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Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

OTA is not as compressed as typical services from what I remember. Might be the only way to really use your hi end tv.

> OTA is not as compressed

Sadly this is no longer always the case with the advent of ATSC 1.0 and sub-channels.

An OTA TV license grants you 20Mbits of bandwidth in your market. The license holder is free to divide this bandwidth amongst however many sub-channels they desire.

In the last 7-8 years, the license holders (including CBS/NBC/et al) have continuously reduced their bitrates on their primary feeds in order to stuff as many sub-channels in their slice as possible.

Some of the majors in NYC (I’m looking at you ABC) resemble a RealVideo stream from 2002 more than a high-definition video from this decade.

> Some of the majors in NYC (I’m looking at you ABC) resemble a RealVideo stream from 2002

I honestly didn't realize that this wasn't true everywhere. Every time I've seen a digital TV broadcast, it's looked like this. Very nearly unwatchable, particularly on a large screen.

> I honestly didn't realize that this wasn't true everywhere. Every time I've seen a digital TV broadcast, it's looked like this. Very nearly unwatchable, particularly on a large screen.

Canadian broadcast networks does dedicate all of that stream into one (or more rarely two) streams per physical channel and it shows up (especially compared to some cable providers which squeeze up bandwidth).

I know that Canada is no more perfect than any other nation, but I really wish that the US would adopt more of the way Canada does things.

There are some channels on my cable service that seem to be rebroadcasts of these sub-channels. They are unwatchable. Sadly, PBS likes to make use of the sub-channels to offer various educational program streams, but their main channel suffers for it. Fast motion degenerates into blocky artifacts quite often.

4k blu rays have an extremely high bit rate; and a much much better picture than OTA.

I think it was meant as "compared to streaming". My parents still have cable tv and the image quality is still noticeable better than even 4K streaming of the same channels.

In ATSC 1.0 I don't think this was true, at least in my area. The reason is there was a fairly finite amount of bandwidth available (made worse by sub-channels) and they were limited to MPEG-2, so I often observed macro blocking and other artifacts. It was decent, and probably better than streaming was when it launched, but now that 4K streaming is routine (with HEVC) it looks considerably better. I'm sure ATSC 3.0 changes this.

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