People under 25, how many of you are aware that you can get 1080p HD TV programming (and many live sports) for free over the air with no app sign-in or susbscription fee?
Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.
The cost to move to America is quite steep, though, and there are significant drawbacks.
Dunno where you are but most countries I've visited in Europe have hundreds of free TV channels broadcast over the air. Minimal ads because a lot of the channels are tax subsidised, or like the UK, a loicense innit
Where I am, you get a TV streaming box from your ISP for a few euros, and streaming is free for about 200 channels; ad breaks are around one minute long every 30 minutes
The cost to be born and continue existing in the US is also quite steep and if you hope to avoid these costs, dying is also quite expensive and in some cases illegal.
The transition from analog to digital really hurt my desire to watch OTA TV (you caught me! I'm not under 25).
With analog broadcast, any weak signal or interference produced a little bit of static, but you could still see and hear what was being said. With digital, any weak signal means dropped frames and silence or weird glitches. You completely lose what's happening. Even with a powered antenna, I have frequent issues with weak signal. I could probably try to get a rooftop antenna installed, but there's no guarantee it would be any better. It's just easier to find other entertainment at this point.
Ditto. We went from having five channels, one snowy on a bad day, plus a bonus 6th channel when the stars aligned, to two channels at best.
The broadcasters and regulators took a basic fact about digital signals "We can get a better quality signal with less transmission power" and saw it as a challenge to set up their digital transmitters with the most conservative estimate of minimum power required. I haven't studied well enough for my amateur radio exam to know if I'm comparing apples to oranges, but I'm still shocked to see descriptions of transmitter power go from 100kW in one case to below 20kW.
I hear that. We have an attic yagi aimed directly at Seattle from 10 miles away, and we still get the occasional dropout even on our strongest signals.
Still when it works, it works really well. We watch Nature and Nova on Sundays, and the wildlife footage looks incredible.
The switch to UHF is also a factor. Compared to VHF, UHF is much more susceptible to blockage by things like leaves. I live in a forest, and 70cm is basically useless while 2m is unaffected and I can work the nation on 6m.
I'm 26+ miles away from the broadcast antennas as the crow flies and I get great reception from an approx $100 antenna mounted in my attic. Some HOAs don't allow antennas and people might be surprised to learn how good your reception can be from an attic.
I guarantee a large rooftop a antenna would out perform anything you have indoors or those terrible small ones. The one you linked is way too small to work properly for the wavelengths used by TV stations.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Cable isn't the same as OTA but from a viewer standpoint they're both live TV. Live TV in the US is basically unwatchable unless you really like sports or 24/7 news commentary (even then live news is usually also available through phone apps) and don't mind being interrupted by ads every 2 minutes.
Anything else is better watched with torrents/piracy streaming sites. They don't stop the show to serve some random combination of medicine, home insurance, and car ads.
What about sports tho?
The ads on over the air programming are so so terrible. And even with a great antenna the many channels aren't exactly the highest quality content even if they didn't have ads.
YouTube has taken the place of over the air TV and for good reason.
It has taken the place in people's behaviour but it has not taken the place functionally. No doubt, you use technology to filter ads out of YouTube viewing, and one could do the same with OTA broadcasts.
Also attempts to make the ads more invasive (louder in this case) are literally legally limited by the federal government.
What’s the password for the “UHF” wifi?
Password is WeirdAl.
We've got it all on UHF!
SUPPLIES!
SPATULA CITY!
Apparently the billboard for Spatial City is real and still standing
Edit: quick Google says my memory of someone's random factoid from a decade ago is wrong
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.
Or you could just use https://bitsearch.to/and save yourself buying a TV
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
IPTV is also pretty great
why would I use that when I have a *arr setup?
Nice try, Channel Master.
(Assuming you mean DVB-T). In some place OTA is just the standard. Where I'm from cable TV is simply unheard of and all terrestrial digital channels are free with varying degree of ads.
Another great example of how things work so different in different parts of the world
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.
Ah, good old linear TV!
You can also just 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
"Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!"
People would be talking about it if there was anything actually worth watching on OTA channels
Have you looked? A bunch of the new shows on Hulu are broadcast. Lots of reality TV. PBS rules.
Also a bunch of movies. Especially shitty Christmas movies around the holidays which are a personal favorite.
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.
Living in tornado alley, having a TV antenna and a weather radio is almost a requirement. If the Internet gets knocked out, OTA still works. Also, my Internet is shit so I wouldn't rely on it if a tornado is bearing down on my location, but I do also love watching 9½ hours of nonstop tornado coverage when nasty storms might come my way.
Outside of that, I know to tune in at about :15 past the hour during newscasts to catch the weather report, which gets uploaded to their website later anyway. If the football game is on, I might catch that if I care to watch. I don't really watch OTA otherwise.
But I'm 32 lol
Are you talking about the US? You really should be mentioning that
I assume this depends on where you live, though.
Vaguely aware that's a thing you can do, but I have no reason to use it as I don't really watch anything on regular TV anyway
I love my rabbit ears. Watch local news and the super bowl if I care that year.
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 💀
Imagine
I am curious though, what do you recommend?
Pick up Tablo or HDHomerun. Connect an antenna. Drop it in a closet or wherever you get the best reception. Then just record stuff you like. You can browse from any media streaming box (AppleTV, etc).
There’s decent content in there and after the upfront cost, it’s free.
YouTube, free broadcasts are on there
r/piracy megathread all the way
Definitely depends on where you are in the world. I don't know if you could do that here in the upper Northwest of the States. I know my parents have a little tablet looking TV receiver they used to use that would get them free TV, but I don't think it gets free sports or my dad would absolutely flip out over that football season.
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.
Whatever, all free broadcasts are on YouTube anyways. But on demand and adblock exists
Does this include american football games?
Not youtube but there are sites that have every game and their condensed versions but never live.
Edit: not including pirate options.
I'm not in that country, I don't know
Wait, what? Are you talking about people who upload content and try to slide by the copyright filters?
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?
I'm 28 so a little older than the prompt, I have a setup i never use it. I used it a lot as a kid but it doesn't hold up to the alternatives.
Kodi + Seren + Real Debris Subscription £2 /month. Every show/Movie you would ever want. No need for VPN services.
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.