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FortecDishWe’re getting a lot of new visitors, so I thought this might be a good time to talk about the foundation of this blog: free-to-air (FTA) satellite TV. That’s a system providing hundreds of channels that don’t require an internet connection to watch but are completely free and legal.

By the way, when I tell the people I meet about FTA satellite TV, about 10 of every 12 act like I’m talking about an imaginary friend, one guy will reminisce about the C-band dish he used to have, and the last one will say, “I used to subscribe to that, then it got scrambled.” Unfortunately, satellite TV pirates often misused the term “FTA” to refer to their practice of unlawfully, temporarily unlocking pay-TV channels. (How stupid is it to risk $thousands in legal damages to save $20/month on satellite TV by paying a pirate instead of Dish or DirecTV?) Anyway, let me make it clear up front that my use of FTA is its original, positive meaning – unscrambled channels that are free for anyone to watch.

As long-time FTABlog readers know, anyone who can mount a small Ku-band dish with a clear line of sight to the right part of the sky can get an amazing array of FTA TV and radio channels. Not only are there hundreds of regular channels, there are also healthy doses of raw news and sports feeds that you’d never see anywhere else. This whole FTA phenomenom is so exciting that it’s the reason I founded FTAList.com a long time ago, as a resource for keeping track of what’s available and a guide to getting started.

After creating FTAList, I added this blog to write about some of the changes in the channels that were available. Then about three years ago, I began to notice that there were more channels and video content online than on FTA satellite. The few over-the-air stations that had used satellite to relay their signal to cable systems mostly switched to IP-based delivery. New streaming technologies provided other ways to watch distant channels, so that’s often the focus on this blog.

In general, FTA satellite provides a great supplement to local over-the-air viewers (what they used to be called before “cord cutters”). There are two catches. The first is that you won’t find HBO or ESPN; full-time FTA channels tend to be networks you haven’t heard of. The second catch is that the channels come and go as they please. Some FTA channels last for years, some for weeks. That’s why FTAList is there to try to keep track of the changes.

If you want to learn more about this easy way to add lots of channels to your entertainment setup, go visit FTAList and poke around. You might find watching odd, often unique free programming to be as much fun as I did.

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hand rising from grave, in TV screen

© DepositPhotos / Paulus Rusyanto & Lyudmyla Kharlamova

Just as I was typing my last post, pointing out that nimbleTV’s guide was the best of the streaming services I’ve seen so far, I got an email from nimbleTV support. It’s coming back.

There are a few new wrinkles in the system. The first was that Dish Network will no longer bill separately for its part of the fee. “(G)oing forward, there will be single charge (sic) for the total amount including the TV provider’s amount,” the note read. The email never mentioned Dish by name, suggesting that nimbleTV doesn’t want to be accused of reselling Dish without permission.

The second, more serious wrinkle in the email is that the New York City locals delivered by Dish are off limits by default. “If you wish to continue to get New York local channels, a New York Metropolitan Area address is required.” I find that wording interesting. It doesn’t say that I need to live in NY, or even provide a NY credit card billing address (as Aereo requires). It doesn’t say that it has to be my address. Did you know that the Empire State Building is at 350 5th Ave, 10118? Just sayin’.

I haven’t provided any new address yet, but I am able to log in to my account. All of my old channels are there, plus TV Guide Network, minus the NYC locals. I can’t watch any of them live; when I try, I see a pop-up that says “Sorry, we’re still activating this channel.” Until I verify my address, all I’ll get to watch are my pre-stoppage recordings, including those I made from NYC locals.

So what happened? Except for that email, nobody has told me anything, though notes on Twitter suggest that nimbleTV has been reactivating accounts for a few days now. Everything still matches my old guess that somebody (NFL? broadcast networks?) leaned on Dish to cut off nimbleTV to block out-of-market viewing, so Dish whipped out its “unauthorized retailer” card because it was shocked, shocked that nimbleTV was selling subscriptions that way. If anyone ever comments on the record about that, I’ll let you know.

An old acquaintance of mine had wondered whether nimbleTV was account stacking. That’s the practice of adding another receiver to your Dish account, running the cord to your next-door neighbor and splitting the bill. (Account stacking is unlawful and dumb considering the small savings and real risks from such a setup.) Theoretically, a company could get Dish subscriptions for a couple hundred receivers, copy and store all the programming, then serve thousands of customers while pocketing their full subcription fees. Before the stoppage, it was easy to answer that question, because Dish billed each nimbleTV subscriber separately. Now I still don’t suspect account stacking, but I’ve got no way to refute it. So congratulations to nimbleTV for clawing its way back to life. I sure hope it’s legal.

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Aereo program gridLast week, I took the opportunity to visit New York City for a week of sightseeing with the family. Notice the comma in the title; I didn’t get to meet anyone from Aereo, the streaming TV and virtual DVR service. but I used the occasion to sign up and try it out.

As my recent misadventures with nimbleTV would suggest, I find the NYC over-the-air channels to be the best set of local OTA channels anywhere. Not only do they include all of the major networks, they also have one of the best live sports schedules plus a heap of interesting subchannels. Unlike nimbleTV’s old lineup, Aereo includes Cozi, this, Movies!, Antenna, Bounce, PBS Kids, Qubo, and Livewell.

There’s one major drawback to Aereo – you can only sign up for the NYC locals if you are in the NYC market and have a credit card with a NYC address. As I sat in my hotel, I satisfied the first requirement, but the second took a little work since Aereo politely declined my offer to present myself in person. I bought a Visa gift card from a nearby drugstore, then logged on to register it. (Turns out that Vanilla Visa doesn’t want to know your home address, but you can add a Zip Code if you want.) Armed with that card, I created a new Aereo account using the true, physical address of my hotel, complete with room number. Bingo!

After my return to FTABlog World Headquarters in Denver, I discovered a second major drawback to Aereo – it refuses to work when you travel outside your “home” market. Even though my account was still good, Aereo noticed that I was out of town and refused to stream even the programs I recorded while I was in NYC, never mind live TV. Considering that just days earlier I was watching Denver OTA TV from my NYC hotel room (via a Slingloaded Dish Network receiver), I was surprised. I wonder whether a proxy service would solve that issue. Hmmm.

Let’s talk about the Aereo experience. First, Aereo is a great deal at $8/month just for its cloud-based DVR and ability to stream to mobile devices. Live TV and playback of recordings were smooth and easy using my laptop with the hotel’s wifi and using my iPhone’s LTE.

The landing page highlights upcoming shows seemingly at random but with nice graphics. Its guide, embedded above (click it to see full size), is pretty crummy, with low-contrast program titles in a vague grid. The good news is that it’s easy to type in program names using a helpful autocomplete to search for and schedule what you want, but to see what’s on now, it’s much weaker than TitanTV or any other real listing service. FilmOn‘s lack of any similar grid is even worse, but nimbleTV’s horizontal scroll was noticeably better. The recordings window is clean and simple, and it includes episode titles. Playback is easy, and as I said, worked well using either the hotel’s wifi or my iPhone’s LTE signal.

Aereo plans to expland to more markets, and I’m looking forward to its arrival in Denver. Meanwhile, I’m glad I had a chance to try it out.

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Les Moonves in 2001

Les Moonves, photo © DepositPhotos / Ryan Born

There are a lot of times when I like the Consumer Electronics Association. In the battle for unfettered access to entertainment, the CEA is usually on the side of consumers, who often lack a strong voice of their own. But this week the CEA came out with a doozy of a report, saying its research shows that only 7% of US households rely on over-the-air (OTA) for their television viewing. The CEA said this lined up with a 2012 Nielsen study that said 9% of US households rely on OTA, down from 16% in 2003.

For all that to be true, there must have been thousands of families who unplugged their rooftop antennas so they could start paying for cable. Oddly, I couldn’t find any articles that mention those families.

The National Association of Broadcasters reacted by pointing to a different study that said 19.3% of homes rely exclusively on OTA television, up from 14% in 2010. That sounded like a much closer match to what I’ve read and seen over the past couple of years.

Just as I was feeling vindicated, CBS CEO Les Moonves spoiled my buzz. Only a few days after his trade organization re-emphasized its viewer numbers, Moonves told analysts in a conference call that those viewers really didn’t matter anyway. According to Deadline, Moonves said, “Right now over 85% of our viewing is done through satellite, cable, or the phone companies. The remaining 15% are not the most advertiser friendly, appealing to advertising.”

You put all that together, and the finished message from CBS is “There are a lot more OTA viewers than you think, but they’re not very important.” There’s a corollary to that: Anyone smart enough to dump cable and save money is not the kind of sucker an advertiser wants.

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WinMedMoviesGoogle’s announcement of the $35 Chromecast streaming dongle is rightfully big news this week, but I want to talk about another bridge between the internet and your TV set. This technology should appeal to anyone who’s contemplating cutting the cable cord. Its main strength is a free-subscription DVR for over-the-air (OTA) TV, but it’s also a great tool for streaming Netflix and countless other internet-based entertainment sources. That DVR is any PC with Windows Media Center (WMC). If you’re running Windows, you’ve probably got it already.

Well, there is one gotcha when it comes to that PC – it needs to have an OTA TV antenna connected to a TV input card or USB dongle. If OTA signals don’t reach you, that’s also a problem. Otherwise, the PC just needs to have a modestly fast processor (roughly 1 GHz or faster), at least 1 GB of RAM, at least 16 MB of hard drive space, some kind of internet access, and a video output that your TV can use.

For example, as I type, MicroCenter is selling a number of refurbished desktops that meet these requirements for $99. All they require is a cheap TV input card (here’s one for $20 from an eBay seller) and sometimes a basic video card (here’s more than you need for $26 from another eBay seller). For more advice about how to build your WMC box, this Motherboards.org page is a good start. WMC would also love to organize and serve up your music and photos, but remember that your WMC box is also a computer, so you can use it to run other entertainment apps (such as Hulu Desktop), type emails and do anything else you can do on a computer.

Instead of needing to buy another older computer, it’s just as possible that you’ve already got a hand-me-down or underused Windows computer that you can set up as your WMC box. Microsoft included WMC in a special version of Windows XP, then more editions of Windows Vista (Home Premium and Ultimate) and most editions of Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate). Windows 8 users have to upgrade to the Pro Pack to get WMC, but the older versions of Windows will work better on the kind of leftover hardware we’re talking about now.

Once you’ve got it set up, WMC works as a DVR and adds a few extra features. As with most DVRs, it keeps a constant buffer so you can go back a few minutes to check something you missed. WMC lets you record programs to your hard drive, and you can set just how much of the hard drive you want it to use. WMC downloads two-week guide data, always for free, that includes all significant OTA subchannels. As shown in the screen capture above, WMC displays all the movies that will be available, making it simple to click and record them. (It does the same for sports, but most events work better live, and few markets have many OTA sports broadcasts these days.)

If you’ve got broadband internet access, then you may appreciate the Netflix plugin for WMC. For all other internet-based entertainment, you’ve already got that computer hooked up to your TV.

If you’re a free-to-air satellite TV fan, thanks for continuing to read this blog. It turns out that WMC supports some FTA satellite input cards as well. The setup process is a little more involved, and I don’t think WMC will drive an FTA motor, but it works okay for stationary dishes with known transponders. In North America, guide data for FTA channels is spotty at best, but we FTA viewers are used to that.

WMC is hardly the only PC-based DVR available. MythTV is one well-regarded open-source alternative. NextPVR is closed source but free for personal use. And there are any number of commercial DVR alternatives. But nobody beats WMC for price, ease of setup, and ease of use. For cord-cutters who want to embrace and explore their local OTA TV signals, WMC is often the best choice.