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dylan604 • today at 4:34 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

You can have live TV with a cheap antenna with a better image quality than any streaming platform.


Replies

toast0 • today at 5:25 PM

> You can have live TV with a cheap antenna with a better image quality than any streaming platform.

OTA video quality isn't that great anymore. ATSC is 20mbps per RF channel, but most broadcasters multiplex video streams into that and use mpeg-2. ATSC3 can do more (or less) bits on the same RF channel, and uses a better codec, but at least for me, tuning channels is even slower than ATSC, half of the broadcasters won't let me use their signals, and the audio codec is difficult to use.

Admitedly, my tvs don't have atsc3 tuners which would have helped, but I bought a network tuner from the same vendor as my atsc tuners and ended up wishing I hadn't.

When I can watch the same event over the air or via a streaming service, my expectation is quality would be better with streaming, but I'll use OTA cause it gives me slightly better feels. Between interference from low band LTE and 5G on refarmed spectrum, reception issues from foliage and airplanes, and technical issues at the broadcasters, I don't know that reliability is higher either... But it feels wasteful to use bandwidth for something that's already being beamed to my house.

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ghaff • today at 4:40 PM

I can not pick up anything with an antenna, cheap or otherwise.

I'm at the foot of of a hill that's between me and where broadcast antennas are 40-50 miles away. I had no TV when I moved in until Comcast eventually put in cable. The seller had even tried putting an antenna up in the attic which did no good. So I would need to subscribe to a live TV streaming service which isn't worth it for me as I don't really watch sports much.

But I'm glad you're so confident of your knowledge of my situation.

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