Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Geez, just when I think I have all the terms, sayings, info, etc down... I don't!
Thanks.
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Yeah, basically the best quality HDTV you can get is actually over the air because it's not compressed like on Cable or Satellite. The best thing is that it's also free. Analog OTA is ending but by law, the U.S. stations are switching to digital OTA.
In major cities in the US and Vancouver and Toronto, you can get a huge variety of HD digital OTA. There's none at all in Calgary and it looks like the CRTC date for the conversion to digital in Canada is 2012 instead of 2009 in the states. We can't even piggyback off American channels like those fortunate enough to be in Southern Ontario (or even Southern Manitoba) since the Idaho/Montana area under us is pretty much a backwards HD OTA deadzone as well.
Here, people are stuck paying for lower quality compressed HDTV to the Shaw monopoly when those fortunate to be in cities with lots of coverage get an amazing amount of channels and variety in real high quality HDTV - for free.
I brought this topic up because I bought an HDTV USB tuner for $20 today. That's my total investment cost for this. I don't plan on ever buying HD from Shaw or Bell. I was hoping Calgary would have the coverage a few other Canadian ciies already had. It looks like nothing will be operational until later into this year or even further because Canada is so behind the FCC.