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People under 25, how many of you are aware that you can get 1080p HD TV programming (and many live sports) for free over the air with no app sign-in or susbscription fee? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Bandwidth is cheaper from the tower since the signal is the "same" for each client and it can then be distributed over a wide area. You send the "DRM" (Just a fancy encryption key) over the network since it's relatively small and likely unique to each device (probably fingerprinting the device ids to the content invisibily in case of piracy).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Multicast is a thing, though it doesn't seem to be widespread. That would make a lot more sense than this weird DRM broadcast system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Multicast still requires more expensive less widespread bandwidth than sending out analog signals ota & shooting off a few packets of encryption information every now and then. US infrastructure has rapidly improved over the past few years, but we're still a farcry from anything robust and reliable enough to serve the people benefiting from this type of content.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Having the receiver phone home would have the benefit of generating more accurate viewership data, where broadcast tv has historically relied on representative cohorts.