Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.
What’s the password for the “UHF” wifi?
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
SUPPLIES!
Password is WeirdAl.
We’ve got it all on UHF!
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.
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.
The cost to move to America is quite steep, though, and there are significant drawbacks.
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.
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
That’s interesting! So it’s like free cable TV?
Not free, tax subsidised. It’s about €120 per year paid through local taxes. If it had the number of ads that cable has, nobody would watch it lol
I pay that much per month and get more commercials :(
Heck, here in the UK, we have a TV licence and the OG ad-free service, the BBC.
Yeah, the BBC has had its fair share of controversies over the years, but I’m still glad it’s there and still ad-free.
People who say the TV licence is a ripoff should be made to watch US cable TV. I nearly gouged my fucking eyes out with a rusty spoon.
The BBC produces the best quality TV programming on the planet
An awful lot of shite as well
r/piracy megathread all the way
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.
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.
Ah, good old linear TV!
Removed by mod
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
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
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.
Whatever, all free broadcasts are on YouTube anyways. But on demand and adblock exists
Does this include american football games?
I’m not in that country, I don’t know
Not youtube but there are sites that have every game and their condensed versions but never live.
Edit: not including pirate options.
Wait, what? Are you talking about people who upload content and try to slide by the copyright filters?
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.
(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
So you only pay for the extraterrestrial channels?
You pay a small tax for public channels (that should have no ads) and you pay for satellite tv
So it doesn’t matter if they are human or alien?
I am aware. I am also aware that I haven’t used cable tv over a decade and I do not regret ditching that garbage
Yeah but instead of $60/mo, it’s free.
Free garbage is still garbage
So to answer the original question, have you tried it and are you under 25?
As someone who meets your criteria, why would I ever put an antenna on my shit again when I can just pirate things or block the ads? An added benefit is that companies think both hurt them as if they are people and subverting their BS fills me with joy.
Whether the commenters are talking cable or not, both are arguably garbage alternatives to more contemporary methods of streaming media except in special circumstances due to the abundance of cell tower coverage and bandwidth. I wish I could say that radio was not also lumped in with this, but again, 50% of airtime is ads and I find the radio in my car less useful with each passing year.
You’re allowed to like something and have people younger than you disagree. Fighting and talking down to them isn’t going to change their minds. It’s cool that you still get use out of older technology for free, but not everyone gets the same value from it.
If anything, don’t blame young people for ruining your technology, blame capitalism for enshittifying it.
