Am I screwed when it comes to OTA TV?

[bsruther]

Son and his wife were down for thanksgiving. He hooked up his chromecast to the basement TV. We watched Skyfall and the HD was much better than through the wii, it was actually better than anything I'd ever seen on cable too.

I'll be getting one of these things, two if we put a TV in the stove room.

 

[fbelec]

ota tv doesn't work so well here with a attic ant. few 3 to 4 years back yahoo was making a box to hookup to any tv like a cable box but didn't need to buy a service. the box would get everything from the internet. i can't seem to find anything on these boxes right now. does anybody know anything about this. as it stand you can go to any one of the cable channels website and watch your favorite show for free. only catch is the up to date show will be 1 to 7 day behind. not a bad trade in my book.

 

[firefighterjake]

I just set up PlayOn and must say I am disappointed in the visual quality. The compression is huge making text very fuzzy. We have a very fast internet connection on a fast computer and get fine quality when watching something like the Daily Show on an HD monitor, but the PlayOn version was much poorer. Is this correctable. All of the user settings are at Max.

I've noticed the quality varies with the PlayOn channel . . . most of the networks are pretty good, I thought Comedy Channel's reception wasn't bad (not up to par with DirecTV's HD though) and some channels -- especially scripts are most definitely not HD quality. I figure the trade off for me is more TV shows to watch at a lower price . . . and lower quality.

The flip side is Netflix and Hulu programs have been very good through the Roku.

I assume you have a Roku with a HD connection vs. a component hook up.

 

[firefighterjake]

ota tv doesn't work so well here with a attic ant. few 3 to 4 years back yahoo was making a box to hookup to any tv like a cable box but didn't need to buy a service. the box would get everything from the internet. i can't seem to find anything on these boxes right now. does anybody know anything about this. as it stand you can go to any one of the cable channels website and watch your favorite show for free. only catch is the up to date show will be 1 to 7 day behind. not a bad trade in my book.

Sounds similar to what Roku and Chromecast are offering these days . . . the ability to get streamed TV through the various offerings on the internet . . . just all in one convenient place.

 

[fbelec]

thanks i'll look those up. yahoo was charging $69.00 for the box and that was it. no other charges.

 

[richg]

I tried to get OTA TV two years ago.....it was a complete failure as terrain is blocking signals. I wound up going with the "Broadcast Basic" package from Disablevision which is $10.00 per month. Throw in three Rokus and Netflix, and the monthly cost for TV is $22.00. Depending on your location, there is a service called Aereo which streams broadcast stations for $8.00 per month. It can be ported into a Roku.

 

[begreen]

I've noticed the quality varies with the PlayOn channel . . . most of the networks are pretty good, I thought Comedy Channel's reception wasn't bad (not up to par with DirecTV's HD though) and some channels -- especially scripts are most definitely not HD quality. I figure the trade off for me is more TV shows to watch at a lower price . . . and lower quality.

The flip side is Netflix and Hulu programs have been very good through the Roku.

I assume you have a Roku with a HD connection vs. a component hook up.

It probably looks good on a 720P HD set, but it's pretty crappy compared to full 1920x1080 HD due to up-rezzing of compression artifacts. We tried several channels and found that it was much sharper to just go directly to that website and watch videos there than via PlayOn.

 

[Dave A.]

So far my local cable has still not scrambled local channels, but am pretty sure it's coming. The local ABC channel in HD was dropped about 2 weeks ago (can still get it in SD in 4:3, not as enjoyable watching the helicopter shots and crime scenes on the news as in HD).

In the last few years I've had my HDTV, it's gone from everything available except premium cable channels via clear QAM to only a few cables like homeshopping, local govt, weather and CSPAN and the local channels from a couple of metro areas (I could not receive with one antenna, if even all of those from one area would work for everything I presently watch). For awhile they were reassigning the channels every 6 mos or so but it's been constant for a year or so up till now. But the drop of the ABC affiliate in HD seems like a big change is in the works.

Thing is I never watch live TV. I always time shift. Either with an older SD dvr with dvd recorder and HDD (for some DIY shows on a PBS sub SD channel CreateTV), or for HD with a dual tuner Hauppauge computer card. I've just finished collecting Burns and Allen and Jack Benny so I wont miss that channel. But am on the final (fourth) season of Bilko and want the rest of that. Once everything is scrambled I'd have to rent tuner boxes for each device and I'm sure they'd be a nightmare to use for changing channels with time shifting programming, and am not about to pay the monthly charges for the devices anyway.

Since they dropped the ABC channel (I've been using only for local news), I've been going to the website to follow the news stories and weather. That seems to be the future when I lose the rest of local TV.

I do use XBMC (free media player) for watching my recorded media on the big TV from the computer (HTPC) and there is an add-on type program for XBMC called NAVI-X which allows me to watch certain live cable channels and other things like old TV series and movies, which I don't even have time for lately, but it's not easy to record or time shift any of that, it's basically streaming, though some of it you actually cache and can pause, backup and skip forward (same idea as what I do with time shifting on the dvr). But that's all via other user input. So the links might stop working after a few months and you have to go looking for new links.

Also there are the add-ons for Apple podcasts, youtube, pbs, cbsnews, foxnews, filmOn, et.al where you basically access the website archives with a little more control (use the XBMC player) to play the files from these sites controlling them with your remote from the couch and watching when you want.

I use the PBS add on a lot like during pledge periods, the local PBS will pre-empt certain shows (like This Old House for weeks at a time). Go to the PBS add on and watch the show from there.

But of course it is better to be able to time shift on your own equipment. With these sites, they sometimes don't keep the programs around for more than a day with some of them (that have daily programs like news-- for example Rachel Maddow, they only keep the last show on there at a time then delete it when they upload the new one.