If you'd love to cut or eliminate your cable bill but still want to get the major networks' live feeds, consider Ivi.tv, an online-only alternative to retrieving over-the-air stations with an antenna or via ClearQAM over the cable network.
ivi.tv works by retrieving publicly available television signals over-the-air in several large markets, including Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago and then rebroadcasting them over the internet using their own custom software.
It is very cool (and useful!) to be able to pull in stations across the country in reasonable resolution. However the service does have some drawbacks. The first is the quality: it is not quite running at full framerate and the skipping of frames was noticable for me even on a 25mbit connection. The second problem is that the network stations are all suing ivi.tv for copyright infringement. ivi.tv for their part is rebutting them claiming that FCC must-carry rules state that they, as a cable network, must be able to retransmit any content that the networks offer for free via broadcast. It's a hot topic within the telecommunications industry, and it'll be interesting to see how things pan out.
Ivi.tv has basic subscriptions available for $4.99 a month with some upgrades that include $.99/month for the ability to DVR shows. For now, I've found that ivi.tv works and it is a great alternative if you want to watch live content from network stations that are not available anywhere else in streaming format on the network. Then again, if all you want is access to you local over-the-air HD networks, you can buy or make your own DTV antenna
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