On 5/1/23 10:55, Bill Walsh wrote:
On 5/1/23 12:24, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 5/1/23 10:11, Per Jessen wrote:
them at all.  They expect you to rent their own proprietary
decoders.  If our ISP ever drops CableCard support we'll just
drop cable TV altogether and go TV via IP.

Apart from old fuddy-duddies like myself, everyone here (Switzerland)
has gone IPTV long ago.  Aerial TV distribution ceased in 2018.  What
remains is DVB-C, DVB-S and IPTV.

I expect that over-the-air TV is on the way out over here too,
perhaps Bill knows more?  I remember hearing about plans for
re-using the spectrum.  Anything that we currently watch on
the telly isn't available OTA anyway.


Cable and satellite were behind the push to digital TV. They thought it would kill OTA. No more "fringe" reception so smaller viewer numbers. It backfired big time. Our station has ten channels on the air. Before digital we could only do one. Most any city with local OTA's will find something on the order of 40 or 50 channels available. We share programming with a friend out in western Kansas. He has multiple stations with multiple channels on each. Major network stations put in repeaters around the state to increase broadcast area. You can now find WAY more TV than you could before digital.

Lew, unless your WAY out in the boonies, which I know your not, or down in a deep hole, which I doubt, OR you local TV stations are all stupid and placed their transmitters in the worst possible location(s), I see no reason you should have an issue with OTA. You might need to put up an outdoor antenna. I see twenty channels plus subchannels.

https://www.channelmaster.com/pages/tv-antenna-map-san-diego-ca-92129


One transmitter site is located on Mount Soledad 22-miles north of us,
a second is on Otay Mountain, about 11-miles NE of us.  The problem
is we're in a bit of a valley.  The neighborhood was originally built with
40-foot TV masts on each house, then in the mid 1980's the area was
wired for CATV.  The antennas then started to disappear.  Ours actually
fell over of it's own accord around 1989.  So going back to OTA would
require a significant mast on our roof.  Also, note that many of those
listed stations are located in Tijuana and are only Spanish speaking.

Regards,
Lew