even the extremely crappy CBS now, the worst streaming service ever, is better than that for watching TBBT. (well almost, since it won't play on my computer at all anymore, even with all filters blocked and privacy disabled)
I tried dropping traditional TV and at the same time I upgraded to a gigabit line. I could make sure no other devices in the house where connecting to the Internet or each other, shut most everything down, and yet... I still got poor streaming quality at random intervals. I called and talked to my benevolent provider and they suggested that, in my sparsely populated area, that there was interference. The closest neighbors, over 150 feet away, are using the default channels on their company provided routers, while I used a WiFi analyzer to select my channel for my own personally purchased WiFi router based on it being the quietest. We will ignore every speed test that showed me getting nearly 970 megabit per second throughput to wired devices and 640 megabits to wireless devices that were run 802.11AC. The interference apparently only struck while watching Netflix, Hulu and Sling and never while I worked with them... Fucking liars were throttling and wouldn't admit it. A mostly empty gigabit line couldn't stream HD quality from Netflix consistently. Things have improved now that I have TV service again, and they gave me a hell of a deal to come back. Huh...
IIRC, AT&T was strangling Uverse so that they could force more people onto Direct TV thereby freeing bandwith. Now they are doing a 180? Strange!
The fact is, once you have a dish, using the service is free. A lot of people are using pay tv services with proprietary receivers, but nowadays tv sets with a terriestrial and a satellite tuner are available and not too expensive. Don't know in the US side, but in Europe with Astra and Eutelsat satellites there a re a lot of interesting channels, normally in lots of different languages, but is reasonable to find some sports events, news, cartoons and serials to watch. Actually I startet to watch satellite TV while learning English and French. For pay TV cable television is not very different from satellite, and what happens is that people is leaving pay tv service, because they are not very interesting anymore and bad commercial practices make it worse.
People in BOTH places who want to use force to get what is not rightfully theirs can all go f*** off. Rural should not subsidize urban. Urban should not subsidize rural. No one should subsidize anyone. Only then do we have a chance to evolve toward a society based on voluntary interaction rather than force, theft, and murder writ large.
Nonaggression works!
I"m not that familiar with Kodi, the only brushes I've had with that, were folks using it to download illegally, or tuning in live channels from russia, etc....didn't know it could be used with an OTA signal, etc.
I played in the past with MythTV, and it was fun, but it was a PITA to keep up and running.
When I want to set DVR settings or channel surf, I don't want to have to grab out the keyboard, and have to do a lot of effort for things, I just want a 'normal' remote control, simple and easy guide to look at visually, click a button to record shows that may be coming in in the future (longer than 24 hours...like a month in advance), etc.
And it has to be simple enough for a non-tech visitor or house guest could use readily without having to be sat down and show how to do a lot of commands, especially a keyboard.
I have disposable income, so convenience for something as utilitarian is easy for me to weigh as a major factor.
I used to have the patience for doing stuff like that in the past, but these days, I've got plenty of other things for my time, and I just want quick, simple for TV.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I can't wait to be watching TV and constant-
Buffering...
Buffering...
Buffering...
My job involves maintaining commercial TV systems. Most of the sites have some combination of sat/cable channels, IPTV, streaming services, plus local channels over antenna. The clients typically want the major network affiliates - NBC, ABC, FOX, etc - so I don't see too much interesting in their local lineups.
However, I am confident saying this. Your antenna matters bigtime. Especially with the digital switchover and FCC moving spectrum allocations around. I don't want to recommend a particular model (haven't done enough comparison) but you might spend $100+ on a solid DTV antenna.
If you are near a majorish metro area you should pick up at LEAST 10 channels on antenna. Probably more like 30. There is a lookup tool you can use to check the reception:
https://www.tvfool.com/?option...
You put in an address and the height of the antenna and it will give you a list of TV stations you can pick up, plus which direction to point the antenna... it takes into account topography and all kinds of neat stuff.
Our local DSLAM is in a locked cabinet, with the fiber to it running underground. I suspect it's a problem with the local loop (also underground), but given that this is the same AT&T that cut my service off by removing the modem's MAC address from the ACL, and took a week to figure it out, I'm not putting a lot of faith in their ability to fix it.
This whole area is technologically challenged. A couple of years ago, after bugging the power company repeatedly about constant outages, they found that the lines from the transformer were shot. So, because they apparently couldn't run down to Home Depot and rent a Ditch Witch, they left the new cabling from the transformer pedestal strung 70' across my yard to the meter, with some plastic taped around the meter and little pink flags along the cable route. It was like that for weeks until they could get a trencher out there and got it buried. Still have the photos. I had to call the yard guy and tell him not to mow until it was fixed 'cause I didn't want a dead yard guy outside.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I wish att would just shut up and provide a big fat pipe like they are suppose. They are always 10 years + behind the curve. Innovation goes to die at att.
Sounds great... if you have a wide enough pipe with which to receive.
You can stream video even over ADSL 1 connections at acceptable quality. You don't need something truly fantastic. Your biggest concern isn't bandwidth, it's data caps. Areas most dependent on satellite typically also depend on crappy expensive ISPs with low caps.