nimbleguideI finally had a chance to poke around the new, revived nimbleTV, and it looks mostly the same as the nimbleTV I got to know before Dish shut it down for a few weeks. There are a few differences, and the big ones have Dish’s thumbprint on them.

The first change is that all nimbleTV customers must provide a valid New York City address to watch NYC local channels. Good thing I’ve got a NYC mailing address.

The second change is a restriction on simultaneous recordings. I know it used to be at least nine, Peter Litman wrote that it was 10, and nimbleTV’s site had called it unlimited and still calls it limitless. Today, a subscriber is limited to four simultaneous recordings.

The third change is trivial compared to the first two. My Casual Viewer package (taking channels from Dish’s Welcome Pack) dropped a lot of shopping and religious channels but added HSN, Daystar, and TV Guide Network.

Most things haven’t changed. NimbleTV still uses my favorite guide (shown above), an outside-the-box horizontal scroller that works well once you get used to it. NimbleTV still provides great streaming TV to my iPhone and computers. And nimbleTV still uses Dish but refuses to say anything substantial about their relationship.

Here’s my theory: Despite Dish’s continued assertion that nimbleTV isn’t an “authorized retailer,” they must have a deal or an understanding in place, otherwise nimbleTV’s receivers would stay shut down. The first two changes address likely Dish objections. If you’ll remember, Dish ran into legal trouble over distant network channels before and wouldn’t want to replay that case just because of nimbleTV. The new recording limit probably came about because Dish didn’t like it that nimbleTV subscribers could record more shows than a regular Dish customer.

Consider that within a couple of days of the outage, nimbleTV was telling its customers that “It may take up to two weeks for the billing issue to resolve completely and for service to be restored.” That was a very specific timeframe, and in retrospect, it sounds like an estimate for the time nimbleTV programmers would need to change the system to check for more than four recordings and to split the channel packages for local and non-local viewers.

I eagerly invite corrections. If I’m wrong about any of these guesses, which are just one explanation for nimbleTV’s behavior, I would be happy to change this post and add whatever information Dish or nimbleTV would care to share with its viewers. But I’ve got an unusual feeling about all of this. It’s the feeling that I may be right.

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.

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.

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.

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.