^ Jealous of you guys in the GTA who can pull in dozens of channels with a coat hanger.

In Winnipeg it's basically CBC, Global, SRC (French) and a religious channel. If you have more specialized equipment I think you can pull in City and CTV. And if you have a rooftop antenna you can maybe pull in FOX from the US. That's it.

I can't imagine the quality of what you can pull off an antenna is close to what you can get with even a decent internet connection nowadays. What's the point?

TV Fool is a good site to enter your address and see what is available to you with an antenna setup. It is colour coded green, yellow, red and grey

Green - An indoor "set-top" antenna is probably sufficient to pick up these channels
Yellow - An attic-mounted antenna is probably needed to pick up channels at this level and above
Red - A roof-mounted antenna is probably needed to pick up channels at this level and above
Grey - These channels are very weak and will most likely require extreme measures to try and pick them up

ATSC 3.0 is suppose to make it easier to get all local channels with just an indoor antenna. My apartment faces south so I only can get CBC, which s fine for hockey. My Shaw Blue Curve service puts the hockey games 30 seconds behind the over the air broadcast, which I don’t like especially during playoffs. Strangely, I can stream games on the blue curve app, and the signal comes in 10 seconds faster than my blue curve cable box. The stream is 60fps, so it’s good quality.

Then you would be wrong. It is an uncompressed signal from the transmitter, unlike cable. It is a better signal. Digital signals are unlike old analog signals, an analog signal would give snowy or weak reception. Digital signals fall off a cliff, either you get them or you don't.

ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) is where things are going, you could be getting your Internet this way in the future.

If you lived in the US you could use this free and legal service. They encourage a five dollar monthly voluntary contribution (similar to Wikipedia, it is voluntary) After about a month of no interruption they will interrupt a broadcast every 15 minutes with a 10 second plea for contribution. If you contribute, no more interruptions. This can be circumvented by going to the guide whenever a show goes to a commercial.

Most people are spoiled and don't want to put up with this "first world inconvenience" but if you're poor enough or desperate enough it is a more than palatable solution.

Locast

Locast is a public service to Americans, providing local broadcast signals over the Internet in select cities. All you have to do is sign up online, provide your name and email address, and certify that you live in, and are logging on from, one of the select US cities (“Designated Market Area”). Then, you can select among local broadcasters and stream your favorite local station.

But since most of us don't live in the US...

So you're pulling 4k content off the airwaves? Something most people with 50 mb/s down could do fairly easily.

ATSC 3.0 is interesting, especially mobile applications.

Except one of them you're paying for, the other is "free".

I have been without "cable" much of my life which is ironic because most of my life has been about the business of TV. To get free TV (or content as I now see it) takes some work. Most people don't want to have to do that. Others are so young they don't know that OTA TV technology has existed for a hundred years and figure free TV is a scam. "Free TV" is made free (of charge) by being advertiser supported so nothing is free (technically)

4K OTA is coming and its free.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...p%20to%20120Hz.

Sadly it'll likely not be available in Canada. A lot of towers have be de-commissioned over the years.

It likely will be, even though there are no announced plans for it, that's usually the way this kind of technology works, you get dragged into it. HDTV technology was available long before it became mainstream, same as regular analog TV.

Modern analog TV was basically available in the UK in 1936, Canada only began to implement it in 1952. Technological change is much faster now, we will have ATSC 3 (or an equivalent) in the coming years.

Several places in the US have already made the conversion to ATSC 3.0, but Covid has obviously caused major delays to what was supposed to be a big year for implementation.

Wow, thanks for all the info guys! :cheers:

What a flashback seeing the old channel numbers! TVO on 28 was like half my childhood.

I don't really see them as competition or mutually exclusive services. Internet is now basically an essential service that is expanding into the traditional content delivery markets. I doubt anyone is installing said antenna system on their tv and saying "thank god now I can finally cancel my internet service!"

I agree with you to a point, but that brings us back to the original problem, can you get CTV or Global without paying an extra "cable" charge on top of your regular Internet access bill. Nope. But you can get them OTA for nothing.

Some of you may be interested in this. The creator is trying to do what I have been advocating for years, free and legal TV. He has created a list of freely and legally available channels that broadcast openly over the Internet. Though you won't receive many mainstream channels ie CTV, Global, ABC NBC, etc, you will get CBC, PBS, most news networks (not CNN) and a ton of other special interest channels ie Bein Sports Xtra. Don't dismiss it, there is a ton of good stuff here.

This describes accessing through Android devices, I do it through Kodi/Windows on a laptop connected to my TV.

He also talks about downloading a file to a USB stick, you can avoid that by downloading the file directly to your device and then linking to it.

Give it a try, you can always delete it if you don't find use for it. On some channels the quality is not the greatest, others it's very good, but it's free, man! You have nothing to lose but a little time to check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42SdKPHa0xo

^ IPTV is still too hobbyist-oriented. If someone can simplify it and sell a product that allows you to access it for a one-time cost, they can make a fortune.

There are products like Cipher-TV which attempt to do that, but it's still based on a monthly subscription model which sort of defeats the appeal of IPTV in the first place. I mean, it's a better deal than what the major telcos offer but it's still essentially the same product.

I will say, there is a surprising number of live news channels available via Youtube including SkyNews, France 24, NBC News, CBS News, DW and PolandIn among others, and CTV News Network is accessible via the CTV News App. So news channels are pretty readily available.

You can combine what I posted with OTA and pay nothing. What I posted is easy to do for someone willing to try. If someone follows soccer FreeSports and Bein Sports Xtra cover most of the leagues aside from EPL.

Yeah, fair enough. Maybe I should give it a try. I have to admit I was absolutely amazed by some of the airbnbs I stayed at in Europe with Android IPTV boxes... literally hundreds and hundreds of TV channels, including many international channels.

Of course there were only a relatively small number of interesting English channels available, but then even with my cable package I probably regularly watch no more than maybe a dozen channels anyway.

As someone whose sports viewing is mostly CFL and hockey related, I'd have to accept not having access to those things anymore, though...

Doesn't work well for hockey, but if you only watch Bombers games the TSN day pass at $5/day is worth it to me, that's what I did for Toronto Arrows games this year.

You can still stream a lot of hockey on CBC. You used to be able to access TSN with a Bell user/pass that you pay your "cable" bills with. If you don't have "cable" (depending on your morality) you could ask for a family member/friend's user/pass. I haven't checked that lately to see if it still works. I know Bell has an online option for subscribers (no extra charge) that allows external viewing. Many providers like Netflix/Amazon allow for legal sharing up to a certain number. My whole agenda is acquiring content legally and free but four people sharing a Netflix account is a very reasonable cost (and legal).

The problem for many of these boxes (often called Kodi boxes) was that they were carrying illegal copyrighted content. I've created my own setup where I have tons of free/legal content and have found a way to get just about everything if I need it. Some of the free content providers are getting more powerful everyday: TubiTV/Crackle/Xumo/Pluto TV and even the Internet Archive (accessed through Kodi) where I am watching the full series of MASH at the moment.

The other thing about free/legal content is that it stays. Illegal copyrighted material disappears, you don't want to constantly have to find new sources for your favourite channels.

As I posted above Locast is very interesting.