> Does anyone watch scheduled television anymore except local news and sportsball?

Yes, especially for folks not at home. It’s common to see multicast used in places where internet bandwidth is constrained, but network maybe not so much.

For example, maybe you have an older hotel, or a cruise ship or a hospital or a retirement home. It’s expensive to just buy better internet backhaul, and it’s expensive to retrofit those rooms, and you can lose a lot of money for every day the room is down.

But, with multicast, you can use the legacy internet connection and the legacy wiring in the room, but easily/cheaply ensure every room has a working TV with full broadcast TV or satellite TV, and anyone watching that is not pulling 5mbps to 10mbps from your internet backhaul.

It also all works from a single remote control, and it doesn’t ask you to log into anything, it doesn’t need your cell phone for anything, etc.

It’s niche, but there’s a number of places where it makes sense.