Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.
You can also just pirate
"Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!"
A $10 antenna to watch NFL games is so much more convenient and better quality than any of the pirated streaming options. Broadcast TV trumps Pirating for live shit 100%. Pirate everything else.
Yeah but then you have to watch football. Why go through the suffering? Lol
TV isnt even something i think about. Im aware of it existing, but the very few things i watch i just pirate. Ive never paid for any streaming service, cable, or even considered doing so. In fact i dont even own a physical TV. When i watch media i carry it around with me as im doing things.
To me the content on TV be that cable, or air broadcasts is too full of both ads (which i entirely block on everything so i never see), and propaganda to stomach.
i dont even own a physical TV
Damn, do you not enjoy things like watching a movie in a theater (given all the bullshit was removed besides the movie)?
I wasn’t big on watching movies for a long time, but then upgraded my sound system for music and eventually got a decent TV, if a bit outdated. This made it more enjoyable for me to watch at home what I would have seen in a theater before, but I hate the theater experience, so I found myself watching more movies.
I agree with everything else you said sucks about the experience, I’m just curious because I don’t meet many people who don’t have a TV unless they can’t afford one.
Nah not really a movie person in general, but when i do watch them i either lay in bed or am walking around, and watch on a tablet, or laptop. I really dislike the way TVs look in a sitting room too. My living room just has seating, and some decorations i think its nice to just sit in there, and disconnect. The only stationary screen i have is a computer monitor at my desk and i never watch media on that just use it when playing games or using the computer.
Sitting in a single place for long enough to watch a movie i get pretty bored too. So typically ill like start out in bed, carry it down to the kitchen and keep watching while i make food, get some chores done, etc.
I think the size of the screen doesnt really matter too because as the tablet or laptop is typically closer to you it appears a similar size in your view to like a larger screen thats far away you know?
They recently cut our cable because it’s no longer included in the rent and I’m not willing to pay extra. I haven’t even noticed.
What’s the password for the “UHF” wifi?
SUPPLIES!
Password is WeirdAl.
We’ve got it all on UHF!
SPATULA CITY!
Apparently the billboard for Spatial City is real and still standingEdit: quick Google says my memory of someone’s random factoid from a decade ago is wrong
Linear TV over an antenna? Well that’s only technically free. You’d need to buy a receiving device - that costs money. You need to watch ads - that costs time.
If you have a TV, you likely already have the receiving device. Antenna can cost, or you can play around with wire length and orientation.
Well considering many paid tiers of streaming services also serve ads, I consider it free-er than that.
Also, most of the hardware is already inside your TV. You just need a $20 antenna.
I have no TV. I watch all my movies and series via a big PC screen which has no TV functionality.
Ah. Well if your PC is static, a USB tuner isn’t too much. Plus then you have a built-in DVR.
Yes.
https://fmhy.net/videopiracyguide#live-tv-sports
Although I don’t tune in to live sports, I just share resources to find free livestreams/media with others :P
17 here, my grandparents used it before switching 1-2 years ago. Can’t imagine the ads are any better that less people watch it and staticy stations were annoying.
I myself don’t watch TV that much, mainly YouTube or music. In the last month I’ve watched ~3 episodes of impractical jokers on the family TV, and 8 episodes of South Park on my Steamdeck before bed.
Bro is 17 in this economy 💀
I love my rabbit ears. Watch local news and the super bowl if I care that year.
I don’t care about cable TV. In Hungary nearly all news broadcasts over here are just propaganda machines and spitting out literal garbage content. Also the ads.
UbO + Internet + torrent goes br
23 year old here btw
See this is what I’m talking about. Cable is not the same as over the air. I’m not sure how your cable works in Hungary content/pricing-wise, but I do find it funny that a lot of younger people in this thread are lumping the two together.
What about sports tho?
Im really glad I moved to germany, aside from all my bad experiences there, the whole place was a shithole from the beginning. I just want to See that place burn
There being Hungary?
Yep.
This (applies everywhere). Besides it’s all aimed at boomers and not at all engaging. People who are internet savvy can easily find better free content.
I’m aware of it I’m also aware that I live in an area that can’t get any freaking signals at all. Not sure why that’s true though.
Have you checked signal finder sites like tvfool.com? I’ll show you what (if any) signals you should get and from where they are transmitted.
You can also watch Pluto TV. No sign in or fee. Lots of 24:7 dedicated channels for shows like Midsommer Murders, MST3K, Americas Test Kitchen, etc as well as variety genre channels
Are you my wife? Since we discovered Pluto, our TVs are constantly flipping between America’s Test Kitchen, MST3K, Antiques Roadshow and Jersey Shore if we’re feeling especially rowdy.
There’s also a Mr Rodger’s Neighborhood channel that our we leave running in the mornings for kid and dogs when we leave hah.
You mean OTA TV? I don’t even watch sports, the rest has 10 minute advertisements. And considering it’s digital, I don’t find it interesting at all. Yes, a weird reason, but anyway.
For like $150, you can get a Tablo DVR or similar that records what you want to watch, auto skips the ads, and streams it over WiFi to your phone or laptop. Just leave it on for a year and boom: entire season of whatever show is now yours forever for free.
How do you skip live ads unless you’ve pre-buffered at least 1hr in advance
You don’t, but that only applies to sports or things that you need to watch live.
My mum has a Tivo-like box that allows her to record things and catch up with them later. She still watches all of her series live, so she can gossip with her friends about it the next day. The most useful feature of that setup is that she can pause the show if someone calls her or she needs the toilet, but she wont miss a show that was scheduled for that day
Just pirate it at that point.
Eh. There’s also the serendipity of it. There’s a half dozen shows that we regularly watch that we only know about because they were randomly on TV.
I think the overlap of tech literacy and nostalgia for a 90s/00s tv feel is quite small. You found your niche though my man, good work.
Or you could just use https://bitsearch.to/and save yourself buying a TV
Nice try, Channel Master.
Ads, ads everywhere.
Besides there, there is also a 4k OTA standard, ATSC 3.0. Most TVs don’t support it yet, but some do. Worth googling before you buy. You can also get something like an silcondust 4k standalone tuner and plug that into your home network instead. You then load its app to watch over the air TV in 4k.
If you do buy the silicondust tuner, you can go further and get a DVR going. Plenty of free projects that will help you setup and record TV like jellyfin, and many of them will auto-skip the ads too with an application called comskip.
Atsc 3.0 requires an internet connection for it’s bullshit DRM
That seems entirely pointless then, why not just stream the content.
Bandwidth is cheaper from the tower since the signal is the “same” for each client and it can then be distributed over a wide area. You send the “DRM” (Just a fancy encryption key) over the network since it’s relatively small and likely unique to each device (probably fingerprinting the device ids to the content invisibily in case of piracy).
Having the receiver phone home would have the benefit of generating more accurate viewership data, where broadcast tv has historically relied on representative cohorts.
Multicast is a thing, though it doesn’t seem to be widespread. That would make a lot more sense than this weird DRM broadcast system.
Multicast still requires more expensive less widespread bandwidth than sending out analog signals ota & shooting off a few packets of encryption information every now and then. US infrastructure has rapidly improved over the past few years, but we’re still a farcry from anything robust and reliable enough to serve the people benefiting from this type of content.
Woww, over the air broadcasts with copy protection? 🤮
It’s like they want OTA TV to die off.
No OTA broadcasts in the US utilize 4k yet. ATSC 3.0 is being utilized some, but not exclusively, but no one is broadcasting 4k unfortunately
Ah, good old linear TV!
