Some Myths and Misconceptions About Free OTA TV

There is a lot of bad information out there about free OTA TV and pay TV. Some of it is lack of information, some is misinformation. Some of it comes from a basic misunderstanding of free digital TV, and some of it even originates with pay TV providers themselves.

LET'S LOOK AT THESE MISCONCEPTIONS AND THE FACTS.

How To Get OTA Program Guide Info After The End of TVGOS TV Guide On Screen

 Breaking News:

If you have a TV or device that uses TVGOS (TV Guide On Screen) you are about to lose your program guide. ROVI, the creator of TVGOS, has announced the end of the service.This is a post from AVS forum on the subject:

Originally Posted by RobMeyer1  

I received a reply from KNME:
"Mr. Meyer,
We were instructed by the distributor for TV Guide to disconnect the
equipment which distributes the TV Guide information last week. For more
information, you may contact them as follows:
Call Gemstar/Rovicorp Consumer Electronics Product Support at 800-386-7380.
Email can be sent to ce_customer_support@rovicorp.com.
Thank you for writing and thank you for watching New Mexico PBS."
Looks like most of New Mexico will no longer get TV Guide.

I called the above phone #. The engineer I talked to confirmed that TV Guide is being discontinued. Approximately 20% of markets have been terminated as of Nov. 1st and the rest will be discontinued over the next 6 months!

Note that TV Guide itself is not being terminated, just the ROVI provided TVGOS.

Now, what are you going to do if you have a TVGOS device? Too bad a lot of channels don't use their PSIP, or under-use it. PSIP (Program and System Information Protocol ) is the program data transmitted by the TV stations themselves, using a small bit of their bandwidth to provide program listings for free. Some channels populate their guide out several days and include program details (PBS stations usually do it best), but most only go out about 12 hours with no description. The worst stations are the minor players, like LP stations. You're lucky if they display the station name / network, let alone program info.

Funny thing is, most cheap converter boxes have a better program guide than even the most expensive TV sets. (That's why my DTVpal converter is hooked up to my 52" HDTV!) Now, if $50 converter boxes can have a guide, then why not a $1000+ HDTV? It would only add about a dollar or two to the price of a new TV.

A couple work-arounds for no program guide:

Missing In Action: Channel 9 KUEN from Mt. Pisgah, Cache Valley

Sometime on weekend of January 8, 2011 , KUEN-TV 9 - broadcasting on Cache County Translator K46JK-D disappeared. It's still down as of today, 01/12/11, with no services and no signal. But I think I have a clue: I now have 3 instances of channel 5, KSL. One is the original KSL 5 signal from Mt. Pisgah, and one is from the Franklin County Translator District. And now - there's a third. I am assuming - because as usual, nobody here knows anything, so I am making this up as I go along - that somehow KUEN's translator got switched over to broadcast KSL's signal. I have also been having issues with FOX13's signal breaking up, both on the Cache and Franklin transmitters. The problem is more pronounced on the Cache translator, rendering it unwatchable at times. I will try to contact the county about this, but I don't expect them to be of much help. I'll let you know if I do get any information.

UPDATE: I did a rescan on my TVs on 1/18/2011, and channel 9 is back up, after a one and a half week outage. And nobody at the County offices could tell me a thing about it.

Fox 13 announces AntennaTV starts Jan. 5, 2011

Fox 13 Utah tonight announces (officially) AntennaTV on it's 13.2 subchannel:

SALT LAKE CITY —

Coming Wednesday, FOX 13 will air "Antenna TV" so viewers in the area can view classic American television shows.
It will be a step back in time for nostalgia t.v. viewers. Benny Hill, Three's Company, Sanford and Sons, these are some of the series titles Antenna TV viewers can see starting at 1 p.m. MST Jan. 5.
"It's all about family friendly television," says KSTU FOX 13's General Manager, Tim Ermish. Ermish says that although Antenna TV in not affiliated with FOX, it is a digital sub-channel that KSTU got licensed to air.

The cost? Antenna TV is free for cable subscribers.
For Comcast subscribers the channel will be 1-06 and will switch to channel 1-1-1 Jan. 20.
Other cable providers will have Antenna TV on channel 13-2.

Satellite customers will not have access, for now.

 

Notice no mention in the print article that it's also FREE OTA with an ANTENNA, what? And if you have satellite, you can add an OTA antenna to your dish setup and get not only antennaTV, but a bunch of other channels you can't get on cable or satellite!

Weigel Broadcasting Co. Seeks Affiliates For its Classic TV Network, ‘Me-TV’

If you broadcasters out there in TV Land are listening (and I know you are) here's yet another opportunity to add subchannel programming to your revenue stream: The Me-TV Network, featuring classic television programming. Me-TV is from one of the partners who created the ThisTV Network that features mostly movies.

Here is Weigel Broadcasting's press release: