by ·Comments Off on My forwarding address
© DepositPhotos / gustavofrazao

© DepositPhotos / gustavofrazao

For years, I’ve been writing here at FTABlog, and my worst problem has always been explaining what the heck “FTA” means. For every person who recognized that I was talking about free and legal satellite TV reception, there were two who figured it was some pirate thing and 20 more who had no clue. Maybe that was okay when the blog was devoted solely to FTA stuff, but not so much as over-the-air and internet-based TV topics took over.

That’s why I was so happy when a much better (in retrospect) domain name became available: FreeTVBlog.com. Maybe it’s a little too straightforward, but at least nobody’s going to wonder what the heck this blog is about.

Another advantage of the new place is that it gave me a better chance to experiment with a fully responsive WordPress template. FreeTVBlog looks so much better on my smartphone than FTABlog does. Soon, that same change will also roll over FTAList.com, but at this writing, that development work is still underway.

This is my last FTABlog post; the rest will be at the new site. I’ll leave FTABlog in place for a while to make it easy to read the links. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you again at FreeTVBlog.

by ·Comments Off on Fall 2015: What's new in channel surfing
Pluto TV

Pluto TV

Summer break is over, so let me catch up with what’s available in free TV viewing. For sheer quantity, there’s more than anyone could ever want.

First and foremost, over-the-air TV remains strong. With digital sub-channels, the typical viewer has dozens of choices. Here at FTABlog World Headquarters in Denver, I receive 68 channels. Your mileage will vary, of course; according to TitanTV, there are over 90 channels available in New York City and over 140 in Los Angeles but only 32 in Springfield MO. There’s a storm cloud on the horizon with the FCC’s upcoming TV spectrum auction, which could cause some of those stations disappear to make room for more mobile internet access. We’ll have to wait and see how that shakes out.

Next is FTABlog’s raison d’etre: free-to-air satellite TV. There are almost 300 free TV channels available with a pretty small Ku-band dish. Over 90 of those are in English, and that doesn’t include the many news feeds, sports feeds, and other such transient satellite signals. If you have a big C-band dish, there are another couple hundred interesting free channels to watch.

With broadband internet access, there are plenty of interesting options, although they haven’t changed much lately. With Aereo and Nimble TV gone, there aren’t any good ways to watch streaming US OTA channels, unless it comes from your own antenna, but there’s still a lot to watch. FilmOn continues to provide a wide range of channels, and internet video aggregator Rabbit TV (not quite free) got a mention at USA Today this week. Pluto TV includes dozens of channels including live news feeds. For ad-supported free TV that isn’t live, there’s Crackle and some parts of Hulu, and for more old TV and movies than you’ll ever have time to watch, there’s the Internet Archive.

There’s a chance we could see an avalanche of streaming channels, OTA and otherwise, if the FCC gives online services full rights and responsibilities as multichannel video programming distributors like cable and satellite providers. Imagine if broadcasters had to negotiate in good faith with the likes of FilmOn. This could open up a whole new category of video service.

Hey, I even had to update the About page here to reflect a change in free (as in free speech) TV. For years, it was nigh impossible to watch reruns of Spenser: For Hire. Period. No reruns on any network, no streaming services, no DVDs. Now that last option, at least, is available as print-on-demand sets on Amazon. Robert Urich, rest his soul, is no Spenser, but Avery Brooks was born to play Hawk. Now I’ll have to start wishing for something else, maybe the complete Fernwood 2 Night?

All in all, it’s a great time to be watching free TV. Discover something you like, kick back, and enjoy.

by ·Comments Off on Upon further review
Mistake in math formula on chalkboard

© DepositPhotos / olechowski

After I posted my review of Channel Master’s DVR+, a part of me was just certain that something was wrong about it. That was the first time I used the Kill A Watt meter, and despite what it told me, I thought its numbers didn’t add up. I used the same meter with the same settings on my Dish 922 receiver, and the meter told me that my 922 was responsible for about a quarter of my electric bill. That couldn’t be right.

Sure enough, the meter had somehow bumped my electricity rate from almost 9 cents per kWh to over 89 cents/kWh. (User error? Not that!) After resetting with the right numbers and calibrating against a known amount of usage (a lamp), I was ready to try again.

This time, the meter told me that my Windows Media Center computer was burning less than $1.50/month of electricity. That was based on a measurement over several days, including several hibernation periods, so I took the computer’s measured peak power consumption of 40 watts and multiplied up to about $2.60/month of 24/7 usage. The meter showed a similar reduction for the DVR+, down to a tiny 7 watts. The DVR+ is still much better with electricity, but not $12/month better. I’ve corrected those figures in the original post.

As I was doing these retests, a comment came in. I was expecting someone to tell me that my power figures had to be full of beans, but this one corrected my remarks about DVR+ buffering. Turns out that it works just fine if it’s got an external hard drive plugged in, so I also added that note to the original post. That’s where it all stands now, and if I ever learn how to reprogram the DVR+ skip-ahead buttons, I’ll let you know.

Update: Commenter phil came through with the full DVR+ manual (PDF) which reveals all sorts of things, including the secret of reprogramming the buttons. To change from the default 10 seconds, just go to the DVR menu, which of course is where you would expect to find remote control options.

Once upon a time, I helped prepare in-box manuals, so I understand that printing a zillion short booklets saves real money over printing a zillion full manuals. In this case, with such non-intuitive options, I think that Channel Master would be well served to include those full manuals. Or maybe just single sheets of attention-grabbing colored paper with the note to be sure to go online for the full version. Then everybody would know exactly how it’s supposed to work.

by ·Comments Off on How I became internationally known

Me, in front of my largest satellite dishI’ve been putting this off because it’s a little embarrassing. But I suppose I really ought to tell you that in the back of its latest issue, the global digital TV magazine Tele-Audiovision (formerly Tele-Satellite) published a 9-page spread on me and my FTA websites.

It all started at the NAB Show last year, where I met the publisher, Alexander Weise. His magazine has had a booth at NAB and CES for years, but this was the first time I caught him sitting at it. Alexander’s a friendly, burly guy who looks a little older than his Page 3 photo. He’s got a good command of English, though it’s clear that it’s not his first language. I told him how important Tele-Satellite had been to me when I was just getting started with FTA, and we chatted about what’s going on in North America. (FTA is much more popular elsewhere.)

I gave him my card and talked about what I do here, and Alexander surprised me by suggesting that he make a stop in Denver on his way home to Germany. I had thought that Alexander was just making friendly conversation, but he called a few days later to set up a meeting. When the day came, he arrived and got to work efficiently gathering what he needed. He asked me a few questions about my work, though he might have made some notes from our NAB meeting. When he saw the dishes that I use, he got out his camera and posed me next to a couple of them. He also took a few other pictures; based on what was published, I believe that he printed every photo that he took at my place.

After lunch nearby, Alexander dropped me off and drove away, and that had been the last I had heard about it. In a previous life, I used to edit a magazine, so I know what it’s like to keep an article in inventory for a rainy day but also what it’s like when a projected article just doesn’t pan out. Months went by, and I quietly doubted that any of our visit would ever see print. At CES a couple of months ago, I dropped by the Tele-Audiovision booth a couple of times just to say hi. The folks there always said that I just missed Alexander, so I gave them my card to pass along. Did that card poke my story loose from its file cabinet? Or was Alexander just waiting until he needed something like that to fill an issue?

I forget who it was, but I heard a comedian once say that when you look back at what you were like a year ago, you curse at your mistakes. (He followed up by wondering whether that ever changes; will you complain at 97 about the dumb stuff you did when you were 96?) Sure enough, when I look at this 11-month-old moment frozen in time, I see some things that I could have done better. I know it was a warm April day, but maybe shorts weren’t the best choice if I was going to be in the photos. It was fun to talk about possibly streaming video, but the delivery method, TVU Networks, didn’t work out nearly as well as I’d hoped. The article’s title “The FTA Fan” makes it sound as if I do this all just for fun; maybe if I’d stressed the serious public service aspect he would have written something different.

So now you know the whole story. If you want to take a look at my motorized 1.2-meter dish, go for it. If you’re impressed by my easy-to-make wood platforms, let me know and I’ll write more about them. Or just go to discover a great magazine about the TV receivers we like to use. Tele-Audiovision is always worth reading, even when I’m not in it.

by ·2 Comments

CES 2013 exhibit hallFirst, let me apologize to anyone who tried to visit here in the past week only to be turned away, often by a 500 database error. According to my web host, FTABlog suddenly began devouring huge chunks of memory for no good reason, and its server had nothing to do with that. After wrestling with the problem for a few days, I moved the blog to a new host, and this time the transition seems to have been successful. Who says I never learn my lesson?

Now I’ve got a lot of CES reporting to catch up on. The first, most interesting bit is that I was proved right; the onsite staff of CNet reportedly voted Dish Network’s Hopper with Sling receiver as 2013 CES Best of Show. Unfortunately for Dish, CBS owns CNet, and CBS (among others) is suing Dish because of the Hopper’s advertising-skipping function. So CBS got wind of the award and squashed it, directing CNet to pick somebody else.

The Verge has a superb story on the whole affair, and it gets bonus points from me for dragging in Alki David, our friend from FilmOn.com. Quite a while ago, fresh from getting smacked by CBS (among others) after his first attempts to stream over-the-air programming, David sued CBS for allowing CNet to report extensively on piracy, including how-to pieces, and for the related site Download.com, which supposedly hosted circumvention software. In that lawsuit, CBS lawyers argued that CNet was independent of CBS’s control. The Verge writes, “Holding CBS responsible forCNET, CBS’ lawyers argued, ‘would create grave uncertainties for writers and publishers — including search engines, web encyclopedias, blogs and most technology journalists — that seek to communicate truthful information about emerging technologies including P2P file-sharing services.'”

I don’t know whether David can use this to show that CBS isn’t quite so hands-off when it comes to CNet, and I think it’s a darned shame that Dish was denied another CES Best of Show (it won in 2009 for the ViP 922 receiver). But I think the Hopper has a chance of beating the courts and becoming a real game-changer. As a Dish shareholder, I sure hope so.