Free to air TV - what are my options?

Electronics & Technology
41

Thanks for your post.

After reading the many posts offering sound advice, including yours, I decided to put any decision on hold until November.

This is because I understand that Foxtel is launching a new product later this month called Foxtel Flash which will be a news streaming service: including Fox News, BBC, Sky, CNBC etc for roughly $10/month. I am keen to sign up.

There are rumours that ABC news will join the line up. But unconfirmed as this post is being typed.
Other rumours are that 7, 9 & 10 will also be streamed through this new service.

If either of the above comes to fruition, then that solves my FTA problem, given I already have access to SBS On Demand on the TV’s menu and while I’d like 7, 9 & 10, I can live without them.

FYI, as I live in a MDU as you correctly inferred one option you canvas of re-installing an outdoor antenna (the old one was disposed of many years ago) on the building is a non starter. Owners have zero interest in spending one red cent on such a thing. Unsurprisingly, many have Foxtel (which pipes FTA through their cable) and others are chuffed with streaming services alone. Others raised the issue a couple of years ago.

You ask if my bldg is connected to Foxtel by cable or satellite. It is cable.
Another rumour I heard is that proposed streaming options by Foxtel may render its expected arm wrestling of cable users to move to satellite dead in the water. No surprise there as it was always for the customers to pay for dish connection.

42

Might not be a bad idea.

Foxtel doesn’t pipe FTA in the way an antenna feed does. The FTA channels are brought into the system at Foxtel’s head end (Sydney) and retransmitted, which takes additional channel space in the cable/satellite. My earlier point about antenna and MDU related to injecting the FTA signal locally into your building’s distribution. The off-air antenna feed is free and universal once you’ve put the infrastructure in place.

Since your building has Foxtel via cable, theoretically you could inject the FTA RF signal into the building distribution - with a bit of care in the engineering. So potentially there is a solution that could work well for your MDU, but I’m out of touch with current practice so better for me to not say what will definitely work. I know what I do at home, where I have at various times combined cable and satellite, or FTA and satellite on the same points. I never had a need to do all three.

Not sure what that means, but you might be surprised about the realities of installation cost. Foxtel was built on cable delivery; satellite came in later when Galaxy folded and Foxtel picked up the infrastructure and subscribers. From a business point of view, a satellite connection is marginally more expensive to install than a cable connection (ignoring the cost of the cable in the street, or launching a satellite). Cable just keeps getting more expensive as you add subscribers. Satellite delivery is relatively expensive to set up and run, but the more subscribers use it, the cheaper it is per-subscriber. There’s no additional platform cost when you add a dish, just the dish and two runs of cable.

Cable is going away for Foxtel largely because the cable is better repurposed for hybrid-fibre/coax data delivery, and a whole heap of subscribers that received Foxtel on cable won’t be able to at some time in the future. But they will have the option of data instead. The IQ5 is the transition box which will pick up via satellite or data, and deliver the same experience. Pretty cool.

Data delivery is an interesting cost model, and beyond a quick discussion. The important factor is that data delivery is becoming very easy to do, and it has become ubiquitous. Everyone has wifi. :slight_smile:

Flash looks like an interesting product; some of those channels are already available on Foxtel packages, and some of them are being newly aggregated as part of the package. Of course, the free-to-air news services are already available as both RF transmission and internet delivered. You don’t need an IQ. And most modern TVs and set-tops, including really low-cost Freeview boxes, can record on an attached USB thingy, so the IQ-like PVR function is very cheaply replicated.

I don’t know if I’m reading between the lines correctly, but it seems like the real challenge you have right now relates to the clients that are available in your TV
 and that depends on the TV. You can always change the TV!

43

One option is cromecast if you have a smart phone and separate wifi ie not you mobiles wifi but nbn or someother option. $50 for cromecast and all the apps seem to cast. There is a freeview app but you do end up being put through to the station apps once you pick the show you want from guide.
So you will need a login for freeview and all 5 station apps. So is clunky. Plus side is that you usually have a programs that you can access a number of days after it is shown so no need to record unless you want to watch it weeks or months later depending on the rights to the show. Good luck.

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44

Or get a Fetch Mighty which is expensive to buy outright (you can rent from some NBN providers but the fetch is usually locked to that provider and if you change, you cannot take it with you), but which costs only $1 to activate (you do not have to subscribe to any packages). If you want packages, they are $6/month each, or $20 for all. You do need a reasonable data connection for that.

But for the available FTA, you only need a decent powered indoor antenna, assuming you are within a reasonable distance of a TV tower/repeater. I have a good indoor, I never did get round to replacing the antenna the last owners of this house removed. Yesterday’s storms disrupted viewing, but generally its been brilliant. For the past 18 years I just had bunny ears :slight_smile: Its flat and can be mounted on its stand, or with doublesided tape to a wall.

45

"reasonable distance’ is variable depending on what is in the way. A helpful site is

https://www.txaustralia.com.au/tvcoverage

but does not take into account localised terrain or CBD sized buildings that can shade signals.

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46

Advice from my experience. I haven’t had an aerial for over 6 years and have been watching free to air no problem. Until recently I rented in a seaside location which rusted out the connector from my TV cable and the wall socket which I couldn’t be bothered fixing. I bought an AppleTV at end of year sales to plug into my pre-smart TV flat screen and have been more than happy with that ever since. In fact, earlier this year I moved into my first home and the orientation of the lounge is such that my TV aerial cable isn’t long enough to plug in to the TV. I haven’t got around to buying a longer one and it is not missed.

The only complaint about streaming the FTA channels is no TV guide (which is basically the same as the 90’s) and when you’re in lockdown and texting your mates during the grand final and your phone pings during a great play you find out the score a minute before you see it because of the up to 30 second delayed broadcast! I think I’ll go buy that aerial cable today


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47

Yep. That’s why I was hoping that Jon01 would answer the locality questions, which would help me make an educated guess about whether he might get good, some, or no reception. It can be a crap-shoot. I can walk to one of the Sydney towers in 15 minutes, but rabbits years don’t work reliably here due to the local terrain. Digital TV is very cliff-like: it’s wonderful when it works, and frustrating when you’re on the edge of reception.

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48

This could be a PITA, but there are online guides which you could consult on your phone.

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49

Some broad prints (newspapers) also still have weekly guides.

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50

Newspapers still exist in physical form?!

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51

All the main catchup TV services have a live TV option. iView, 7Plus, 9Now, SBS On Demand, 10Play. To view these you need an internet connection and a streaming device like a Smart TV, Apple TV, Google TV, Amazon etc

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52

Here’s a trick. Many years ago I bought an iPhone from a Telstra that was supposed to be unlocked but it wasn’t. I contacted Telstra who was completely unhelpful, wanting to charge a fee, so I contacted the telecommunications ombudsman who advised me that they were unable to help for a while as they were backed up for weeks, however, the ombudsman gave me a case number. I wrote back to Telstra quoting my case number, and all of a sudden Telstra became most helpful, inviting me into my nearest Telstra shop for a free unlock while I waited. See if you can request the same service

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53

Or tablet/iPad/
.

I find these guides infinitely better than our TV screen versions. There is no need to labour through the scroll lists on the TV screen wearing out the remote buttons. Depending on which guide there is a greater amount of content available and it’s quicker to access. Searching content looking forward hours or days is also more convenient.

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54

As bad as the customer service might be in the store that you bought from, it isn’t entirely clear that you have been misled.

The underlying problem here (i.e. patchy support for FTA catch up services, changing support and requirements) is as much a problem caused by the networks themselves as it is by the smart TV manufacturers or the stores selling said smart TVs.

If the TV that you bought has a USB port, you might try to attach a keyboard and/or mouse. That may afford an easier time of it when entering the password.

To illustrate my point about how the problem is caused by the networks 
 the ABC catch up TV service (iView) does not currently require an account or login. The ABC has now repeatedly advertised that they are changing this so that you do require an account and login (and then delayed introducing that change).

The tentative conclusion from many battle-scarred veterans of “smart TVs” is 
 DON’T BUY a smart TV.

Just buy any TV that has an HDMI port and connect an upgradeable, well-supported device to that HDMI port i.e. keep the “smarts” out of the TV - because the “smarts” in the TV will die after a few years and you will be left with an expensive “dumb” TV.

In addition, these days the smart TV is just as likely to be spyware.

As an added bonus 
 the connected device will no doubt vastly outperform the TV anyway for some activities. My TV has an embedded web browser that, well, it does sort of work - but it is slow to render pages, doesn’t work with all web sites and is cumbersome to use.

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55

Cheshbr - Do you think my TV would come under the Telecommunications Ombudsman?

56

What apps were you trying to download? Were they the full freeview streaming apps say available on Google Play/Apple Store - or ones available from Hisense to be loaded on the particular TV and TV operating system?

Did the TV come with its own preinstalled Freeview (On-Demand) apps for SBS, Nine, Ten, ABC and Seven? If these wouldn’t load and the TV is sold as having such, then the TV could be seen as not fit for purpose as it doesn’t do what it says it should do. You could ask for resolution under the ACL if this was the case and the failure to be able to use wasn’t disclosed before purchase.

If the TV came with its own preinstalled, yet simplified, Freeview apps then the retailer may have understood this is what you meant in relation to being able to load apps.

If you said can the TV install any Freeview apps direct from Google Play/Apple Store, and the retailer said yes, but the TV can’t, then you may have been mislead. Getting any resolution in this case will depend on what exactly you asked, and being able to prove what you did say.

If you assumed that Google Play/Apple Store apps could be installed, even though the TV doesn’t have this ability, assuming something isn’t grounds for resolution as it would fall under a ‘change of mind’. In relation to Change of Mind, does the retailer have a Change of Mind Policy and can this be used in your circumstances.

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57

We have found that some TV guide ae great, and some are frustrating and cumbersome. Whether a guide is great is limited to a particular brand (we have Sony TV along with a family member - our guide is good when connected to the internet, but useless if getting information from the DTV data broadcast, the family member’s TV guide is frustrating to use from either sources).

We have tried guides in apps in our smart devices, but found these aren’t as good as our Sony guide (using internet sourced data) - the presentation and also having to switch between devices isn’t as user friendly. I have however recommended a guide through an app for our family member as it would be an improvement on their own Sony TV.

Unfortunately usability of onscreen guides can only be determined after using the TV and connecting to the internet. It might be a hit and miss to whether one finds the inbuild TV guides useful to use.

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58

Are you expecting to try to make phone calls from it?

59

We’re getting way off-topic (for TV reception) but definitely in a pressure area. I’ve just been through a complete reconfiguration exercise at home, where I have enough gear to fit out a TV station.

The advice about separate devices is solid. However going down that road means one of two things: you will forever juggle a collection of remote controls on the coffee table, or you will attempt to unify the experience so that an average person can operate the collection of assembled gear with a single remote.

I solved that with a Logitech remote control (I started with a 650, and I’ve now added a Hub). It’s a brilliant system, neatly manages all of the permutations that exist with 11 different devices, and is highly configurable. However Logitech is moving out of that business area. They say they intend to keep supporting the platform, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before they announce end of life on the servers and central support.

For many people the pain of managing multiple devices is more than the cost of replacing one every so often. I know this because I’ve purchased Logitech remotes from people who say their TV can now control everything else. Bwwwwaaahaaahhhaaaa
 They will learn.

60

Not from my TV