Subj : Re: Cable rip offs
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : Nightfox
Date : Thu Jun 22 2023 09:13:57

  Re: Re: Cable rip offs
  By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Thu Jun 22 2023 07:29 am

 Ni>> I live in an urban metro area, and I do get plenty of stations over the
 Ni>> air. Sometimes it seems like some people have forgotten that
 Ni>> over-the-air TV stations still exist and will pay for cable when they
 Ni>> might not need to.

 PF> The picture over the air is better than the pixellated 720p that my cable
 PF> company used to send over the cable.

In my area, there are a few over-the-air stations that broadcast in 1080p, but I think many of them broadcast in 720p.  Some of it looks even lower than that - There are broadcast subchannels that show reruns of older shows & other things that look a bit more blurry, like it's from a DVD or VHS tape (perhaps they're still broadcasting 720p or 1080p but the source video isn't as good).

Years ago, I had a basic cable TV package, and they gave me a small cable box to use with my TV.  The cable box outputted a standard-definition square (4:3) image..  The 4:3 image bugged me because it cut off the sides of widescreen content rather than using black bars at the top & bottom.  Also, I could tell the image quality wasn't as good as over-the-air digital broadcasts.  At the time I wasn't sure my over-the-air reception would be very good, but once I realized I could indeed pick up a good number of broadcast stations, I called the cable company to ask them to cancel my basic TV and just keep internet, but they said my bill would increase.  I find it odd that they do that.

Nightfox
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