Jun 17 Podcast #483: Over the Air TV Signals - Are They Still Needed?
On the last two shows we discussed comments made by CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro stating that, "using huge swaths of wireless spectrum to deliver TV to homes no longer makes economic sense. Congress should pass legislation to allow for incentive auctions so free market dynamics can find the best purposes for underused broadcast spectrum, such as wireless broadband." In the CEAs findings they stated that only 8% of the US population EXCLUSIVELY receives their TV signals through the air. We feel that this number is artificially stated as low. The survey polled 1,256 adults but it did not say where the respondents were located. If the survey was done in rural communities that number may be as high as 25%.
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- The HDTV specs that matter
- Cable Show 2011: TiVo Opens Up Two New Boxes For Cable
- Motorola Televation turns cable TV into IPTV streams for the whole home
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- Six reasons receivers shouldn't be media streamers
Over the Air TV Signals - Are They Still Needed?
On the last two shows we discussed an initiative by the Consumer Electronics Association to eliminate over the air (OTA) broadcasts of television signals. In CEAs findings they stated that only 8% of the US population receives their signals through the air. We feel that this number is artificially stated as low. The survey polled 1,256 adults but it did not say where the respondents were located. If the survey was done in rural communities that number may be as high as 25%.
Regardless, we put together a quick survey to see which side our listeners/readers come down on the subject. Today we’ll discuss the results.
1) How do you primarily receive your HDTV?
- Over the Air 61%
- Cable 20%
- Satellite 14%
- Telco (AT&T/Verizon 4%
At first glance it may seem a bit surprising that 61% of our listeners use OTA as their PRIMARY source for picking up their TV signals. But when you think about it, OTA is the highest quality signal available for picking up HDTV signals and our listeners are really into HDTV! How would that question translate to the general public? Well just look around, how many antennas do you see on roofs in your neighborhood? In our neighborhoods its pretty much just the HT Guys.
In reality that number would be far less than the 61% of our listeners/readers but probably nowhere near the 8% of the CEA survey. Our take away from this question, the CEA better not succeed in turning off OTA or it will have a rebellion on its hands from all the consumers they convinced to buy HDTVs in the first place.
2) Do you plan on (or have already) completely cutting the cord to receive your TV VIA Internet and OTA?
- Yes 66%
- No 34%
Based on the response to our first question these results don’t surprise us at all. Our listeners/readers are on the forefront of technology and have found alternative ways to get their entertainment. Whether its movies through Netflix and Vudu or watching the latest video on Youtube the vast majority of you no longer need to pay a monthly fee for content you don’t watch. With high quality HDTV coming in over the air, all of you are informed and entertained for free. We’ll talk about why the 34% who said no are not willing to cut the cord in a bit.
For those who answered yes 6% plan on cutting the cord by year’s end, 11% in one to two years, 3% in three years and 3% in more than three years. What really was interesting is that 44% of you have already cut the cord.
Some of the reasons given for not cutting the cord were:
- Bandwidth caps/Internet speed
- There is not a readily available DVR that works with OTA that doesn’t require a HTPC
- Specific programming is not available OTA (Food Network, F1 Racing, Sports packages, etc)
- Channel surfing becomes harder. (buffering, no accidental discovery, no consistent way of getting access to content)
- Any room DVR, Web Access to setup recording, convenience
- Poor Reception
- OTA used as an extension of cable/satellite not a replacement
3) Do you use any of the following services?
- Netflix 82%
- Amazon VOD 25%
- iTunes 43%
- Hulu 49%
- Zediva 1%
- Cable/Satellite VOD 19%
For fun we wanted to see what streaming services were being used by our listeners. Netflix was the overwhelmingly most used streaming service with 82% of survey takers saying that they use use it. It makes sense since the service is available on almost every platform you can think of. Next up was Hulu at 51%. We did not distinguish between Hulu and Hulu+. The two things these services have in common are that they are all you can eat for a flat fee. Its pretty clear to us that all you can eat for a flat fee (or free with quick ads like in Hulu) will win the day.
Apple’s iTunes was the most used a la carte style service at 45% followed by Amazon with 26% and cable/satellite VOD at 18%. Zediva registered 1% even though they stream current hits on demand.
Between these services you will be able to get your A&E, Food Network, or other cable channel without a TV service. Many shows like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives are available for download without commercial, usually the day after the show airs. A season pass to the upcoming season of Burn Notice, on USA Network, will run you $45. Less than half a month of a typical cable bill. If you over the air you can buy programs a la carte for current shows or just go Netflix for many older TV series so you don’t have to feel like you are missing anything.
Of course not all programs are available for download, for instance HBO’s Game of Thrones is not available on iTunes at this time. That could change at any time, but in the mean time, cord cutters may have to ask their work friends to discuss some shows when you are out of ear shot. But anyone with a DVR is already used to doing that!
4) What new services would you like to see offered VIA the airwaves that broadcast TV is now using that would make it worthwhile to forgo OTA broadcasting?
Now that we have established that listeners of the HDTV and Home Theater Podcast are big proponents of OTA broadcasting, we were curios to see if there would be a service that could be offered in place of television that would make it worthwhile to give up OTA. We got a lot of comments but they boiled down to fast wireless Internet without data caps.
Something to Consider
If you could get 100Mbps or better Internet access then you could stream your TV to a set top box. After all, digital TV is 19Mbps digital streams at best and about 11Mbps at worst. This could be a boon for 1080p content. Broadcasters wouldn’t have to make huge investments in equipment to support 1080p. In fact they could vary the data rate based on the content being streamed. By allowing the airwaves to be used for Internet, rural areas would now have access that wasn’t there before. In areas with cable and DSL there would be more competition which could force down prices. One of our news stories talked about Gigabit Internet access. If you had this coming into your house you would have no need for OTA what so ever. So let’s make it a requirement that before any ATSC signals are turned off, the broadcast area must be served by a minimum of 100Mbps service at a nominal cost.
This just in!
Knowledge Networks just released a report that says 46 million Americans still use OTA as their primary means to watch network television. That’s up by 4 million from the prior year. That works out to be 15% of the US population. Cost cutting was the main reason viewers cut the cord.
Here’s how it breaks down:
by age
- 18 - 34 20%
- 35 - 54 13%
- 55+ 23%
by income
- < $30K 23%
- > $30K 11%
Reader Comments (9)
We cut the cord about six months ago and are very happy with the results. The signal over the air really is vastly superior to cable and in our area we receive over 30 channels.
One thing I was very suprised to see when we started "The Experiment" was the variety of programming available over the air. While we get out major networks in amazing quality, some smaller local stations have decided to do something very different with the bandwith made available by the switch to ATSC. A local PBS station has split it's signal into four discrete streams of programing. They include; the standard PBS station. PBS Create (Cooking, Home Improvement, Crafts etc,) PBS Kids (24 hour childrens educational programing) and PBS World (Travel and World News). We also discovered local stations dedicated to health and fitness, additional childrens stations and even a shopping channel. By far the most ironic station we've come across is a non-stop Country Music station broadcasting from Cambridge MA. (I couldn't believe it either).
With this depth of programming available over the air combined with Internet options the only complaint I hear is that there is no more Food TV coming into the house.
"How many antennas do you see on roofs in your neighborhood?"
None. Not even my house, even though OTA is my primary source of HDTV. My attic antenna pulls in all the local signals just fine :)
Have been an OTA only user here in the S.F. Bay area for a few years now. Using TIVO HD as the DVR allows me to play back anytime, and I don't miss the few, very few alternative channels I watched with DirecTV or cable.
The quality of signal easily exceeds the other options, and I can get Netflix via the Tivo as it's connected to the internet. So, if I'm in the mood for a film or TV show, it's not hard to find something, even in the dog days of summer without new OTA content.
We use TiVos as well. One resides in our living room and there is one in the media room hooked up to the projector. A couple of weeks ago after I hooked up the second one I completely blew my wife's mind. There was nothing on the living room unit we wanted to see, so I scrolled down the menu and brought up the shows that were recorded on the TiVo in the media room, selected a recent episode of 'Men of a Certain Age' and suggested that we make a snack and get a drink while the transfer had a chance to run a little bit. I have never seen my wife actually agog before. She had no idea that the networking would do anytihing but let us watch Netflix.
I took a minute to show her a couple of other tricks like watching YouTube videos of a friend's dog, playing music off my laptop over the wireless and running a slide show of pictures of our boys. Her jow dented her chest.
When I suggested getting rid of cable in favor of OTA and internet I got a lot of flack and complaining from everyone in the family. Now we are saving a ton of money and not missing a blessed thing, except FoodTV. I still sometimes hear about not seeing The Barefoot Contessa and Paula Deen, but not too often.
I put our antennae in the attic as well and have the coax running along some corners and down doorframes. That's the one thing that I wish I knew how to do differently. We live in a house that was constructed around the turn of the century and have horsehair plaster walls with beadboard behind it. There is no way to easily fish cables through there and I really don't want to pay for a pro to do it. We are planning on painting them out and that will hopefully make them a lot less conspicuous. Still, saving over $1200 per year in cable charges makes that a lot easier to handle. It also makes my blu-ray habit a little easier to afford.
Love the TiVos!!
I have 6 netfiix devices in my house. Added two just this week with the 55" ST30 and the BDT110 player.
I will say the netflix is available everywhere, my aunt just got a hip replacement, and it came with netflix!
Love the show, keep up the good work guys!
I had gotten away from listening to the podcasts recently, since they didn’t contain anything I was interested in. I do, however, always look to see what the subject is when I receive the email. The one on the CEA “survey” was one I’m definitely interested in. I’ve already had my say on the HDTV Magazine forum, and I was really interested in seeing if your views matched the majority of responders there.
As to your question about “cutting the cord”, my take has a lot to do with what I call “The Serendipity Factor” (you mentioned it as “Accidental Discovery”.) Especially in the summer, the short-run original programming on USA and TNT are so much fun (yeh, I know, nothing a big deal) I would hate to miss out on new ones - at least having the chance to see them once and deciding. I wouldn’t know if I “cut the cord”, so one vote in favor of keeping my U-verse. ...and Burn Notice is surely in the group of shows, along with In Plain Sight, Leverage, some others and a couple of new ones we haven’t seen yet, but look interesting.
On the other hand, I’ve had an external antenna for quite a few years. We live 35 miles from the two broadcast locations on either side of Salinas, California. Before U-verse, we had Dish Network, and the HD receiver we used allowed us to connect our external antenna directly into it, and even placed the channels we received in the programming grid - plus allowed us to record them. U-verse doesn’t do that, but being phone company retirees, we get the service at such a good price, there was no excuse in keeping Dish. What we did have to do, though, was purchase a Tivo for the signal from the antenna. In the process we found, as one of the other responders, some additional channels - ones Tivo likes! We also have the problem that is another U-verse quirk, two channels we should get but don’t, because they’re only available as ‘-2'. One is KTEH, the San Jose PBS station that has its own mind with regard to broadcasting, in that they broadcast mostly British programming, comedies, mysteries and information programming. The other is The CW, which my wife has to have because of “The Vampire Diaries.” Those two come through just fine on Tivo.
So... I’d be hard pressed to give up my U-verse link, but I’m not about to let anyone give away the broadcast spectrum either, if I can help it.
Well I certainly envy all the folks who can replace cable service with OTA and Internet streaming. I live in Canada, so right away, the number of OTA HD channels goes way down. Then on top of that, I'm in a concrete apartment with only a North-facing view! No possibility for an outdoor antenna, and poor reception with an internal one :( Digital satellite isn't even an option with no view of the southern sky. And our selection of streaming services up here is pretty pathetic. So I'm more-or-less forced to use Shaw cable. The only alternative for me is IPTV from Telus (the phone company here). The picture quality on Telus is horrible, so that's out. Telus does offer a multi-room DVR though, but only 2 HD recordings at a time. Shaw's image quality is not very good either, but it's better than Telus. Shaw is also rolling out their new multi-room DVR with 6 HD tuners, so that will be sweet once it expands beyond only Calgary (the sole test city at the moment). This "Shaw Gateway" DVR is based off the old Moxi platform, by the way.
One question for everyone though:
Even if your cutting cable/satellite TV service, what about internet?
I get my broadband service through Shaw as well. And there's a discount for "bundling" more than one service. I'm just wondering, aren't most people still paying their local cable provider for broadband service?
First off I want to say it is great to live in a time with so MANY choices. wooohoooo
Setup:
2 XBOX 360s (1 with Active Live Gold Account - my sons)
WDTV Live Plus HDMI HD Media Player
Hitachi 57S500 RPTV (that I wish would die after 8 great years)
Toshiba 32" LCD
Logitech Harmony One
Dell 530s quad core Desktop w/ Win7 Ultimate w/ dual tuner card AVerMedia A188C PCIe for QAM
HDHomerun dual tuner plugged into my 4 bay antenna in the attic
Home built WHS 8TB storage
I have a Netflix account one out at a time mostly used to rent foreign DVDs. No DD 5.1. The video quality is not too bad after I upgraded my cable DL speed to 7MB down/512 up.
I got rid of DirecTV back in May 2010 (I will say I also was divorced then with myself the only person in the house it was much easier to give up channels and I am bleeding red financially) I have been using WMC on my Win 7 box since. My kids can adjust with fewer channels. ;-)
When I first did a QAM scan I was highly skeptical of how many channels I would get. All I can say is woohooo. Here are the channels I get in HD and I only pay for cable modem access - No TV. Is my podunk cable company that clueless to not apply better filtering???
NatGEO HD
History HD
USA HD
DIS HD
A&E HD
HGTV HD
Food HG
SYFY HD
ABCF HD
ESPN HD
ESPN2 HD
FXHD
Speed HD
Foxnews
Outdoor HD
TravelChannel HD
All 4 major networks OTA in my antenna
We cut the cord last year. We're using two SiliconDust HDHomeRun OTA network tuners, with a Windows 7 Media Center acting as the DVR. Programs can be watched/recorded locally at the TV's using Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders. Those machines have Netflix, Zune Movies, Last FM music, etc. We use PlayOn + tubeCore running on the PC to push additional internet content streams to the 360's. My wife has two Roku's, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, that she uses for all her entertainment TV watching. Those TVs also have ATSC tuners in them so she can watch news and weather primarily. PlayOn can also plug into the Roku and serve up additional streaming channels as well.
After a few months I wanted more content and flexibility than I was getting through the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender, so I set up a home theater PC. I absolutely love it. Boxee, Hulu, etc. The one disappointment: I don't own any devices that streams Vudu, and I was shocked to find out that PC users cannot stream in the highest quality from Vudu!
My teen son was never a huge TV watcher anyway. He's a gamer: Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. When he watches TV, it's usually Netflix on his iPad while he kicks back on his bed.
So, we do not miss cable in the least.
Regarding the politics of OTA broadcasting, even though I am a user, I would not lobby Congress or the FCC to preserve it if the market could find other more productive use of the spectrum. In my (probably minority) opinion, not all spectrum should be public in the same way that not all land is public. Spectrum should be considered a form of property and should be sold and titled to the highest bidder. That is the only way to ensure that the greatest economic utility is achieved.
If OTA went away, I am sure that other advertising-sponsored content delivery methods would rapidly fill its place.