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Staff member
HERE TO HELP YOU!
Pub Member / Supporter
Cutting Edge
Well friends, usually if you read this column you'll see me railing on one of my favorite love-to-hate streaming services. This column's a little different and I hope that it gets some traction out there because it's a story that needs to be told.
Let's say you use one of those live TV streaming services. I mean like DIRECTV Stream, Sling, YouTube TV, that sort of thing. When you're at home you'll get local channels. But what happens when you travel outside your local area? Can you still get local channels from home if you are away from your home city?
Most of the time, the answer is no. The major streaming services will either give you local channels from where you are, or if you're away from your home city (where your billing address is) they'll give you no local channels at all. If you have a Gemini Air, AirTV Mini, even a Fire Stick or something like that, it's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
You're not supposed to get local channels outside your local area, and the loopholes tha let you do it have mostly closed in the last ten years or so. For a while, with both satellite and streaming, you could get local channels from another city if your city didn't have streaming locals. That's really not true anymore.
There's a reason you can't stream channels from another city. It goes back to a mid-20th-century rule called "syndicated exclusivity." This goes back to the days when everyone got about 3-5 channels and that's it. Syndicated exclusivity means that if a local station has the right to broadcast a show, no one else in the market would get that right. It's why every market has only one ABC station, for example. Markets might be close enough to each other that your antenna can get two of them, but your "home market" only has one.
In the days before cable, this was enforced with an iron fist. When cable TV came in, the rules got more flexible because they had to. If your local TV station carried Gilligan's Island they weren't going to get anywhere trying to sue TBS for carrying the same show. But when it came to broadcast channels, that rule still existed.
The rule of "syndicated exclusivity" became a big problem in the 1990s when satellite TV came into play. In order to distribute local channels, they would need to go to an uplink center. In practice this meant sending locals from all over the country to Los Angeles or Colorado. There was also a law that said that a local channel couldn't intentionally broadcast outside its local area. Since satellites are definitely not in anyone's local area, that was a problem.
By the truest definition of the law, that was illegal. So, Congress carved out a set of exceptions to this rule that let satellite providers encrypt signals and provide local channels. It's this set of rules, or the spirit of them anyway, that govern live streaming TV.
Streaming isn't broadcasting. It's not required to follow a lot of the same rules. But content providers like Disney and live TV companies like DIRECTV and DISH still agree to follow the rule of exclusivity. Most of it is through contracts and not through laws, but the end result is the same. You're just not going to get local channels from another city on a live TV streaming service.
Obviously there are streaming channels on Pluto and other free services that show newscasts from other cities. You can go to a station's web site and stream their broadcasts most of the time. And I'm not gonna lie, there are times that your streaming devices doesn't catch up when you move and you still get channels from where you used to be. However, these cases really don't affect anyone's revenue. Those streaming newscasts are designed to go national. If you stream from someone's web site, you're watching their commercials. And eventually, your streaming device will catch up and you'll lose those out-of-market locals.
Then there's the matter of the VPN. I won't go into too much detail here, since you can find that info a lot of other places. But, you can set up a VPN which makes it look like you're anywhere else you want to be. This would let you get local channels from any city you want. Technically, you're agreeing not to do that when you sign up with these services.
Some folks on enthusiast web sites will tell you that you'll never be caught. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. It seems like an awful risk to me.
The AirTV Anywhere device you see above connects to an antenna in your home. It lets you stream your antenna content to your Sling app (the app is free) so you can watch it no matter where you are. You can even set up recordings. If you set up one at your house, you can watch local channels no matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection.
How is this legal? About a decade ago it was established that this sort of retransmission was legal, as long as it was for personal use and didn't generate any sort of profit. Sharing your stream isn't legal, but using it yourself is just fine.
When I tell people about all of this, the first question is always "is this ever going to change?" After all, the world of live video is very different than it was 50 years ago. I don't think it's going to change necessarily, but I do think that the world of local live television is going to change a lot in the next ten years. It could be that this sort of rule just doesn't make sense to anyone anymore when that happens. But that's a matter for the lawyers, I guess. All I can do is blog about it.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Using live TV streaming when you're away from home appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
Continue reading...
Here's the real question
Let's say you use one of those live TV streaming services. I mean like DIRECTV Stream, Sling, YouTube TV, that sort of thing. When you're at home you'll get local channels. But what happens when you travel outside your local area? Can you still get local channels from home if you are away from your home city?
Most of the time, the answer is no. The major streaming services will either give you local channels from where you are, or if you're away from your home city (where your billing address is) they'll give you no local channels at all. If you have a Gemini Air, AirTV Mini, even a Fire Stick or something like that, it's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
You're not supposed to get local channels outside your local area, and the loopholes tha let you do it have mostly closed in the last ten years or so. For a while, with both satellite and streaming, you could get local channels from another city if your city didn't have streaming locals. That's really not true anymore.
Why does it have to be this way?
There's a reason you can't stream channels from another city. It goes back to a mid-20th-century rule called "syndicated exclusivity." This goes back to the days when everyone got about 3-5 channels and that's it. Syndicated exclusivity means that if a local station has the right to broadcast a show, no one else in the market would get that right. It's why every market has only one ABC station, for example. Markets might be close enough to each other that your antenna can get two of them, but your "home market" only has one.
In the days before cable, this was enforced with an iron fist. When cable TV came in, the rules got more flexible because they had to. If your local TV station carried Gilligan's Island they weren't going to get anywhere trying to sue TBS for carrying the same show. But when it came to broadcast channels, that rule still existed.
The evolution of broadcasting and exclusivity
The rule of "syndicated exclusivity" became a big problem in the 1990s when satellite TV came into play. In order to distribute local channels, they would need to go to an uplink center. In practice this meant sending locals from all over the country to Los Angeles or Colorado. There was also a law that said that a local channel couldn't intentionally broadcast outside its local area. Since satellites are definitely not in anyone's local area, that was a problem.
By the truest definition of the law, that was illegal. So, Congress carved out a set of exceptions to this rule that let satellite providers encrypt signals and provide local channels. It's this set of rules, or the spirit of them anyway, that govern live streaming TV.
Streaming isn't broadcasting. It's not required to follow a lot of the same rules. But content providers like Disney and live TV companies like DIRECTV and DISH still agree to follow the rule of exclusivity. Most of it is through contracts and not through laws, but the end result is the same. You're just not going to get local channels from another city on a live TV streaming service.
Yeah but what if you do?
Obviously there are streaming channels on Pluto and other free services that show newscasts from other cities. You can go to a station's web site and stream their broadcasts most of the time. And I'm not gonna lie, there are times that your streaming devices doesn't catch up when you move and you still get channels from where you used to be. However, these cases really don't affect anyone's revenue. Those streaming newscasts are designed to go national. If you stream from someone's web site, you're watching their commercials. And eventually, your streaming device will catch up and you'll lose those out-of-market locals.
Then there's the matter of the VPN. I won't go into too much detail here, since you can find that info a lot of other places. But, you can set up a VPN which makes it look like you're anywhere else you want to be. This would let you get local channels from any city you want. Technically, you're agreeing not to do that when you sign up with these services.
Some folks on enthusiast web sites will tell you that you'll never be caught. Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. It seems like an awful risk to me.
The one legal guaranteed way to get your local channels from home
The AirTV Anywhere device you see above connects to an antenna in your home. It lets you stream your antenna content to your Sling app (the app is free) so you can watch it no matter where you are. You can even set up recordings. If you set up one at your house, you can watch local channels no matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection.
How is this legal? About a decade ago it was established that this sort of retransmission was legal, as long as it was for personal use and didn't generate any sort of profit. Sharing your stream isn't legal, but using it yourself is just fine.
When I tell people about all of this, the first question is always "is this ever going to change?" After all, the world of live video is very different than it was 50 years ago. I don't think it's going to change necessarily, but I do think that the world of local live television is going to change a lot in the next ten years. It could be that this sort of rule just doesn't make sense to anyone anymore when that happens. But that's a matter for the lawyers, I guess. All I can do is blog about it.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Using live TV streaming when you're away from home appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
Continue reading...
3 Replies
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723 views
TWiT Tech Podcast Network
Time for another AWESOME video from the TWIT Network!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n43A0sNukCg
Direct YouTube Link - SpaceX Seeks to Conduct 450 Starship Launches a Year in Texas!
TWIT's Website
TWIT Live Feed
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n43A0sNukCg
Direct YouTube Link - SpaceX Seeks to Conduct 450 Starship Launches a Year in Texas!
TWIT's Website
TWIT Live Feed
0 Replies
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0 views
Staff member
HERE TO HELP YOU!
Cutting Edge
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!
So let the game continue!
The last song was added by Bobby who posted...
One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters
CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!
Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game
Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.
Example:
Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
Another example:
Ride the Lightning -- Metallica
Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne
Get it?
An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
So let the game continue!
The last song was added by Bobby who posted...
One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters
CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!
Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game
Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.
Example:
Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
Another example:
Ride the Lightning -- Metallica
Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne
Get it?
An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68506 Replies
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2671269 views
Marques Brownlee
Time for another AWESOME video from Marques Brownlee!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwlR0QHGOk
Direct YouTube Link - The NEW Tesla Roadster: My Honest Reaction
The official MKBHD Website!
The MKBHD Store
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwlR0QHGOk
Direct YouTube Link - The NEW Tesla Roadster: My Honest Reaction
The official MKBHD Website!
The MKBHD Store
0 Replies
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5 views
iJustine
Time for another AWESOME video from iJustine!
View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m44iKsdN1-Q
Direct YouTube Link - NVIDIA RTX Spark launch party!!!
The official iJustine Website's Website
Buy her book!
View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m44iKsdN1-Q
Direct YouTube Link - NVIDIA RTX Spark launch party!!!
The official iJustine Website's Website
Buy her book!
0 Replies
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13 views
For quite a while now, people with a VIP211k have been losing their recordings on their activated external HDDs... even when there's nothing physically wrong with HDD. I believe this is an intentional and underhanded tactic that Dish is pulling in an attempt to force users away from the VIP211k.
They are obviously regretting that they ever let users have a "non-dvr" dvr in the first place. You would think they would be happy charging you a $40 one time fee... and then be happy letting the customer be the one responsible for HDD failures.
Dish clearly hates the 211k bitter-clingers. This recording deletion problem is intentional (IMO), and I think it is just one more tool that they are using. Hopper and a 2-year agreement... that's what they want you to have. Think about that... a 2-year agreement... with a company $30 Billion in debt (that's with a B). What happens when all that debt causes them to drop the channel that may have been your whole reason for having Dish in the first place? Guess who's stuck with a service that no longer suits their needs... for the remainder of the 2-year agreement.
On top of that, they don't want you to install it yourself. I purchased and installed all my equipment myself. That used to be common. Now, they lie to me and tell me that my dish must be updated to use a Hopper. Funny thing is... they don't even know what dish I have because they didn't install it, and I didn't tell them. If you ask what type of dish/LNBs the hopper needs... good luck getting an answer. All they know is that whatever you have needs to be upgraded by an installer.
It is quite apparent to me that they care much more about staying in their box, than they do working with the customer. That's too bad, because it hasn't always been that way. It's like they are totally unaware of the current business environment that they are trying to compete in.
I have been a customer since 2010. I will be cancelling my service before the next period. Yeah, I know, my $1,200 a year won't make a difference to them. It just seems like they have forgotten who needs who, especially when you consider the competition in today's streaming world. But hey, they will have succeed in forcing me off the 211k.
They are obviously regretting that they ever let users have a "non-dvr" dvr in the first place. You would think they would be happy charging you a $40 one time fee... and then be happy letting the customer be the one responsible for HDD failures.
Dish clearly hates the 211k bitter-clingers. This recording deletion problem is intentional (IMO), and I think it is just one more tool that they are using. Hopper and a 2-year agreement... that's what they want you to have. Think about that... a 2-year agreement... with a company $30 Billion in debt (that's with a B). What happens when all that debt causes them to drop the channel that may have been your whole reason for having Dish in the first place? Guess who's stuck with a service that no longer suits their needs... for the remainder of the 2-year agreement.
On top of that, they don't want you to install it yourself. I purchased and installed all my equipment myself. That used to be common. Now, they lie to me and tell me that my dish must be updated to use a Hopper. Funny thing is... they don't even know what dish I have because they didn't install it, and I didn't tell them. If you ask what type of dish/LNBs the hopper needs... good luck getting an answer. All they know is that whatever you have needs to be upgraded by an installer.
It is quite apparent to me that they care much more about staying in their box, than they do working with the customer. That's too bad, because it hasn't always been that way. It's like they are totally unaware of the current business environment that they are trying to compete in.
I have been a customer since 2010. I will be cancelling my service before the next period. Yeah, I know, my $1,200 a year won't make a difference to them. It just seems like they have forgotten who needs who, especially when you consider the competition in today's streaming world. But hey, they will have succeed in forcing me off the 211k.
168 Replies
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7492 views
Pub Member / Supporter
Lifetime Supporter
Has anyone subscribed to NBA League Pass for 2026-27 and try to link their account to NBA.com to stream League Pass? I purchased it for 2026-27, and when I linked, I got a message saying success, but then I receive an error that my linked subscription does not include the preseason games for NBA League Pass. Is that how it has always been? I know satellite doesn't have the preseason games on the NBA League Pass channels, but I thought that I was able to stream the preseason once I linked my account on NBA.com?
2 Replies
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83 views
Supporting Founder
Really excited for this season with Kentucky having a new coach and some really exciting recruits. Probably won't last long, but here's hoping this season is great.
143 Replies
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1462 views
Nah, you just don't understand how ignore works, which is why you made your own NFL thread thinking there wasn't one
For some reason, the satelliteguys.us site is loading a lot slower than usual on both Chrome on my Asus laptop and Safari on my iPhone.
I'm also seeing longer appearances of the blue bar at the top and the "3 blue bars" loading symbol.
Is anyone else also having the same problem? Thanks in advance.
I'm also seeing longer appearances of the blue bar at the top and the "3 blue bars" loading symbol.
Is anyone else also having the same problem? Thanks in advance.
530 Replies
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18121 views
Remember folks... just like DNS... its always Foxbat. 
WTF… …What the Foxbat!Remember folks... just like DNS... its always Foxbat.
S
wow what a kick in the balls!!! the wife blames you when things don't work now scott's blaming youWTF… …What the Foxbat!
I know. Here's what Scott has in store for me if I get out of line:wow what a kick in the balls!!! the wife blames you when things don't work now scott's blaming you
S
OMG to freaking funny
You're no fun.
I thought I would come here and find lots of complaints about the update to the dish anywhere mobile app, but am not seeing any. It used to look just like the desktop webpage. Now you can no longer filter by sports channels or movie channels. Plus that they made it look like a big button telephone and you see fewer channels in the screen which requires more scrolling. Yes I realize you can look at sports then select which sport you want to look at, I just liked being able to see all sporting events in the guide with all other channels being filtered out. Am I alone in the wilderness on this?
7 Replies
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156 views
Supporting Founder
Pub Member / Supporter
Lifetime Supporter
Apple has finally released their Apple TV 4K with built-in Siri and a microphone so it can respond to your queries even if you don't have the remote. It also increases in price, to $299. I had been planning on updating my current Apple TV 4K streamers, but that's $600 for the two of them, and that's a pass at this point.
At $299, it had better come with 256 GB of Storage, Gigabit (or better) Ethernet, the latest HDMI tech and standards, and one year of free Apple One. But it probably won't…
At $299, it had better come with 256 GB of Storage, Gigabit (or better) Ethernet, the latest HDMI tech and standards, and one year of free Apple One. But it probably won't…
Apple TV 4K
Apple TV 4K. New Siri AI and hands-free control. Stunning picture and immersive HomePod surround sound. Works with your Apple and smart home devices.
www.apple.com
20 Replies
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329 views
S
. apple's been making money off of software and not hardware for a while
they all do that anyways.. ever notice your cell phone slows down when you come up for an upgrade..
. apple's been making money off of software and not hardware for a while
You should have looked in the APP STORE instead.
