# Locast Launches Its Free Live TV Service in South Dakota



## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

Locast Launches Its Free Live TV Service in South Dakota - Cord Cutters News


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

I'm not moving to South Dakota to take advantage of this service! But thanks for the report. Maybe they'll get to Los Angeles eventually.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

billsharpe said:


> I'm not moving to South Dakota to take advantage of this service! But thanks for the report. Maybe they'll get to Los Angeles eventually.


It took a combination of private and corporate donations to get the SD stations online, so maybe that'll work for LA as well...


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

It’s a bit misleading to call this a “free” service anymore. When they first started this service you could actually watch it for “free”. That is no longer the case as it has been rendered unwatchable unless you “donate”. I completely understand why they did it but to continue to claim that it is a “free” service is simply no longer accurate.


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## Newshawk (Sep 3, 2004)

Funny, but I watched the Dallas PBS station for about two hours last Sunday night without any hassle. Even funnier, I'm in Tulsa, but they say that the Dallas stations are my "locals."


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

If you go to What Is My IP? is the city given correct (or close)?

Depending on the ISP (especially when they add a new IP range) I have been located hundreds of miles away from where I am. Which may be why you are accidentally getting Dallas locals outside of the Dallas market.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

We've watched Locast locals for several hours at a time with nothing more than the brief donation pitch at the beginning or channel changes.

As James said, your current IP source can change where Locast thinks you are. We're physically in the Albany, NY DMA currently, but if I use our Verizon hotspot for streaming, Locast thinks we're in the Boston, MA DMA. If we use our AT&T hotspot or Spectrum cable service, Locast says they're not available in our area. Or I can use the "Location Guard" Chrome browser extension on my laptop or the "FakeGPS" app on my phone to be anywhere I want to be.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Services like locast trying to utilize ip addresses for geolocation are going to almost always have a bazillion problems. 

First off, most (all?) Streaming players don't have embedded GPS chips to report their location on the planet. I know none of the roku's do, can anyone point to any that do? And these things are inside homes to begin with, not the best for gps reception. Then you have all these ISP's out there that misreport their routing tables, causing some poor folk in Fargo being reported as being in Bakersfield. They don't find this out until they 'cut the cord' and subscribe to some streaming service and find the local channels they get are 1000miles out of wack.

And if course, location can be 'spoofed' by so many ways it makes your head spin. Bleh.


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## billsharpe (Jan 25, 2007)

Most sites know where I am but there are a couple, including Starbucks, that think I'm in Canada, not California.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

1948GG said:


> Services like locast trying to utilize ip addresses for geolocation are going to almost always have a bazillion problems.
> 
> First off, most (all?) Streaming players don't have embedded GPS chips to report their location on the planet. I know none of the roku's do, can anyone point to any that do? And these things are inside homes to begin with, not the best for gps reception. Then you have all these ISP's out there that misreport their routing tables, causing some poor folk in Fargo being reported as being in Bakersfield. They don't find this out until they 'cut the cord' and subscribe to some streaming service and find the local channels they get are 1000miles out of wack.
> 
> And if course, location can be 'spoofed' by so many ways it makes your head spin. Bleh.


The Locast app on my phone does use the phone's GPS to geolocate me, but my Firestick uses my hotspot's IP. But of course there's nothing illegal about spoofing your location in this case, just as there's nothing illegal about receiving an out of market broadcast. I once lived in a location where I could receive four different markets with my OTA antenna. As long as Locast is using generally accepted technology to geofence, I doubt it would be a legal issue.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Legal issue who knows, but don't put it past the entrenched broadcasters to try just about anything. Where I live they essentially have banned rooftop/outdoor antennas to stop people from watching stations from the adjacent dma (state law allows communities to ban them for 'esthetic' reasons, and the FCC has agreed with that; they can also ban dbs dishes and where I used to live 15 years ago in a city that did but I managed to hide my DirecTV dish behind some shubbery and the home was 'U' shaped) but not where I live now. 

When I retired the first thing I did was move some 2 miles away to an area between two cities limits (antenna heaven!) but then I moved again to where I'm 100 miles in two directions between dma's, so for now it's cable or cable streaming to get all the stations (both DirecTV and dish skip some 1/3rd of the stations) so I'm hoping locast will carry all. If I lived some 2miles out into the country I could put up an antenna tower, but then there would be no internet unless 5g or starlink would magically appear at reasonable cost. Rock and hard place.


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