I read a rumor awhile ago about DTV doing a USB TV tuner that would replace the AM21 but not sure if it would work with the HR-44 and HR-54 maybe just the HS-17 and above. I haven't seen anything about it since.
DIRECTV and DIRECT NOW Streaming Merger Complete?
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Putting OTA Tuners BACK in recvr/towers, I don't see that happening.
You can't disable the router function and put it in bridging mode? If not, I guess AT&T is out as anything I will EVER consider for home internet!
Agreed, no chance. They want to make them as cheap as possible, and while putting ATSC 1.0 tuners in them would be cheap (patents are pretty much all expired now) it isn't future proof. ATSC 3.0 would be future proof, but if the licensing for 3.0 is anything like 1.0 they aren't going to add $20+ in patent licensing for something only a small minority of customers would use.
Oh, I think they would get used, they would have continued to get used IF they were still in the recvrs.
There are an awful lot of AM 21s out there and look at the prices of those am21s now.
That said, a dongle that did the same thing would be great, IF they ever do come out.
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Seems to me allowing subscribers to tune to Locals for free would save them the royalties to rebroadcast them. AM21 integrated Locals were pretty sweet. OTA PQ was much better too.
I agree, but there's no advantage to building it in and several disadvantages like added cost for all the people who DON'T want OTA, early obsolescence when ATSC 3.0 arrives, etc.
Given that locals cost more than $10/month now it would be an easy sell to customers if they let people shut off their locals and save money. The first step to selling people on that though is to break out the charge for locals like Mediacom does, so you can see how much they really cost and watch that price keep going up, up and up. Though I wonder if dropping locals is even an option for them - their contracts might not allow it or might specify that they pay x dollars per month per customer not "per customer who receives locals". The local stations know that if everyone getting cable/satellite who could pick them up OTA chose to do so, they'd lose a ton of money. Directv has been busy trying to get streaming rights for all local stations, they might have been forced to accept some terms that limited their ability to let customers drop locals to get those streaming rights...
Not true. I have ATT Fiber. If you have the NVG brand modem, you can do bridge mode. I use my own router with it.
The other brand they offer, I believe Arris, has no way of doing this. They originally gave me the Arris, I called and asked for the NVG instead, they sent it to me no problem at all.
Yeah, you can. I'm sure it's a very small percentage of customers who do though. Actually, there's a sort of "halfway" bridge mode called DMZ+ that allows you to use your own router but that still lets the AT&T gateway properly handle special traffic like IPTV and VOIP. You may also be allowed to do a full-out bridge mode too, where the AT&T gateway just blindly forwards everything to your own router. I haven't delved too deeply into it all since I'm happy with my BGW210 gateway after having initially assigned static IPs for certain devices on my LAN.
Yeah, the big issue for MVPDs is the contracts that they make with the network owners. In the largest markets, the broadcast nets actually own and operate their local affiliates, accounting for a huge chunk of viewers nationwide. "Hey DirecTV, you wanna carry ESPN? Then you better include WABC in every package tier for all of your subs in the NYC area, and KABC for all your subs in the LA area, and KRTK in the Houston area, etc." Yes, if every DTV sub had a built-in OTA tuner and antenna in their existing DTV set-up, it would give DTV a much stronger hand when negotiation stand-offs lead to blackouts. But I guess they figure that the actual benefits they'd see there don't justify the cost to include ATSC 1.0 tuners in every STB or home server tower. (As for ATSC 3.0, who knows how that's really going to end up playing out.)
Now, if AT&T launches this proposed $15 skinny bundle (dubbed "AT&T Watch"), then I can see them doing a bit of legwork to let viewers integrate ATSC 1.0 signals. That bundle isn't going to include any locals or any cable channels owned by those companies (nothing from Disney/ABC, Comcast/NBC, CBS or Fox). So why not make the AT&T Watch app capable of integrating those DLNA-compliant streams from HDHomeRun OTA network tuners? I have one of those tuners and can use it with apps from HDHomeRun as well as Channels, Plex and probably others. Heck, to my amusement, I even found that my old Panasonic smart Blu-ray player was able to detect and display live channels from the tuner, I'm sure because the streams are DLNA-compliant.
Perhaps we'll see AT&T even sell their own low-cost retail Android TV streaming box, as Sling TV has done with their AirTV Player, with either a built-in or optional USB ATSC 1.0 tuner. And maybe they'll let the user plug in a USB hard drive so that local TV channels can be DVR'd. Everything -- OTT and OTA live TV, plus cloud DVR and local DVR -- could be elegantly integrated into the same UI.
Why would AT&T do this? Assuming the Time Warner acquisition happens, I think their main strategies with regard to video distribution going forward are threefold:
- Use video subscriptions as something to bundle (at reduced cost or even free) with their mobile and broadband services, as a way to enhance those products and reduce churn
- Make money from subscription fees, both on their premium a la carte services (e.g. HBO, Cinemax, Filmstruck, Boomerang, etc.) as well as their basic cable networks (CNN, TBS, TNT, etc.) distributed through other MVPDs and vMVPDs
- Maximize ad revenue from their ad-supported networks (CNN, TBS, TNT, etc.) by expanding distribution as much as possible and charging more per ad impression via targeted ads on those networks when distributed through their OTT services
So why not sweeten this $15 bundle even more by letting the viewer integrate whatever free OTA TV he can receive into it? Imagine spending $100 or less on new hardware (either an HDHomeRun OTA network tuner or an Android TV box packaged with an OTA tuner) and then you could spend just $15 per month going forward (or completely free if you're an AT&T Unlimited wireless subscriber) to have the following:
all the HD and SD locals you can get via antenna (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, The CW, Me-TV, Antenna TV, Cozi TV, etc.)
TBS*
TNT*
CNN*
HLN*
Cartoon Network*
TCM*
TruTV*
Audience*
A&E
AMC
Animal Planet
BBC America
BET
Bloomberg TV
C-SPAN
C-SPAN 2
CMT
Comedy Central
Discovery
E!
Food Network
Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
HGTV
History
Investigation Discovery
Lifetime
MTV
MTV2
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Ovation
Paramount Network
RFD-TV
TeenNick
TLC
TV Land
Velocity
VH1
Viceland
WE tv
Weather Nation
Now, none of us know yet exactly what will be in the $15 AT&T Watch bundle. But the above list is a good guess, I think. It's everything in the cheapest $35 DTV Now bundle but without any locals or anything owned by the big four networks. The asterisked networks at the top of the list are those that would be owned by AT&T after the acquisition of Time Warner.
[EDIT: I would add that another reason that AT&T may want to segregate the $15 bundle under its own app/brand is because it may have a different feature set/usage rights than DTV Now has. Perhaps AT&T Watch will not offer a cloud DVR, or -- more likely, IMO -- it will have one but without the ability to FF past ads as you can always do on DTV Now. Remember, AT&T's main strategy with those Turner nets they plan to acquire is to use them to sell as many targeted ads as possible. Fresh targeted ads can be inserted just as easily and effectively in a recording from two weeks ago as on a live channel.]
I don't see them fooling around with all those subchannels, which only add to the complexity of contracts with locals. However, we are seeing some of the diginets, such as Decades, offer a national feed to vMVPDs. Some, like Comet, live stream a national feed on their websites. Apparently their agreements with local stations do not preclude them from OTT distribution.
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Ah, I should have stated that you cannot use your own retail modem with AT&T Internet/Fiber service and you cannot avoid using the gateway device that AT&T supplies. However, you're correct, you can use your own retail router by connecting it to the AT&T-supplied gateway.
I don't know, this question comes up ALL THE TIME on Centurylink boards. Now you're right I'm sure it is probably less than 10%, but I think more people do this than you'd think. The routers built into the modems/gateways are typically pretty limited, so if you want something newer bridge mode is your only option.
Or if like me (and now we're talking a very small percentage) you want to run DD-WRT, OpenWRT or one of the other open source packages so you aren't at the mercy of closed source vendors with their backdoors and built in security holes - this is happening right now with the VPNFilter attack that hits most popular OEM routers, and I'll bet most likely affects the routers built into stuff like AT&T's gateway as well. F.B.I.’s Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russia-Linked Malware
Actually if you know what to buy..you can get it on amazon
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Yeah, as soon as I read that news several days ago, I unplugged and rebooted my router. Ugh, Russia.
Yeah, maybe I'm underestimating the number of technologically sophisticated folks like you out there who want to use their own special routers for whatever reason. But keep in mind that guys like us who post on these kind of message boards just AREN'T very representative of the general public.
At any rate, to get back to the thing which (I think) prompted this talk about retail routers with AT&T service, yes, you CAN use your own router in conjunction with an AT&T gateway and still properly receive Uverse TV multicast IPTV streams IF you only put the AT&T gateway into DMZ+ mode, which is a bit more limited than full bridge mode. I don't think you can use full bridge mode and Uverse TV at the same time. So I suppose the same rules would be in effect should AT&T provision multicast streams for linear channels with their upcoming "streaming DirecTV" service.
I wouldn't. AT&T doesn't have a general policy of supporting customer-owned gateways. And they don't even charge customers for use of their gateways. They've never charged me anyway. I think some years back, with regular DSL (not FTTN or FTTH), there may have been a retail modem policy in place. But not now.
Here again, if one company can get away with it, everyone should be able too.
I would imagine there's probably a simple way of using bridge mode and Uverse TV - you'd just have to configure the router correctly for multicast, VLANs or whatever it is that trips up bridge mode with default settings.
Didn't I read somewhere that AT&T will use the Directv Now infrastructure to deliver this new "streaming Directv" service? Obviously they can't do multicast for non-AT&T customers, and while they could for AT&T customers they might figure it isn't worth it since they already have to do the "hard way" for the rest. Its not even clear it is worth it for their future fixed wireless offering, depending on how many customers they end up serving per tower. The size of an HEVC stream isn't that large in a 5G network, and antenna diversity would mean broadcasting the same thing multiple times from a given tower anyway.
You'd only see savings from multicast on fixed wireless if you had multiple customers watching the same thing off the same antenna off the same tower. A single customer watching the same thing on multiple TVs could be handled by having the box at one TV stream to the other TVs within the home network.
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