No Reason Not to try OTA Digital Television

I’ve written in the past about the wonders of (free) OTA (Over-the-air) digital television. It’s an oversimplification to call this HDTV, because there are many digital signals that broadcast specifically non-high-def or “standard definition” digital television.

For a quick refresher about the wonders of digital OTA television (also called ATSC) here are some of the neat features:

• Almost all of the frequencies are broadcast in the UHF frequency range, so any cheap UHF antenna can get you on your way. (“Rabbit ears” are VHF, the funny little loop is UHF.) There are expensive products out there that call themselves HDTV antennas, but they are generally fancy UHF antennas with a higher price tag. Believe it or not, most of you can get a decent number of channels with a set-top antenna. You generally don’t need to deal with expensive roof-mounted antennas unless you’re really far away from broadcasting stations.
• Old fashioned analog TV was a pain because lots of stations would come in snowy. Digital TV is cool because it’s an all-or-nothing deal. Either there’s enough signal for clear, perfect pictures, or you don’t get anything. And believe it or not, it takes a lot less reception to get a good digital signal than it used to take to get a good analog signal.
• OTA Digital television is, in some cases, superior to digital cable (don’t know about satellite) because the cable company often tries to cram hundreds of channels over one wire, which they can only do by over-compressing the digital signals. The bandwidth dedicated to each OTA station by the FCC is a HUGE data pipe.
• Cable and satellite companies don’t always carry the standard (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, etc.) network HD channels on their own HD offerings, so you could feasibly pay well over $100 per month and get very little in return. DirecTV offers to install a separate UHF antenna on your roof next to their satellite dish to pull in network programming!

Up until now, getting started with digital television could be an expensive proposition. In most cases it involves buying a new $1000+ HDTV, and some of the cheaper models don’t actually come with built-in ATSC tuners. I bought my first HDTV for about $900, and it wasn’t until I got it home that I realized I still couldn’t watch any television (I’ve never been willing to pay money for cable.) so it was a glorified DVD player. I eventually bought a Sony DVR that was essentially a Tivo-like device + an ATSC tuner in one. That cost $600+, so I was well into $1500 before I could even find out if OTA HDTV was worth the hype. (In my opinion it is. In fact, I consider it one of the [unfortunately] best kept secrets.)

No more! If you are either a Mac or a PC user, there is a cute little device for about $150 that will get you started in the world of HDTV. Actually it’s a single device that is offered under two different names by two different companies, depending on whether you are Mac or PC. For Mac users it’s known as the Elegato EyeTV Hybrid, and it you’re a Windows user it’s the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950. (Actually, the WinTV device can be found for about half that price on Amazon, so PC users have an advantage.)

I bought the EyeTV Hybrid a couple weeks ago. It’s this tiny little USB 2.0 module that’s only about 3″ long. One end plugs into USB, the other plugs into a standard coaxial antenna cable. The software allows you to turn your computer into a TV/DVR. On my Mac Pro with 23-inch flat panel display I can get native-resolution 1920x1080i HD resolution and eye-popping programming. (You’ll fall in love with PBS especially! Their HD programming seems somehow 10x as cinematic as any network TV shows.) And on my Mac it’s not all that hard to take a program, edit out commercials, re-encode and burn to a DVD using iDVD. It’s pretty phenomenal.

The big point want to make is this: if you can afford to part with $150 for this little device, you can dip your toe into the HDTV OTA world with very little risk. Even if it turns out your area is still too rural and there aren’t many TV stations (Note: my cousin in Seattle was able to locate over 40 digital tv stations so you don’t have to be in L.A. for this to work!) or you learn you’ll really need to get a larger antenna to pull in the signals, you didn’t drop that much money on the experiment.

And what’s more, you might decide that you actually CAN cancel your cable TV service, buy that Sony DVR for your home theater system, and save several hundred dollars per year. Seriously, I really urge you to try this out, and now you have little reason not to.

(One quick disclaimer: these two USB devices I’ve mentioned use the CPU of the computer rather heavily for the MPEG-2 decoding. My Apple PowerBook G4 at 1.5 Ghz was pretty much maxed-out with the task. Anything older and you’re out of luck. For the PC world you want a 2.0 Ghz P4 or better.)

Author: Murray Todd Williams

I live in Austin, Texas. I'm enthusiastic about food, wine, programming (especially Scala), tennis and politics. I've worked for Accenture for over 12 years where I'm a Product Manager for suite of analytical business applications. View all posts by Murray Todd Williams