by ·Comments Off on New Winner Antenna On My Roof

You know, I never did get around to telling you about the new over-the-air TV antennas that Televes gave me at CES. Let’s fix that now.

Televes over-the-air TV antenna on a rooftop mount
Here is the antenna that beat my old HD Frequency Cable Cutter

You might remember that at CES this year, I met Javier Ruano, GM of OTA antenna maker Televes. Here’s one of the benefits of attending the last day of a convention: Ruano offered to let me try out some of his display models if I dropped by when he closed the Televes booth. When I came to collect, there was an impromptu demonstration that these antennas are much harder to take apart than they are to assemble, then I was on my way. I shipped the largest via FedEx and brought a couple more as carry-ons on my Southwest flight home.

CES is in January, and FreeTVBlog’s World Headquarters of Denver is known for snow. We got an extra helping of the white stuff this winter, which was great news for skiers and the water supply but made it difficult to time a safe trip to the roof to test the new Televes Ellipse against my incumbent, an excellent Cable Cutter antenna from HD Frequency. While I waited for a rooftop opportunity, I descended to the basement’s indoor antenna torture chamber.

There in the world of foundation walls and casement windows, over-the-air TV reception is really tough. So that’s where I like to try out various indoor “solutions” to see which ones might be sensitive enough to pick up the local transmitters 17 miles away.

Let me mention here again that TV signal quality measurements vary quite a bit from hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute. And that’s on top of the variation that can be introduced by different coax cables, even those that seem identical. My testing technique was strictly A/B, swapping one antenna for another while keeping everything else the same. My measuring tool was the amazing HDHomeRun receiver, which reports signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio, and the most important, signal quality.

Televes Bexia indoor antenna
The Bexia by Televes

I could get into the weeds here with all the measurements of Televes’ Bexia vs. the square RCA antenna that Dish sent over during one of its retransmission spats. (It’s something like this one.) I’ll spare you the channel by channel quality numbers. Although a few of its frequencies showed lower numbers than the amplified RCA square, the Bexia pulled in a wider range of usable channels from its awful position by the ground-level casement window. I wish I could link to a product page, but the Bexia appears to be a prototype, so all I could find was a YouTube video.

Weeks passed, and a week of warm weather invited me to the roof. After the difficulty of taking it apart at CES, I was surprised that the Ellipse really did snap together in less than a minute. Up on the roof, the only installation drawback was that the centered coax connector lined up with the mounting pole; an connector on one side or the other would have worked better. It made the connection more awkward, but with a 7/16-inch wrench, anything is possible.

Measured against the old champ, the Ellipse’s VHF was a bit weaker though definitely good enough. (I later learned that was because the CES demo unit was also a prototype, without the VHF element of the finished product.) The Ellipse’s advantage was on some UHF channels that had been plagued with dropoffs because of signal reflections. Those signals were now continuous. A few of the strong UHF channels showed lower SNR percentages than the Cable Cutter produced, but the weaker UHF signals came in stronger.

That prototype is still mounted on the roof, and the family is pleased. The flat HD Frequency Cable Cutter is well suited for both indoor and outdoor use, but in a way it’s kind of nice to once again have a rooftop antenna that looks like a TV antenna.

by ·Comments Off on Is There A Secret Locast – Dish Link?

Writing in his regular column in TV News Check yesterday, Harry Jessell said something pretty close to what I said a couple of months ago. He wrote, “I don’t know it for a fact, but I know that it’s true that Charlie Ergen is the money behind Locast,” the non-profit over-the-air TV streaming service.

Jessell pointed to most of the evidence that I mentioned earlier, that Locast founder David Goodfriend used to represent Dish in Washington, and that it’s a heck of a coincidence that the Locast app is now on the Dish Hopper receiver. And Jessell also provided the principals’ public denials, noting that Dish co-founder Charlie Ergen declined to comment about the Locast connection during Dish’s Feb. 13 earnings call. About the only thing of mine that Jessell didn’t use was Locast’s otherwise odd choice of Ergen’s home, Denver, as the smallest of its first markets.

As I understand it, the key to Locast’s survival is its non-profit status. That way it can use the chunk of copyright law originally meant to encourage repeater towers to send local free TV over the internet. And that’s why Ergen and Dish have to stay at arm’s length; I’m surprised the Locast app is already on the Hopper. Then again, maybe it’s all just a coinincidence.

By the way, I’ve been meaning to note that my previous difficulties with Locast have evaporated. If I use a GPS emulator on my Android tablet to appear to be within one of Locast’s TV markets, I can see that market’s channels. Since the enabling copyright law was designed for spreading free-TV signals beyond their original reach, I feel like I’m just taking advantage of the world’s best repeater.

by ·Comments Off on Fun Photos of CES 2019

To talk about my visit to CES* this year, I need to get into some history. This blog started as FTABlog, supporting FTAList.com, which still provides the best list of Ku-band satellite free-to-air (unscrambled, legal) TV channels available in North America. Because of that perspective, my relationship with CES has changed over the years.

*The official name has changed more often than you might expect. It launched as the Consumer Electronics Show, then officially switched to the International CES, and is now just CES. Every year, its press releases provide guidance on exactly how its name should be used in articles. But I digress.

When I first started attending the show, it was just before the Great Recession and satellite free-to-air equipment was still on the exhibit floor. For a couple of years after the economic downturn, some past and future attendees stayed home, and hotel rooms were easier to find. CES has been growing ever since, and the days of inexpensive rooms look like ancient history. FTA satellite equipment vendors vanished, but for a while there were plenty of TV pioneers to interview. In past years, I saw over-the-air streamer Tablo TV in the startup Eureka Park and the launch of Sling TV, the first over-the-top provider, on the main floor. Now OTT streaming video is mainstream, and there’s just not that much left to interest free-TV fans.

Don’t get me wrong. CES remains an amazing experience, and I heartily recommend that everyone should attend at least one. Even in a haystack of incremental advances and knockoffs, there are always at least a few amazing innovations. If you want to network with other technology professionals, CES is a great opportunity. But this year had less dazzle and less TV than in past years.

Because of my other projects, there have been years when I’ve spent only a single long day at CES, and that’s just not enough time to see everything. This year my schedule restricted me to the last two days of CES, which was also suboptimal. The final day is deliberately shorter, and many exhibitors begin wrapping up even before that early close.

(Three days at CES may be too overwhelming for some attendees, including me. In my experience, the best possible CES visit is the middle two days. If your goal is to be the very first to see new cutting-edge products, then join the crowd that comes for just the first two days.)

The highlights of my visit, as always, were the people I met. Theodore Head, who runs SiliconDust, makers of the excellent HDHomeRun over-the-air TV receivers, talked about plans for the Scribe Duo, a more integrated DVR to make life easier for new users. (I’ve often said that the most successful consumer electronics should be as easy to use as a toaster, which leaves out all FTA satellite equipment I’ve ever seen.) Javier Ruano, GM of OTA antenna maker Televes, showed off some prototypes, of which I’ll write much more next time.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the 2019 CES. I haven’t decided whether I’ll be back next January, but when I look at the pictures, they make me smile enough to want to return.

RCA Antenna on a fake window at CES

At the RCA booth, a guy explained that a huge percentage of antennas sold at retail and soon returned had nothing wrong with them but had just been incorrectly placed. That was the genesis for this RCA antenna with a built-in signal meter. It also works with an RCA phone app that suggests which direction to point for the best chance at receiving particular TV stations.

Rows of phone chargers at CES

Previous CES shows (is that like “ATM machine”?) featured an amazing array of cell phone cases in a variety of styles from a variety of vendors. This CES was different – there were more cell phone chargers than cases. Plus plenty of battery-enhanced cases.

A huge, wide video wall showing an ocean wave at CES

The usual half-dozen stunning displays at CES was down to maybe one this year: this amazing, wide, curved video wall that was so much more impressive in person.

TV Jockstrap® booth at CES

Tired of sports spoilers in the TV bottom crawl? Maybe you need a TV Jockstrap®, my CES Goofy Award winner.

Woman with headset at CES giving presentation to empty aisle

Finally, my favorite CES 2019 photo. As I walked the exhibit floor in its final hour, I encountered a woman giving a full presentation to literally no one. She rolled through the whole spiel to the empty aisle before her. It was time to leave.

by ·Comments Off on Locast Arrives On Dish’s Hopper

On a day when most of the electronic industry’s press is focused on the opening of CES, and when Dish Network announced plans to add Google Assistant to its Hopper receivers, Dish also quietly flipped a switch. Locast, the free over-the-air TV streaming service, now has an active app on at least some Hopper receivers. Since FreeTVBlog World Headquarters happens to be in one of Locast’s markets, I can verify that it’s up and running; reports from other viewers suggest that it’s only working within those markets.

This is pretty much what I predicted almost a year ago when Locast first came on the scene. I wrote, “What do you think it would be worth for Dish, in its next OTA retransmission impasse, to be able to tell its customers to flip over to the local Locast feed? Could Dish add Locast as a digital service alongside YouTube and Netflix?”

Was this always Locast’s goal? I have no way of knowing for sure, but it’s easy to build that scenario. David Goodfriend, chairman of the non-profit behind Locast, worked as a Dish vice president for seven years. Despite its stated goal of benefiting online viewers, Locast only carries the primary channels and ignores the sub-channels, which Dish doesn’t rebroadcast. In recent months, Locast has beefed up its geofencing technology – VPNs and location spoofs don’t work as they did at launch. And check out Locast’s first seven markets by size: six of the top nine (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, and Boston), plus #19 Denver, home of Dish.

Locast’s Hopper app itself isn’t anything special, just a standard program grid with the major networks shuffled to the top, but it works just fine for delivering live local TV. For now, the app offers no DVR capabilities or any other coordination with any other Dish programming. I’ll keep checking in and let you know when that changes.

by ·Comments Off on Another Microsoft TV Option Withers Away

Man at Xbox One mall display playing a game

© canadapanda / Depositphotos.com

Ars Technica ran a story this morning with more bad news for free-TV viewers. Microsoft quietly sent an email to Xbox users who stream over-the-air TV on that platform through a Hauppauge USB tuner to a mobile device. It read in part, “You may have streamed TV content using a USB TV tuner from your Xbox console to the Xbox app. In 30 days, the Xbox app on iOS and Android will no longer support this functionality.” The Windows 10 app will continue to work.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft’s former commitment to the Windows Media Center, which was a pretty good way to watch and record OTA TV until Microsoft turned its back on it. WMC had been on some versions of Windows XP and Vista, then was included in almost all versions of Windows 7. For whatever reason, Microsoft stopped caring at about that point. For Windows 8, WMC was available only as a pricey add-on, then Windows 10 dropped it altogether.

In other words, it’s another example of Kilgore’s second law: It’s hard to monetize what folks get for free. A feature that helps buyers watch OTA TV can be a helpful selling point for that first hardware purchase, but there needs to be an economic reason to continue supporting that feature. Folks such as Tablo and TiVo sell subscriptions. Google probably uses Live Channels viewer data to sell more ads pointed at those viewers. Maybe Microsoft will tie OTA TV support to one of its Xbox subscription services. Until that happens, it might not have enough incentive to keep supporting free TV. If you rely on Xbox-served OTA TV, you have been warned.