[pridkett]

I live in an area that is on the edge of coverage and has lots of hills. On ATSC 1.0, CBS is hard to pick up. Frequently unwatchable - which means unreliable for sports. I picked up an HDHomerun Flex 4K a few years ago. Basically the same week that ATSC 3.0 went live.

For a few weeks it was glorious. I had no problem picking up CBS (it was broadcast from the same antenna as ATSC 1.0 - so it was the modulation that was helping out). And then, after a little over a month. Whack! No more CBS. They turned on DRM. They are still the only network that in my area with DRM. Ughh.

Under the previous administration I filled a few issues about this from a public safety perspective - I live in with the FCC an area with unreliable power. During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous. Unfortunately, nothing happened then regarding the issue and given the way that Brendan Carr is taking the FCC, I don’t think there will be any progress on this.

[threemux]

I have an older HDHomerun - it's great! Most of the 3.0 stations in my area are already encrypted so I haven't bothered to upgrade

[pridkett]

I’ve had a couple of the original, the prime, extend, and now the Flex 4K. They’ve all been terrific devices. The extend was a little wonky because transcoding goes wonky on bad signals, but generally great.

They’re all a huge improvement over older cards like the pcHDTV or the really old Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 that I fought with for Freevo and MythTV so long ago. The switch to Channels was a huge quality of life improvement too.

[gruez]

>During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous.

Just listen to radio?

[pridkett]

Radio can work, but again, I’m on the edge of reception areas and the hills make picking up FM and AM inconsistent.

In the event of a truly severe weather event (the ones where they hit the alert to make every cell phone go off), the visuals provided by television are hugely helpful.

[mopenstein]

Deaf?