Name: Cable TV channels and 4K from an antenna? It's rolling out to this US city for $49
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Cable TV channels and 4K from an antenna? It's rolling out to this US city for $49

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Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission.FollowBoise, Idaho, is the first to get Evoca, a new kind of pay-TV service broadcast over the air. More areas are coming soon.Geoffrey MorrisonGeoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer for CNET, Forbes, and The New York Times. He also the Editor-at-large for The Wirecutter. He has written for Sound&amp;Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor in Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. He is NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Television/Radio from Ithaca College. His bestselling novel, , and its sequel, Undersea Atrophia, are available in paperback and as an ebook on Amazon. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com.5 min readToday there are basically three ways to get live TV shows from big-name channels into your home. The most common is paying for a service like cable or satellite. An increasingly popular alternative is a&nbsp;&nbsp;like&nbsp;&nbsp;and&nbsp;, which which offer&nbsp;&nbsp;for a monthly fee. The third option is free and also sounds the most old-fashioned: getting an&nbsp;&nbsp;and watching channels broadcast in your area.&nbsp;Now, a company in Idaho is launching a fourth live TV option that's especially interesting for anyone with limited, or data-capped internet where streaming isn't an option. Called&nbsp;, it takes advantage of the new technologies rolling out with&nbsp;&nbsp;to broadcast "cable" channels over the air. It's designed to serve people in&nbsp;&nbsp;across the US saddled with&nbsp;.Evoca started rolling out this week in Boise, Idaho, but it's hoping to have the service available in other markets soon. It currently offers over 60 channels of sports, news and other entertainment for $50 a month. Here's how it works.Free 4K TV for your home is coming soonBeginning this year, many stations across the US will start broadcasting Next Gen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0. It's a huge leap forward in tech compared with the current ATSC 1.0 broadcast standard for HDTV -- almost big as the leap from fuzzy analog TV signals to HDTV itself (2.0 was skipped and rolled into 3.0).&nbsp;Read more:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The headline features for Next Gen TV are 4K resolution, &nbsp;and potentially . We might eventually get the ability to watch live broadcast TV on phones and too. One of the more obscure but important features is the fact that it's&nbsp;-based. That means it's kind of like streaming video, just sent over the air instead of via wires. This has several benefits, not least that it will be easier to send broadcast video to various devices around your house.&nbsp;Read more: . &nbsp; Many Americans live in big cities with access to fast home Internet, numerous broadcast stations and multiple TV providers. But in smaller cities not only are there fewer local broadcasters, but the "high-speed" internet could be slow or have data caps. Both of these things mean that "cutting the cord" by giving up an overpriced cable service isn't easy. Over-the-air content might be limited, and streaming TV either doesn't work or costs too much money (or both).With its Evoca service, Edge Networks wants to be like other pay TV providers, offering a slate of channels for a monthly fee. Instead of running wires to your house, however, it'll use Next Gen TV's tech to broadcast those same channels over the air. This sadly doesn't mean that everyone in Boise with a will have . Edge Networks customers get , similar to a cable box, that decodes the broadcast. The difference is that the "last mile" from the provider to the house is the airwaves.In addition to the Evoca tuner box, all a potential customer needs to get started is an and an internet connection (and it can be a relatively slow one) for downloading optional video-on-demand content. The box will give a single point of access, functioning as a tuner for Next Gen TV and other local broadcast channels, plus the various cable channels and specific video-on-demand content. Evoca is still in early rollout stages, and its initial goal is to boost the current 60-channel selection to over 80 channels in HD and 4K. The $49 monthly fee is in line with the competition. By way of comparison,&nbsp;, costs $65 per month for more than 70 channels but&nbsp;, especially if you want HD resolution or to stream more than one show at once. With Evoca there shouldn't be in the home when watching multiple streams, HD or even 4K video, since the signal isn't reliant on the speed of an internet connection. This is useful for anyone without a superfast internet connection, but especially so for people with speeds that might not support 4K at all -- requires 25Mbps to stream in 4K, for example. Evoca recommends a minimum speed of only 5Mbps.The niche for Edge Networks is in smaller markets that are under-served by internet providers and by cable/broadcast. Many communities are in so-called "TV deserts" where there are few, if any, local broadcast stations. These areas often also have poor internet for streaming. Next Gen TV, with its more efficient , opens up possibilities like this for high-quality, more varied content.&nbsp;It's unlikely Evoca will expand to larger markets, where internet is generally cheaper, faster and lacks data caps. In those markets, cutting the cord usually just means getting an antenna and/or streaming everything not broadcast.Like all antenna TV, is a local endeavor, but after Boise&nbsp;&nbsp;intends to expand to other, similarly sized markets in the future. $49 is technically below the $50 it promised earlier this year, and initial signups will only have to pay $20 a month for the rest of the year plus they'll get a free antenna.For the rest of us, how well Evoca does might have some influence on offerings in other, larger markets. Perhaps more stations might see this as a way to offer a wider variety of content, in new ways, just on a smaller scale than a full "cable" TV package. Update Sept. 4, 2020:&nbsp;Added details now that the service has official launched.&nbsp;As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of&nbsp;, including&nbsp;,&nbsp;,&nbsp;,&nbsp;&nbsp;and more.&nbsp;You can follow his exploits on&nbsp;&nbsp;and&nbsp;, and on his travel blog,&nbsp;. He also wrote a&nbsp;&nbsp;about city-sized submarines, along with a&nbsp;.Get the CNET TVs, Streaming and Audio newsletterBecome a home entertainment expert with our handpicked tips, reviews and deals. Delivered Wednesdays.

Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission.FollowBoise, Idaho, is the first to get Evoca, a new kind of pay-TV service broadcast over the air. More areas are coming soon.Geoffrey MorrisonGeoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer for CNET, Forbes, and The New York Times. He also the Editor-at-large for The Wirecutter. He has written for Sound&amp;Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor in Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. He is NIST and ISF...

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Geoffrey Morrison

CNET, formerly Computer Network, is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. Founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition in 2008.

Cable TV channels and 4K from an antenna? It's rolling out to this US city for $49

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