What is the main driver behind people still watching OTA broadcasts?
Is it cost? People don't want to or can't afford to pay for a streaming service?
Is it technophobia? People who have watched TV the same way for decades and are not going to change?
Something else?
With about 132 million US households I am just amazed that 26 million are watching OTA on a regular basis.
Other than cost, which admittedly is a good reason, streaming with a cloud based DVR is so superior over any OTA DVR device.
I remember back to when I was recording OTA. It was during the birth of HD OTA broadcasts and I had a ATSC card in a computer and some software that got an online guide so I could schedule recordings not just by time but also by show, emulating a TiVo but in HD long before TiVo supported HD.
It was a pain.
Football season meant recordings were often wrong on CBS and FOX and despite having a large antenna I still would suffer through reception issues. I also had to manage storage space, often having to discard movies I had recorded to make way for new prime time TV shows. The software was buggy and required a great deal of baby sitting to make sure it was actually going to record.
Streaming solves those issues and so many more.
Cloud based DVR often get real time schedule updates and record correctly even when sports runs over or you have the option to watch the on demand version if your requested recording is messed up in some way.
The streaming services often receive the OTA via a fiber link and not an OTA antenna, greatly minimizing reception issues.
And you generally never have to worry about running out of space and can record as much as you want with streaming services.
I have always preferred OTA over satellite/cable and now streaming for a number of reasons...
1) Bandwidth. OTA gives you the full bandwidth available for the signal. Satellite/cable, even if they're getting a fiber feed from the station (not always common) adds compression to get the signal to the headend, then more compression to get it back out to the TV. So OTA gives you the best bandwidth. Granted, it doesn't help when the station puts up a bunch of subchannels, stealing bandwidth from the "main" channel, but everything would be affected by that.
2) Dependency. I'm not dependent on a 3rd party and their associated equipment. This is true whether it's sat/cable or streaming. For either of those, the signal needs to get from the station to the provider, then from the provider all the way to a house. That's a lot of equipment that can go wrong. Yes, there are redundancies built in, but can still cause problem. My antenna goes to an amp, a two way splitter, then to two TVs. I still get reception even if my internet goes out.
3) Time delay. I just did a rough measurement and checked receiving my local NBC via Hulu Live vs OTA. Hulu was delayed by about 30 seconds. Generally not a big deal, but I like watching live events as "live" as possible.
I'm pretty sure most streaming services are getting the feeds at the stations themselves and sending over internet (which is fiber), but again, adds complexity.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against streaming. As you said, the DVR functions are a big benefit.
Just some reasons why *I* prefer OTA, when available.
