And the beauty is that is a true uncompressed signal - not compressed like broadband, cable or satellite.

And no HDMI cable is required. A standard 75 Ohm RG6 cable with F-connectors does the trick. I am willing to bet that you already have the cable in place. Just make sure you have an ATSC tuner on your new LCD or Plasma.

Here is a great link to find out what HDTV stations are broadcast in your area.:
http://www.showmecables.com/showproducts.asp?category_id=147

@Michael - how is surfing the internet aimlessly any different than flipping through the channels? I’m not saying that its a viable alternative yet - but i think the line will ultimately be blurred for those that like to ‘flip’ through the channels aimlessly once the billionaire executives finally decide to offer everything on the internet as they do on TV.

You admit that you’re paying for cable, yet right an article that sounds like you think people are stupid for doing that very thing.

I know why I’m paying for cable. Why are you, Nicholas?

You’ll have to program the channels yourself, but you’ll receive all your locals in Hi-def (PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox), plus about 40 of the mainstream cable stations in 480p resolution.

And if you’re really excited about such things, then hook that coax cable from the wall into a QAM-tuner, then the QAM tuner into your Mac, and run EyeTV software to use your Mac as a DVR. Then run your Mac’s display out to your 1080p projector and there’s your live sports in 100 glorious inches, sonny!

It is a lot easier to watch TV when someone else makes your decision as to what you want to watch, when you have seemingly limitless options as to what you can watch you don’t want to settle for less than the best, and when you can’t actually find what you want to watch or you don’t know what you want to watch getting it on the internet can be a little frustrating.

My wife and I have been without cable/satellite TV for almost a year now. We get all our shows (about 30-40 of them) through Bittorent each night. Using a program called TVShows.app, we setup “Season Passes” similar to we did on our TiVo. The app then goes out and looks for the most recent episode of that particular show.

It works flawlessly. When I get up in the morning, all my shows are read to go. What’s even cooler is that they are in DivX/Xvid/MP4 format already, and so they’re even easier to put on a music player.

We could easily wirelessly stream these to the TV, but for now, we just simply copy them to a USB stick and play them in our USB-capable Philips DVD player.

This has worked great for us, and without fail, gets the shows we want by the next morning. I’ll also not that live sports can easily be remedied with a $20 antenna in MOST cases. It’s much easier to get a signal with the newer ATSC tuners–for the most part, the signal is either there or its not, and when it is, it looks great.

1. As someone mentioned, live sports.

2. Channel surfing. During television hiatus time, particularly the strike, I come across programming by flipping channels. Some are crap, but I have come across some interesting shows this way.

The other deal is the delay factor. Waiting around for the final episode of the sopranos to be uploaded so I could grab it was painful. The same goes for other shows I watch like Top Chef. With new content providers like AppleTV the availability of shows is unpredictable. Sometimes they are immediately sometimes it takes days.

So the answer is simple - availabilty of content and ease of use is still unmatched. But I see that slowly changing.

To be honest, I am just not impressed by traditional TV as a format. I am not normally in during the hours of prime TV here in the UK (about 8-11pm), and so miss most shows when they are on anyway.

I make a big use of the online services (BBC iPlayer, 4OD, etc) and they are going in the right direction - if only they would use something better than the terrible Kontiki for downloads I would use that over the streams, but that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. Fingers crossed they develop something in-house for Kangaroo…

I used to use Bittorent for a few shows, but there isn’t much from the states that I really watch at the moment - it comes in waves I suppose. Now as my Bittorrent is throttled I get these shows via file sharing/storage sites (you know the ones…). For most TV shows, I am happy with a 350MB XViD quality (a similar file size but h.264 would be better obviously) and it is pretty quick to download. Someone needs to find a way to monetise online TV, keeping TV free as people are used to. For me to pay $1.99 (or £1.99 as it no doubt will equate for no good reason) I would have to already really like a show (so have already seen most of a season at a minimum) and I don’t think I’m in a minority with that view.

Films-wise I go to the cinema relatively regularly, watch Film4 (free film channel in the UK that has ads but actually shows decent films regularly) every now and again, and rent the odd DVD. It is all about on demand though with films as with TV, and the marketplace is calling out for a legal outfit to offer good quality streams on demand (like you used to be able to get form Stage6 and still can through a few others but legal). Film is something that does benefit from better quality and sound - and people aren’t used to them being free like TV - so pay for options are more viable in my opinion. But studios need to work out that people are not going to pay the same price for a DRM’d download as a DVD or Blu-Ray title. If they sold titles that were time limited (for maybe 2 weeks) for something like £0.99 or $1.99 then I would happily pay that - but the DRM can’t be too restrictive and make me need extra hardware/software to use.

If I want a film or TV series to keep then I buy the DVD (and then rip them for ease of access/storage) - to make me buy them online they would have to have NO DRM at all, impressive HD video and surround sound and be notably cheaper (so $5 or $6 per film). Distribution costs are basically zero (ok maybe $0.10 for them - but that is pretty close) and there doesn’t need to be a middleman like Amazon/HMV/Play/etc involved to take a cut, so they should be able to get them out for under half price.

I just hope a studio/network just stands up to be counted on a new method and to try new things. If they sell time limited downloads (limited to 14 days) then if it ends up not working, they only have to support the system for 14 extra days of no sales - so not annoying customers (yes you MSN Music), or if they sell completely DRM free downloads in encoded in high quality open source codecs then even if they shut down the consumer can continue to use their downloads. The risks are quite low for them in these distribution methods, I just wish they would realise that and try new things. Something should work.

None of that is necessary, or even convenient. We have a DVR. Why does a TV show still make people trash their schedules? Because “it just not the same” to do it with a DVR. It feels like “cheating.”

In five years we’ll have a hell of a lot more people who don’t have these irrational anti-DVR emotions living in prime marketing demographics, and live TV will fall out of favor. I hope. I might be able to pry my friends away from the TV to go outside and live by then.