Oleg
Bellsouth Fastaccess
Premium
join:2003-12-08
Birmingham, AL | reply to jmn1207
Re: Rural General Suckitude
This days everyone has digital cable or satellite anyway. |
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jmn1207
Premium
join:2000-07-19
Reston, VA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| said by Oleg  :This days everyone has digital cable or satellite anyway. No, 12% do not, according to what is being reported. |
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DrModem
Premium
join:2006-10-19
USA | That's the same percentage of people who (supposedly) still have dialup, but no one caters to that class.
Why should this be any different just because it's TV? |
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jmn1207
Premium
join:2000-07-19
Reston, VA
·Verizon FIOS
| said by DrModem :That's the same percentage of people who (supposedly) still have dialup, but no one caters to that class. Why should this be any different just because it's TV? Well, we could at least get a crummy, snowy reception of Jeopardy if Uncle Bill, with a metal plate in his head, sat on the love seat near the window. It was something, just like dial up. Better than nothing at all, perhaps, or maybe losing TV is the best thing that will ever happen. With no TV, one might expect to see increasing levels of reading comprehension in those areas. |
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BabyBear
Keep wise ...with Night-Owl
join:2007-01-11
| reply to DrModem
said by DrModem :That's the same percentage of people... ...but no one caters to that class. Hasn't stopped Apple.  |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
 ·Hollis Hosting
 ·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
| reply to Oleg
said by Oleg :everyone has digital cable or satellite anyway. As jmn1207 posted about 12% of us rely on over the air transmission.
Conversion to DTV is actually increasing number of people using over the air antennas. OTA typically has better picture quality then Cable or sat because it is not recompressed to reduce bandwidth usage. In addition in these poor economic times I'd be willing to bet some folk are going back to OTA to save money.
/tom |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Hollis Hosting
·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
| reply to DrModem
said by DrModem :That's the same percentage of people who ... have dialup, but no one caters to that class. An analogy would be if dialup was being discontinued and you did not have broadband access you are no longer able to access the Internet.
/tom |
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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·Comcast
| reply to tschmidt
said by tschmidt : OTA typically has better picture quality then Cable or sat because it is not recompressed to reduce bandwidth usage. That is not always true as these 2 Philadelphia, PA channels indicate. Check out the video bitrate column.
CBS isn't compressing and has only 1 digital channel to use their bandwidth.
But ABC cut up its bandwidth to squeeze in more sub channels.
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Ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk? |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Hollis Hosting
·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
| said by TKJunkMail : That is not always true as these 2 Philadelphia, PA channels indicate. Sorry, guess I was not clear. Stations can and often do broadcast multiple sub-channels.
What I meant was programs broadcast over the air are often recompressed by Cable and Sat providers to squeeze more channels into their channel capacity reducing quality compared to what one gets with OTA.
/tom |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
 ·PHONE POWER
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T CallVantage
·Time Warner VOIP
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to TKJunkMail
8.6mbps MPEG-2? Yuck!
Problem is, cable or sat is going to use WPVI's 8.6mbps ABC broadcast as their source. So no matter where you go, it's going to, at best, be that same 8.6mbps crappy quality, perhaps with even more artifacts introduced if it's transcoded to MPEG-4 or pushed through a cable company compressor to guarantee WPVI doesn't change their mind and up the data rate. It's unlikely that TV providers are going to go through the trouble to get their encoding equipment installed at a point prior to being compressed for OTA transmission.
You have, however, perfectly illustrated why I cringe when people say OTA is superior because it's "uncompressed". As you've shown it may be compressed quite severely! Many cable systems just remux the same quality data onto a QAM stream.
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AT&T U-Hearse
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utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT | reply to BabyBear
Hasn't stopped Apple. |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Hollis Hosting
·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
1 edit | reply to djrobx
said by djrobx : I cringe when people say OTA is superior because it's "uncompressed". Agree, most people don't realize an uncompressed 1080i or 720p raw bit stream is over a Gigabit per second. Lossy compression is used to reduce it to around 20 mbps.
Compression can be used to reduced data rate to anything desired. However, greater the level of compression the poorer the image/motion quality.
/tom |
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RayW
Premium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
clubs:
·XMission
| reply to tschmidt
said by tschmidt :Conversion to DTV is actually increasing number of people using over the air antennas. OTA typically has better picture quality then Cable or sat because it is not recompressed to reduce bandwidth usage. In addition in these poor economic times I'd be willing to bet some folk are going back to OTA to save money. /tom My neighbor put up an outside antenna just for that reason, much better signal than Dish or Comcast, but he kept Dish for the extra programming he gets.
We and a few of our neighbors who have gotten the boxes have seen a bit better signal on the digital modes than with the analog. But the digital modes do have some odd display formats (vertical letter box vice horizontal?), but that may just be the wife not wanting to adjust for the different modes with the control. (caveat: I do not watch TV very much, very little worth watching any more)
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. |
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mr_slick
join:2003-05-22
Lynnwood, WA
| reply to Oleg
Re: Everyone has cable
I don't-- OTA all the way!
I do have FiOS Internet however 
**actually i havent had cable for about 15 years once i discovered the content choices over the air, on dvds and via the internet are far superior to paying for cable
i always just surfed through the channels with cable anyways (hoping to find something good!)
--i would however reconsider cable if they offered an al-a-cart service of just a few channels (like 2 or 3!) |
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thecptrgod
join:2008-04-03
Madison, WI
1 edit | reply to Oleg
Re: Rural General Suckitude
said by Oleg :This days everyone has digital cable or satellite anyway. Um.. not everyone. I still watch TV over-the-air with rabbit ears. Oh and I'm IN Madison and still have problems with the DTVs here. (Approx. 10 miles from the 15/57 tower and approx. 12 from the "Supertower.")
-Adam |
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Mactron
el camino Real
Premium
join:2001-12-16
CM94sv
| reply to Oleg
said by Oleg : This days everyone has digital cable or satellite anyway. This These days everyone has YOU have digital cable or satellite anyway.
Corrected. Lucky you... 
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If only the Verizon CSRs worked this well. |
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wcnghj
join:2008-05-01 | reply to tschmidt
I would switch to DTV if we could get signal. I wonder if we could get a big enough antenna to get signal 70 miles away. |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Hollis Hosting
·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
| said by wcnghj :I wonder if we could get a big enough antenna to get signal 70 miles away. 70 miles may require Herculean effort, unless you or transmitter are very high.
Check out the TVfool site and see what estimated signal strength is. If estimated signal is better then about -110 dBm you have a chance. Try modeling at different heights. But putting up a tower is expensive. At that distance weather will be a factor so no matter how good the antenna you may not be able to get good signal 24/7/365.
Good Luck
/tom |
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