Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

I was in Best Buy this afternoon, and the Verizon salesman was trying
to convince me that FIOS is better than any other TV reception. Of
course, he wasn't aware that digital signals could go over-the-air, so
I don't have too much faith in his spiel.

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
In article
,
NadCixelsyd wrote:

A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

Cablecos typically get a fiber feed directly from the station in
question.

It's been a long time since a local cable company took in OTA and
redistributed that (well, some Sinclair shenaningans notwithstanding).

Many cable franchise areas still get the local stations from a OTA
antenna source. More of them are running land lines to the local
stations, but OTA reception is still common for smaller cable operators
and smaller cities. Cheaper to put up a set of antennas on the roof of
the head end or wired cable facility than to run a fiber line to the
station.

Alan F

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

NadCixelsyd wrote:
A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

I was in Best Buy this afternoon, and the Verizon salesman was trying
to convince me that FIOS is better than any other TV reception. Of
course, he wasn't aware that digital signals could go over-the-air, so
I don't have too much faith in his spiel.

Verizon does provide a good HD picture, but all they do is pass
through what they get from the source. For the local digital stations,
Verizon passes through the broadcast feed from the station unchanged
with all the HD and SD sub-channels. Verizon puts the signal from two
19.4 Mpbs ATSC stations onto one 38.8 Mbps QAM channel. The picture
quality of the broadcast HD stations and what you get on Verizon will be
the same. people have directly compared the OTA versus Verizon feed for
the local stations and found them to be identical. Not so for some
bandwidth starved cable companies. When I was with Adelphia, they had 3
of the local Washington DC HD stations as sub-channels on one QAM channel.

Same goes for the national HD cable channels. Verizon puts no more
than 2 full bandwidth HD channels per QAM channel. Comcast has taken a
lot of heat recently for re-compressing the HD feed for national HD
cable channels and squeezing 3 HD per single QAM channel with, umm, less
than great results. Some national cable channels - Universal-HD,
Discovery-HD notably - provide a reduced bit rate from their uplink
source (saves on satellite bandwidth costs), so Verizon passes through
the reduced bit rate picture, but there is nothing Verizon can do about
that.

Verizon Fios does provide the best overall HD picture because they do
not re-compress or re-process what they get from local stations and
national cable companies. Movies on HDNet Movies look superb. But
Verizon has been lagging behind in number of HD channels. Once Verizon
completes the removal of the 40 analog channels they never should
bothered with and the upgrade of the central offices to provide 135
digital QAM channels for live TV signals, they will have enough
bandwidth to match or exceed any other service provider. BTW, Fort
Wayne, IN will be the first market to see the long awaited HD expansion
with ~ 27 new HD channels on June 30. Oregon is scheduled for July 9.

Alan F

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:28:36 -0700, NadCixelsyd wrote:

A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

It's the same ATSC signal. I have no clue what verizon does with it, if
anything, other than convert it to fiber. Of course what you recieve
depends on how good your reception and receiving equipment is.

I was in Best Buy this afternoon, and the Verizon salesman was trying to
convince me that FIOS is better than any other TV reception. Of course,
he wasn't aware that digital signals could go over-the-air, so I don't
have too much faith in his spiel.

Anyone that believes anything a salesman tells them......:-)

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

"A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family
and their pets watching TV after FIOS has
been installed. Everyone is going, 'WOW'."

ALL the idiots in TV commercials go "Wow!" after using their sponsors'
products.

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

"Alan F" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
In article
,
NadCixelsyd wrote:

A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

Cablecos typically get a fiber feed directly from the station in
question.

It's been a long time since a local cable company took in OTA and
redistributed that (well, some Sinclair shenaningans notwithstanding).

Many cable franchise areas still get the local stations from a OTA
antenna source. More of them are running land lines to the local stations,
but OTA reception is still common for smaller cable operators and smaller
cities. Cheaper to put up a set of antennas on the roof of the head end or
wired cable facility than to run a fiber line to the station.

Alan F

Retransmission of an OTA signal is pretty much limited to Mom/Pop cable
companies. The local Comcast head end here does not even have a TV antenna;
just microwave and large sat antennas.

Tam

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message


A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets
watching TV after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is
going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I receive is
the same one that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from
my local TV stations. Or does my local TV station pass a
different signal to the cable/ satellite/FIOS providers?

IME the best HDTV you can get is when there is one video stream per 6 MHz
channel. This mode of operation is becoming increasingly rare. Cable
operators can only duplicate this, or do less.

AFAIK digital processors that reduce the information content and therefore
the bandwidth of digital video streams are relatively inexpensive and very
widely used.

For example I was over my daughter's house watching one of the Red Wings
playoff games on their cable system. The puck tended to disappear when it
was moving fast. Classic symptom of reduced MPEG stream bandwidth. I
watched the next game at home using a HDTV card running off an indoor
antenna. I could follow the puck, no sweat.

Thing is that OTA bandwidth is arguably the most precious resource of all. I
notice that some local stations are adding more secondary services. That
bandwidth can only come from 1 place.

I suspect that eventually all cats will become black. IOW, all providers
will sacrifice bandwidth in favor of providing more services with lower
video quality.

This all reminds me of the early days of Cable internet. I saw response time
and download speeds back then that I can only dream of today. Ditto with
satellite radio. In the early days when they ran only a fraction of the
number of channels they run now, it actually sounded pretty good.

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

Tam wrote:

Retransmission of an OTA signal is pretty much limited to Mom/Pop cable
companies. The local Comcast head end here does not even have a TV
antenna; just microwave and large sat antennas.

comcast has antennas on their 'satellite farm' down the street from me
for their local reception. I am currently on OTA. By the way, was
watching pbs in analog the other day and could barely make out the
picture, switched to digital feed through my digital stream box and the
picture was perfect.

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

In article NadCixelsyd writes:
A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

I was in Best Buy this afternoon, and the Verizon salesman was trying
to convince me that FIOS is better than any other TV reception. Of
course, he wasn't aware that digital signals could go over-the-air, so
I don't have too much faith in his spiel.

That is where you take him to the OTA converter boxes and ask what
they are for.

Alan

Is OTA reception the best there is?
 

I'm not sure if this is the type answer you want, but the best picture will
be from a Blu-Ray player and disk. Netflix rents the disks at no additional
charge over the DVD disks. Not all titles are in Blu-Ray yet.


"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message
...
A Verizon FIOS commercial shows a family and their pets watching TV
after FIOS has been installed. Everyone is going, "WOW".

Then it occurred to me that the OTA signal I recieve is the same one
that Verizon is receiving (isn't it?) from my local TV stations. Or
does my local TV station pass a different signal to the cable/
satellite/FIOS providers?

I was in Best Buy this afternoon, and the Verizon salesman was trying
to convince me that FIOS is better than any other TV reception. Of
course, he wasn't aware that digital signals could go over-the-air, so
I don't have too much faith in his spiel.