I'm in southern NH, about 50 miles north of Boston. I have an antenna that gets all the Boston stations, but since I'm in range and own Apple stuff, I decided to give it a try. It works very well, good picture, no pixelating or buffering, and the interface is easy to use. Available channels are: WBZ (CBS), WCVB (ABC), WBTS (NBC), WFXT (FOX), WHDH (Independent), WLVI (CW), and WGBH (PBS). I fear that these guys will be sued out of existence like Locast, but I'm hoping I'm wrong and that they make it.
Once upon a time in America, OTA broadcasters were grateful to cable TV providers because they enabled viewers in fringe reception areas (for a minimal cost) to watch these broadcasters' programming that otherwise would be impossible to receive with an OTA antenna. Early cable TV companies (which often were mere mom-and-pop operations) increased OTA broadcasters' audience size for their advertising clients. But then one dark day the FCC allowed these OTA broadcasters (owned by huge media conglomerates) to extract fees from ordinary cable TV customers (via their local cable TV provider) for the privilege of receiving OTA channels on their cable TV system. These retransmission fees extracted from consumers soon became a huge cash cow for these billion dollar media conglomerates. If our goal is to return to the prior arrangement of cable TV providers offering OTA channels without re-transmission fees, would that require an act of Congress, or would it merely require a ruling from the FCC Board of Directors? If it's the FCC Board that decides the retransmission fee issue, hopefully a pro-consumer majority of appointees on the board (**cough cough...Democrats...cough cough**) will make the right decision.
The truth is: The FCC is not going to do anything about DRM. USA Congress is not going to do anything about DRM. TV stations control the Fake News about their TV business model so no help here. It is going to be a big long DRM fight that we can only delay for now by not buying ATSC 3.0 tuner boxes. Tell the people about the easy action they can do by themselves to stop/delay DRM on ATSC 3.0 TV without any effort. Do not buy OTA DRM ATSC 3.0 TVs or 3.0 tuners. This is a checkmate win because the FCC can not turn off ATSC 1.0 TV Stations until enough DRM 3.0 tuners have been bought and accepted. This is going to take many years. No one has solve the FCC problem of no government money for free DRM 3.0 TV tuner boxes because 1.0 TV turners and recorders will not work after that TV Station switches to 3.0 TV broadcasts.
Absolutely masterful presentation of complex legal, financial, and technical issues explained in a way that laymen can easily understand. Nobody does this better than Lon, and I'm not a Lon fangirl, because I hate his infomercials that look like product reviews, even with all the disclaimers. Lon could/should be a technology analyst for major media organizations, but I guess he wants the freedom of working for himself.
I really don't have my hopes up. Even though they're complying with what Locast did not, they will still see immense legal trouble. But, I hope they'll be able to persevere.
All OTA DRM encrypted ATSC 3.0 NEXTGEN-TV tuner boxes are preprogrammed to stop working for DRM depending on which certification program (10, 15 or 30 years) they have. IMO. Why?
I used Aereo in Boston from its start until the Supreme Court shut it down ten years ago. I don't use Apple anything, so I can't give this service a try.
Cord cutters, keep in mind we find great technology like renting/ buying dvd 📀 , and this industry all way fines a way to destroy the latest technology. They don't care about what we. want.
According to a quick Google search the UK TV license is about $200/year. That means if you have cable, satellite or a live tv streaming subscription in the US you are likely paying double that for your local channels.
I wouldn't pay 32 cents a month for local broadcast channels. I damn sure wouldn't pay 33 dollars a month for the propaganda being spilled forth and a commercial break every 7 minutes.
I am rural and can get a number of stations on my antenna. I think the programming is pretty rotten anyway but... Wow. Here we have to listen to commercials, which pays for the Free TV, but now we will have to pay even more to get FREE TV. This is the end of TV completely for me. Just not doing it, and TV programming these days is trash anyway. My TVs will be relegated to use as monitors for my computers and DVD players. I have a lot of DVDs and can buy a lot more for $3 each or less. Maybe I will expand using Ham Radio somehow....
OTA TV transmission is stupid. It requires a large amount of power to transmit OTA due to inverse square law. I don't know anyone who doesn't have high speed internet.
I'll just keep using the shady IPTV services thst give me tons of live TV and on-demand content for $5/mo instead. I'm bot going to continue to pay money to these "legal" crooks.
Judges should stay out of it....the broadcasters should allow streaming live channels... because there are areas that antenna will not work 😮... now DRM will make reception worse... digital had made reception so bad You can not get the next town 😮
It's almost like these broadcasters don't want people watching their content. People want to stream things now. It's like when the music industry refused to get with the times and embrace downloading music. Just let people enjoy the content how they prefer to consume it. The networks should band together and make their own streaming service. They could run targeted ads to users and probably make a lot more ad revenue. But they are too blind or stupid to come up with any good ideas. Great video Lon!
Looks like you may need to drive slightly east to see if you can get the service to work on your iphone. Thanks for letting us know, going to check it out.
This will work with a VPN set to Boston as I am using it. Patreon is now being blocked in several countries due to the legality of it in those countries.
This would never happen here in Canada where some of the incumbents wanted to get rid of OTA channels. CRTGC put the nixed in that but for a vast part of the incumbents get their ways with fees for TV, Internet and cell service.
Locast had a great idea 💡, for years we Americans have been asking why can't I pick an choose 🤔 different states to watch. Let me the viewer controls different local channels (bundle) netflix is too expensive, hulu, disney, cable. Cable industry will definitely be the big loser in the future.
Thank you again for the great content. On the not for profit ruling, that seems to not hold true. Religions accept donations from their members, amass funds, build more churches, and collect MORE donations. The Locast decision seems to be targeted and likely paid for by the plaintiffs.
The difference is that religions don't retransmit broadcast television :). The law specifically says cable systems can't retransmit without paying licensing fees so any non-profit that falls under this exemptioon needs to make sure it's not a cable system as defined.
Interesting. So if it's individual users/community groups operating their own 'instances' and collaborating in open source, that could work. thanks lon, this is interesting to think about
$32.75 for local TV stations? That’s ridiculous. It would be great if cable companies could do like Dish does and provides a way to add a TV antenna to your receiver and you can save the local channel fee of $12/mo.
It sounds like any company trying to do this would need to deploy the network in full and build out as much as possible then go public and start providing service then just maintain into the future. When the time come that they need to expand they would need to creat another non profit and build that service off of TV+ network and etc……..
@GeorgeVCohea-dw7ou Oh, believe me, I already know. It was rhetorical. Netflix had a big impact on piracy by making it simply to get content. But now the streaming wars, with their 9,000 different services, means people are once again turning to piracy because it's simply a better experience.
@@4ryan42 It's not like these channels are lacking in the streams, but for whatever reason, they are trying to hold onto the dying cable television revenue. At a certain point, most probably much sooner than later, the loss of subscribers will become unsustainable for their tradition of demanding an increase. Cable companies will have to say, _no way,_ and opt for their unjustified threat of a black out. When the cable companies don't bother coming back to the table, the local broadcasters will be stuck without its greatest leverage tool and without a base to demand that their cable provider put them back on air! They most certainly need to look learn that the market has changed, and the gravy train is empty and needs to haul something else. Aereo and LoCast were correct all along, but the broadcasters delighted in killing the solution to their near future survival. I don't see people subscribing to multiple local streaming services, and this means, that there won't be a real alternative to the cable television revenue that they had been overinflating for decades. Cable companies were monopolistic and greasy, but local broadcasters are substantially worse. Good riddance to both!
@@4ryan42 Without cable television revenue, local broadcasters will struggle to survive, and it will absolutely, sooner rather than later, get to the point where cable companies have to tell them, _no way_ to fee increases. There tradition of demanding an increase and getting their way is long past unsustainable, and a blackout will no longer result in any significant customer base being capable of budging their monopolistic cable provider. Cable companies may have been terrible monopolies, but local broadcasters were their atrocious monopoly provider too. The whole lot of them will have to reap what they sowed, and pretty much no one will bother caring to join their pity party. Customers were ripped off for decades and may actually enjoy their meltdowns. This is not even uncivilised nor unwarranted. Aereo and LoCast were the answer, but local broadcasters delighted in destroying the obvious solution to their own impending survival.
I believe piracy is theft & stealing. The entertainment & sports industry is affected by piracy every year. I personally would not be comfortable with piracy. People have a moral & ethical decision to make if they choose or not choose piracy.
Lon, great easy to understand articulate interpretation. Your knowledge and insight on this and other topics of related importance is to be commended and is greatly appreciated. Much continued success.
Hi Lon, sterling work & great vid. It's a pity LocalTV+ is so late to this (unless ATSC3.0 goes away?). There shouldn't be very much cost & overhead, perhaps one volunteer, the SW designer is also the network manager? I could see these nonprofits popping up in other techie cities? I have a pet theory that broabcasters said to the gov "If you don't include DRM in ATSC3.0 we'll shut off our feeds to OTA", what do you think? What would be the cost to broadcasters if they did that?
They actually threatened to shutdown their broadcasts during the Aereo situation ! It could very well end up that way if things don't go their way on DRM.
We 🇺🇸 have a capitalist democracy correct? Unless it's an unwanted product or service, one provider exiting the market is opportunity for new or existing providers to learn from the perceived successes and failures of the exiting organization(s). Still, people want a moat around their castle
@@de1mos211 I guess it really boils down to what the FCC would do with the spectrum if the broadcasters stopped broadcasting. If they sell it to cellular providers that of course would destroy the market for OTA content completely.
What if you took an ATSC 3.0 channel and put over ip unaltered with encryption and all? Then the end user would need something to take that stream and put it back on a coaxial that their TV could use. Maybe that would be too bandwidth intensive.
That would probably be ok - would use the same amount of bandwidth as the transmission signal (not much) and would require less computing resources as you wouldn't need to do any transcoding.
A way around this is to not decrypt the signal but rebroadcast the encrypted signal and let the free market provide a way for a consumer to decrypt the signal themselves.
