SoundGuy wrote:
Lynnmor wrote:
It is amazing that TV manufacturers have totally ignored the needs of those that want to receive over the air stations. I have to believe that they are catering to the cable companies as there is no other good reason for not being able to add channels. When you talk to many people today, they have no clue that antennas now can receive more channels than ever before.
OTA will always exist but cable is eventually going to go the way of the do-do bird as more & more stream what they want to watch. Cable costs, at least here in Canada, have increased to the point where we're paying ridiculous sums for hundreds of channels that are absolutely useless just for the "privilege" of receiving a few select channels that we actually would watch. For sure, wireless connectivity can still be spotty when out camping but coverage does continue to improve and will eventually spell the death knell for greedy cable operations. I have a spare omni RV antenna and even just sitting it in any of the upstairs bedrooms I can receive all the Canadian networks transmitting off the CN Tower in Toronto and most of the US networks transmitting out of Buffalo. Since we already pay for unlimited internet data we're now thinking of ditching cable entirely and going back to OTA for news & network shows and streaming for anything else we may want to watch.
Sorry, Sound Guy, but in my not so humble opinion (35+ years in the broadcast engineering, cable TV, & Internet businesses), your fundamental premise for cord-cutting doesn't hold for RVers. It's totally dependent on having high-speed broadband Internet access -- either wireless or wired (i.e., Cabled).
It'll be a long time before 5G Internet service reaches most places where RV parks, campgrounds, and certainly boondocking sites are located. The amount of land the first two categories require means that they will be on the outskirts of an urban area, at best. Boondocking sites better be in the wilderness, or they aren't any fun.
5G buildouts schedules for the major US wireless providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, & Comcast) are quite logically focused on major urban cities for the next decade, because that's where the numbers are. Anything on their periphery will be waiting until cost-justified, and that's not where most of us camp.
Cable TV originated from a TV store owner in NE Pennsylvania who wanted to bring OTA signals into his valley town, with a head end atop the nearby mountain. You'll still find many "remote" areas where Cable is the only way they can get OTA signals, without the OTA stations' repeaters or 100+' towers. Those areas are where
I camp!
By the way, you're living in a unique location, because Toronto & Buffalo NY are so close. I had a similar situation living in Detroit and watching Windsor ONT TV over-the-air. That rarely happens elsewhere.
Finally, you're blaming high cable fees on "greedy cable operations". Actually, much of your cable fees goes to the content providers, both satellite and OTA local origination stations. Another large chunk goes toward maintaining the network infrastructure, to deliver the reliability the public demands,
