I read you on a daily basis and, as an Apple stockholder, appreciate your analysis.
I, and many others, are lost in the evolving TV hardware/signal provider area. Quoting from your post this morning "The fact of the matter is that the problem that cable TV was created to solve -- that of snowy, ghosting pictures due to weak signals and reflections -- now has been solved by digital technology." was the first time I had heard this, for example.
You mentioned a while back that your youngest son was starting a Blog of his own. Might I suggest that he incorporate his experiences in this area into his new venture to help educate us?
Do you have to put this in a powered USB connection ie in the monitor or computer, or can you put it in the low powered USB outlets of the keyboard?
Just wondering for flexibility of setups.
I had the pleasure to use ElGatos EyeTV 500 for quite some time now, and it has not disappointed me.
A year and a half ago I also a Terk TV-55 digital antenna to my roof and enjoyed ever since true HD programing from the local stations. I receive about 23 HD channels and 16 analog, so finding content to watch is never an issue.
Boy did you luck out. You live in a very favorable reception area. We just got a new TV with a digital tuner and with a very BIG antenna we get 2 (count em) digital channels + 6 analog channels we had before. We are just at the edge of reception area where you can just get the analog stations but the digital ones fall under the margin. (Our system has a deep fringe antenna, antenna amplifier + a distribution amplifier inside). Going to look into a antenna rotor.
Carl wrote:
"After all, with free TV like this, who really needs cable TV?"
Didn't you answer this just a few blog posts down about Apple TV. You were trying to argue against a Forrester report that said that paid media can't ever compete with free TV.
So if people don't need cable, they don't need Apple TV either.
Digital TV reception is one of those inconvenient truths that cable companies would prefer most people don't understand. The notion that one can purchase a digital TV and an inexpensive external antennae then receive pristine HD reception FREE makes the cable TV value equation much harder for many people to swallow.
Anyone looking for the best broadcast HD quality will receive a far superior signal via antennae because the ATSC tuner receives a first generation MPEG 2 stream while cable typically re-compresses that stream so it fits within their pipes. Re-compression results in a degraded HD image.
Cable companies now have a strong hold on people's perceptions of television delivery but that may change with the advent of free over the air digital HDTV combined with services like NetFlix and iTunes.
Sooner than they think, cable companies may become primarily ISP's without the revenue from their overpriced cable TV subscriptions.
I live in area where the analog reception is HORRENDOUS. And Time Warner gives me NO BREAK if I want to add CATV to my cable Internet.
Sooooo....I am open to suggestion on indoor Digital antennas...
As mentioned above, over the air HDTV signals vary from location to location. The best way to find what you could get (and which way to point a directional antenna) is AntennaWeb:
http://www.antennaweb.org/
Generally, the same over the air analog channels will be available in HD as well. You will also find more than one program per "channel" on digital. For example, on my PBS carrier (UNC TV) there is UNC-HD, UNC-ED, UNC-Kids and another local UNC program. Of the four, only UNC-HD is actually HDTV but the others look crystal clear as they are standard definition channels delivered digitally. (with digital, you will find it either works perfectly or it doesn't work at all)
I also have an HD TiVo but as switching from one channel to the other generally requires an antenna move, it isn't exactly a drop-in replacement for cable / satellite HD service. If you live in a location with strong enough signal, you might be able to use an omni-directional antenna but that would be the rare case. Generally multiple directional antennas is the solution to this problem but the HD TiVo only has one antenna input so you would need to put amplifiers on each antenna and feed the signals together to your TV. In my humble opinion, this makes over the air HD programming less desirable, but if you keep to one set of channels it can be a great solution.
Another solution for the more technically inclined is to use one or more PC-HDTV cards in a MythTV setup. This gives you TiVo like recordability with multiple antenna inputs. MythTV is based on Linux and there are some easy to use distributions such as MythDora which install a complete working system right out of the box. The PCI based tuner cards are about $129 and there is virtually no limit to the number of cards you can have in one system allowing you to simultaneously record many channels. Personally I use 2 cards simultaneously with HD cable which is also supported by the PC-HDTV cards. With MythTV you also have the ability to view programming from any computer on your network. There is a great Mac OS client which also has a version for the AppleTV (effectively making the AppleTV able to record and playback live TV in HD) but it requires a hacked AppleTV box. If you can deal with TV on your laptop or other computer, connecting to your MythTV setup over the network is a very viable solution.
Watch out, you can spend lots of money trying to nickel and dime your way to cable-less HD nirvana. Talk to someone who has experience with the technology before you jump off the cliff and buy something. But if you do it right, you can get a workable setup for a very low price and have un-copyprotected access to everything you record to boot!
Commenting by HaloScan
