by ·Comments Off on New LNB just a little better

The new Spitfire Elite LNBAfter long last, here’s a post that’s actually about FTA stuff. Although I am drinking from an ivi.tv coffee mug as I write it. (You can buy yours from CafePress.)

I used to have a dish dedicated to all of the great over-the-air programming of then-Galaxy 10R, so I could switch over to one of those channels in a snap. A couple of months after the old Equity stations winked off, I moved that dish to pick up all the PBS channels on AMC 21.

As of yesterday, this stationary dish had a small Tracker 0.2 dB LNB. Although I’ve never had a truly bad LNB, I keep swapping them out as they improve.

The latest new LNB that I wanted to try was an even smaller Spitfire Elite 0.1 dB from DMS International, via FridgeFTA. What bugs me these days about AMC 21 is Montana PBS, which comes in for me just enough to be detected, but without enough signal strength to watch. Was this new LNB sensitive enough to make a difference?

After a quick swap, I re-peaked the dish while keeping an eye on the signal quality. On the transponder I used for testing, the old Tracker’s quality flickered from 67 to 70. With the Spitfire, it stayed steady at 70, with occasional blips of 71.

Montana PBS still isn’t working for me, and this quality improvement is pretty marginal. But if you’re just now buying your equipment, or if you want to wring every last drop of quality from your dish, the Spitfire is a good choice.

by ·Comments Off on Go read it!

“The Federal Communications Commission is going to need to make a decision, and soon, on how it will treat over-the-top services in the ‘brave new world’ of broadband video delivery (and, yes, we understand the irony in that phrase).”

Go read the rest of John Eggerton’s column about the need for new rules after the ivi injunction.

by ·6 Comments

Welcome to the new host for FTABlog.com. We ran into some technical difficulties, and it turns out that it might take a couple of days to get them all fixed.

If you need to move a WordPress blog from one host to another, and at least one of them is GoDaddy, here’s a tip: Copying over all of the files isn’t enough. You also need to back up the database, which is stored on a different domain with GoDaddy, then restore it once you’ve moved.

Uh, I didn’t do that. The good news is that almost all the text is cached on Google. The bad news is that I’ll need to copy and paste those posts into new posts here, as well as change more configuration stuff than I expected. (Because a lot of it is in the database, not the files.)

What’s really galling is that, according to a friendly GoDaddy support person, that old database is floating right where they can see it, but to restore it would cost a hefty fee (well, okay) and take over a week (not okay). I’d rather get to work on bringing back the old content right away, so I’m going to be adding it a piece at a time. I’ll shoot for having everything back by Monday morning. Wish me luck!

Update: Almost everything is back to almost normal now. Every word of every post and comment is back, along with every illustration. Some of the internal links are broken, and some of the sidebar stuff needs rearranging, but I’m pleasantly surprised that I was able to salvage such a high percentage of the old site so quickly.

Thanks again for your patience. Check back soon when I’ll type about something fun.

by ·Comments Off on Injunction knocks most channels off ivi.TV

Gavel falling hardThe last show I watched on ivi.TV was Jeopardy, the episode where the two best players of all time lost to an expert system created by IBM. Sure, I checked ivi every day to make sure it was still there, but that historic occasion was the last time I sat down to watch it. And now, thanks to a US District Judge’s preliminary injunction handed down Tuesday, I’ll probably never watch Jeopardy on ivi again.

To its credit, ivi vows to appeal the ruling, and it’s limping along (for free!) with Trinity Broadcasting and a few other odd channels. But the odds of seeing distant broadcast network channels look very weak. You can lose the injunction and win the case, but that’s not the way to bet.

(Speaking of limping along, those irrepressible FilmOn folks keep on streaming their own oddball set of channels. FilmOn’s channel list includes Retro TV, Tuff TV, PBS Hawaii, Fashion TV, ion, parts(?) of WPIX and KTLA, and a few others. But none of the British channels it dangled before us at its launch. FilmOn wants $9.95/month for that motley collection, or $19.95/month for that set plus six “adult” channels. That’s all too pricy for me. but you can take a look to see what you think.)

From a free-to-air TV perspective, we’ve had a great run with the ivi broadcast channels. We had dozens of streaming channels for half a year, all for about the price of a replacement LNB. These channels never felt permanent to me; with so many deep-pocketed players against them, I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did. In the end, it seems appropriate that my last memory of the “old” ivi will be of highly skilled humans beaten by a multinational corporation.

by ·Comments Off on Ancient history now available here

old desk with cobwebsIt always surprised me how many people told me that they wanted to read the old, pre-WordPress posts from FTABlog. It sometimes scared me to discover how many actually discovered the old site that hosted it.

So I can satisfy folks who just can’t get enough old stuff, and so I can shut down the old site, I’ve added a page here that contains all of those old blog posts. Now I need to get back to writing something new.