Which would you pick? OTA vs. TVE Showdown

Channels DVR Server TV Everywhere
#1

My local CBS recently became available again as a TVE channel for me, so I was trying to decide whether to make it my default over the OTA channel. I thought I would just do a side-by-side comparison in VLC to see if I could notice any differences quality-wise (couldn't really tell), but while I was there I captured some other pertinent details:

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I live within 5 miles of the tower with good line of site, but there are occasional drops and issues, especially in a densely packed area. ATSC 3.0 will not even start to become available until late Summer at the earliest, so that is not a consideration at this moment. I do prefer the overall stability of TVE and find it works better when remote, but that time delay is very annoying.

What would you do?

  • OTA
  • TVE
  • Neither

0 voters

#2

OTA 5.1 Sound TVE Stereo sounds flat on my entertainment center.

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#3

OTA wins on specs. I have OTA with first priority when recording.

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#4

There is more to take into account that audio and video quality. Also consider:

  • Tuner availability
  • Network bandwidth
  • Network reliability
  • Antenna / Cable reliability
  • Commercial skipping hit/miss via the different sources
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#5

Not a concern for our household. Rarely is more than 1 of 4 tuners being used at the same time.

Also not a concern here. Very stable 200/200 with many, many, many devices running. We have never seen anything that gives us pause.

Antenna reliability is my real concern, for sure. This station is by far my best, though:

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That said, watching the stats in VLC there were plenty of frame drops in OTA while TVE had zero.

Something has happened recently with other stations either lowering their power or some type of interference as they used to be perfectly fine but now are not. It is difficult to say with so many moving parts. Maybe my antenna got pushed a little off by the wind or a construction worker bopped it. Tough to say. Until NextGenTV is ubiquitous, I am going to have a lot of problem troubleshooting.

Interesting thought... I have another local station (NBC) that I already picked the TVE for default, but do not have a good feel how ComSkip is impacting it differently. I have plenty of misses no matter the source, but I know Devs are working on developing better tech for that, so I'm going to discount it for now.

#6

I find that I get better comskip results via cable than TVE for the major networks. The Devs did a super job for the Discovery family of channels over TVE so I make the TVE channels priority for them. Your experience may be different.

#7

For me, OTA and it isn't even close.

I have used OTA, TVE, and Cable as sources for locals.

Quality - Despite the specs shown, both the TVE and Cable (Spectrum) are highly compressed. This is very noticeable on some broadcast content.
Audio - AC3 > Stereo
Reliability - The OTA works as long as I have power, even without internet. And, as much as I like all the stuff I get via TVE, it flakes out on occasion particularly with authentication, even with a strong internet connection.
ComSkip - I did not notice any difference either way on the broadcast channels, but with the exception of weather alerts and such, it is spot on.

About the only place where the TVE/Cable signals are better is with file size of the recording. But I would rather have the quality than save a few bucks on hard disk.

Just a note on ATSC3, my experience with it is that it needs to bake a little longer before it is ready for prime time. We have most networks broadcasting from a single lighthouse. It looks decent as far as quality, but my guess is they are just up converting the 1080i/720p to 1080p and then compressing it way down so that everything fits into the single channel. It may be a long time before we get 4K, but even a pure 1080p with reasonable compression would be enough for me to switch.

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#8

For me it has been the TVE vs OTA. Quality should be better over OTA, but for what ever reason it isn't in Northern Illinois. Hopefully someday they will switch over to ATSC 3.0. I think some of my issue is multipath.

#9

CBS seems to be a outlier in that their TVE feed is 1080p/60. Locally for me, FOX and ABC are 720p/60 but NBC is 1080/30 in their TVE feeds. That said, I watched the CBS TVE feed of the AFC championship and it was outstanding compared to the OTA feed. I didn't need 5.1 so the choice was easy for me.

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#10

I vote OTA all the way. Also consider if you have any data caps from your internet provider. When Olympics started I was recording everything and much of that was cable channels via TVE, and was burning through my data much faster than I realized.

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#11

Not only does OTA have much high video and audio quality, but is far more reliable in Channels. Comskip also runs much faster on the mpeg2 streams from OTA. And detects commercials better.
Channels also tune much faster than TVE.
And the shows start and end exactly at the time they are supposed to... almost to the second. You don't need to put buffers on any of your recordings unless they are live... everything will start and end exactly at the right time.
There is no question about OTA winning here.
If there are occasional issues with an OTA channel or two, I would fix the antenna, or get a second antenna and aim it just for those channels. You are 5 miles from the towers. This is about the distance I live. I am also in a city with interference, but with a roof mounted antenna, I get 100% quality nearly 100% of the time on all of the local channels. Even in bad weather. I am sure you could do it too.

#12

For me it is TVE over OTA, but that is completely a signal strength / quality issue. I live at the bottom of a ridge in a dense apartment complex where I cannot have an outdoor antenna. I do get very acceptable signal, but the TVE is simply much more reliable in my specific situation. Granted in my priority setup for local channels I go CableCard - TVE - OTA.

#13

No data caps for me, so no worries there! Plus, I have a gazillion other stations between the rest of TVE and m3u.

I should clarify: I am 5 miles from this tower. Other stations, not so much. The local locals are fine for the most part (damn low VHF), although ABC reduced power for a couple of weeks a few weeks ago and I had to switch to a non-local one for a bit (it's bounced back since). The non-local ones I pick up are the ones I'm getting more issues with it. Most of the time, CBS is 100% as shown above. I had the antenna mounted on the roof by pros, so it is already in the best situation it can be for my area. Even then, there are blips and boops from time-to-time. I don't really want to get into all the little nuances of my particular curvature of the Earth, though, so let's just leave it at that.

#14

OK. So then, you need to decide which is most reliable for your situation. And use that. I would probably get on the roof with a signal monitor myself though to see if I could fix the OTA issue before giving up on the best solution. But thats just me.

#15

Picture is slightly better on the best OTA channels vs the best TVE that I get OTA. 5.1 surround sound is better than my upmixer from 2.0 to 5.1.
However, I still choose Channels DVR over my TiVo. I like having everything, Music, Movies and TV through Kodi. When I eventually pick up a HDHomerun my vote may change.

#16

All of that with the exception of tuner availability says OTA, provided you have a proper antenna with good reception. TVE sources are of lesser quality, always, in all ways, visible and audible.

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