OTA DTV hits ONE%

I don't know. Seems I have gone full circle.
I remember only OTA analog. Then in the late 70's early 80's our
town, Tucson, AZ (pre cable) offered a small "special" curved antenna
that would pick up HBO only. Wow.
Then cable..........
I got tired of the various lines and poor signal on various channels.
Got DishNetwork. Every channel clear.... WOW (still had to have an
antenna for locals)
Then more satellites and locals on dish...... all clear. SD

I got my new Vizio and just for kicks hooked up my old roof ant that
had been unused for a few years. WOW! HD to the max..... Real OTA
HD.

I have dropped my locals off Dish. And reduced my Dish selection. Now
only $19.99 per mo plus tax.
I am extremely happy and thinking about dropping dish all
together.......
my 2¢ YB


On Nov 16, 5:37 pm, "Tantalust" wrote:
"Bob Miller" wrote:

Habitual, hopeless and pointless/childish arguing, with the *perfectly*
inappropriate crowd, (mostly OTA ATSC HDTV proponents), no less. As per
usual.

It's been eight years (!!) of your running with this compulsion, a common
symptom of your ongoing obsessional-delusional mental illness.

In article Larry Bud writes:
Lots of good reasons for OTA. So why are broadcasters not telling the
public about them?

Because Bob, nobody ****ing needs to watch TV over the air. I don't
know one person that doesn't have cable or satellite, HD or not.

I do. Apparently you don't get out much. :-)

Also, what of someone who gets local channels and networks over the air,
and gets one or two specialty channels from satellite? (such as MPEG FTA
or c-band)? How do you count them? They definitely get their TV over the
air.

Alan

It's not that the penetration is only one percent, but that I'm in the
99th percentile ahead of everyone else.

Seriously, the only reason that the number is not higher is that
digital and HDTV demand has been marketed by the cable and satellite
companies, from point of sale to television ads. They want the
consumer to buy a new set to replace their analog, and they want the
monthly service fees. Marketing works, and the stakes are high.

What's at risk is the percentage of people who only get cable so they
get good reception of network TV. When people learn how free it is,
subchannels will become a new domain replacing basic cable, and OTA
HDTV will not be disappearing, at least in urban areas. Only collusion
can destroy OTA programming, because what broadcaster wants to give up
what they got to their competitors?

wrote in message
...
It's not that the penetration is only one percent, but that I'm in the
99th percentile ahead of everyone else.

Seriously, the only reason that the number is not higher is that
digital and HDTV demand has been marketed by the cable and satellite
companies, from point of sale to television ads. They want the
consumer to buy a new set to replace their analog, and they want the
monthly service fees. Marketing works, and the stakes are high.

What's at risk is the percentage of people who only get cable so they
get good reception of network TV. When people learn how free it is,
subchannels will become a new domain replacing basic cable, and OTA
HDTV will not be disappearing, at least in urban areas. Only collusion
can destroy OTA programming, because what broadcaster wants to give up
what they got to their competitors?

There are those of us for whom it is not really a matter of choice. Before
cable, I was able to get an almost tolerable picture from the major OTA
stations on a good winter day. During the summer, with the leaves on the
trees, the signal ranged from poor to nonexistent. After 9/11, there was no
viewable signal - period. All I wanted was to be able to watch the local OTA
stations. But as long as I had cable anyway, I got used to having some
options, and never went back to the major local stations. As far as I'm
concerned, cable and satellite offer mostly trash (even after you filter out
the home shopping networks, the religious channels, the lifestyle stuff,
etc.), but OTA offers 100 percent trash. The first few days after I got my
HDTV, before I signed up for the cable company's digital service package,
the only HDTV content I could receive was the local stations whose HDTV
broadcasts were being retransmitted on the cable. I scanned through them a
couple times but chose to watch SDTV cable stations rather than what they
were offering. It is truly a Vast Wasteland.

On Nov 18, 3:55 am, wrote:
It's not that the penetration is only one percent, but that I'm in the
99th percentile ahead of everyone else.

Seriously, the only reason that the number is not higher is that
digital and HDTV demand has been marketed by the cable and satellite
companies, from point of sale to television ads. They want the
consumer to buy a new set to replace their analog, and they want the
monthly service fees. Marketing works, and the stakes are high.

What's at risk is the percentage of people who only get cable so they
get good reception of network TV. When people learn how free it is,
subchannels will become a new domain replacing basic cable, and OTA
HDTV will not be disappearing, at least in urban areas. Only collusion
can destroy OTA programming, because what broadcaster wants to give up
what they got to their competitors?

That is so true about marketing.
I was in Costco looking at all the HDTV's. Signs all over. HD AS EASY
AS 1-2-3
Buy TV - Have Cable or Sat - Enjoy
They do not mention Ant or OTA....
That is where the REAL CLEAR LEAST AMOUT OF COMPRESSION OR SIGNAL
PROCESSING BEST HD SIGNAL IS.

my 2¢ YB

On Nov 18, 12:17 pm, "Nick Danger" wrote:

options, and never went back to the major local stations. As far as I'm
concerned, cable and satellite offer mostly trash (even after you filter out
the home shopping networks, the religious channels, the lifestyle stuff,
etc.), but OTA offers 100 percent trash.

You don't watch PBS or you couldn't or wouldn't say that. The reality
is that most TV, cable or OTA, is trash. You're just trying to get as
many channels as possible to reduce the chances of you surfing and
finding nothing of interest to you.

Nothing wrong with that, but with my DVR, I'm already watching too
much TV. I cannot justify the monthly cost of HDTV for a household of
one.

wrote in message
...
On Nov 18, 12:17 pm, "Nick Danger" wrote:

options, and never went back to the major local stations. As far as I'm
concerned, cable and satellite offer mostly trash (even after you filter
out
the home shopping networks, the religious channels, the lifestyle stuff,
etc.), but OTA offers 100 percent trash.

You don't watch PBS or you couldn't or wouldn't say that. The reality
is that most TV, cable or OTA, is trash. You're just trying to get as
many channels as possible to reduce the chances of you surfing and
finding nothing of interest to you.

Nothing wrong with that, but with my DVR, I'm already watching too
much TV. I cannot justify the monthly cost of HDTV for a household of
one.

I apologize for that oversight. Yes, PBS is broadcast OTA, but I tend to
forget that because it does not fit the profile of the rest of the OTA
stations here, and it's at 13 - way up at the end of the VHF stations. Even
though I know better, I was subconsciously thinking of it as a cable
station. Apparently, our cable company didn't think there was enough demand
for it, so they didn't carry the HD broadcasts on their basic service.
Still, it was better to watch PBS SD than the commercial networks OTA.

On Nov 15, 4:02 pm, Bob Miller wrote:
Larry Bud wrote:
Lots of good reasons for OTA. So why are broadcasters not telling the
public about them?

Because Bob, nobody ****ing needs to watch TV over the air. I don't
know one person that doesn't have cable or satellite, HD or not.

Sounds like you agree with me that free OTA is dead.

When naysayers make these predictions, it surprises me how
historically wrong they have been. They're greatest victory may have
been Betamax, but that's only because VHS won. Naysayers have doubted
the telephone, movies, talkies, radio, television, color television,
the Internet, and now OTA digital and Hi Def.

Why the negativity? Because anthropologically, people don't want to
change anymore than they have to. As long as analog is the lowest cost
option, digital will play second fiddle. The second part of the
argument: I don't know anybody without cable or sat, is classical
centric thinking. Ask yourself, how much do you make? Are you a senior
citizen on a fixed income? Are you a single mother of four? Do you
have financial obligations that compromise your ability to pay a
recurring monthly cable bill?

Personally, I know a considerable percentage of people who don't have
cable or sat, I am one of them. Many people are just not interested in
TV. If they aren't, then they obviously wouldn't bother with this
forum. Then there's me, the first layperson to congratulate a Michigan
station manager for converting their newscast to high definition.

I do not claim to be representative of the general population, but I
proved to the manager was that OTA-HD was not a snuffleluphagus. Most
likely, all digital needs is to subsidize the conversion for senior
citizens and low income households. But, as I have said before, the
combo of highest quality HD and increased SD capacity is a serious
threat to the cable/sat companies. These companies will be able to
overcome the bandwidth problem, but they can never compete on the
price. And the border town trump card is that Canadian programming is
not available on sat, and only partially available on cable.

OTA networks have retained the highest ratings share for their
programs. They have not become obsolete as naysayers have predicted.
Their dominance has merely been diluted by the availablity of
alternative programming. They will not give up the market share from
inclusive programming-- that is their trump card.

On Nov 18, 2:59 pm, wrote:

historically wrong they have been. They're greatest victory may have

Darn it. I thought I changed that. Their-- their!!!!

"Nick Danger" wrote in message
...
I have a feeling this is another Y2K crisis in the making - lots of panic
over something that's going to be largely a non-event.

On this point, I've always found this point of view a bit silly. While Y2K
might never have been the mass disaster some suggested it would be, I do
think the primary reason it only caused minor problems was because so many
businesses spent so many millions of dollars in advance to make sure that
didn't happen. This was a lose-lose situation for businesses: be laughed at
afterward for wasintg boatloads of money "for what turned out to be
nothing", or be eviscerated for failing to prepare properly for a problem
they should have foreseen.