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Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna (wsj.com)
From a report on WSJ: Dan Sisco has discovered a technology that allows him to access half a dozen major TV channels, completely free. "I was just kind of surprised that this is technology that exists (alternative source)," says Mr. Sisco, 28 years old. "It's been awesome. It doesn't log out and it doesn't skip." Let's hear a round of applause for TV antennas, often called "rabbit ears," a technology invented roughly seven decades ago, long before there was even a cord to be cut, which had been consigned to the technology trash can along with cassette tapes and VCRs. The antenna is mounting a quiet comeback, propelled by a generation that never knew life before cable television, and who primarily watch Netflix , Hulu and HBO via the internet. Antenna sales in the U.S. are projected to rise 7 percent in 2017 to nearly 8 million units, according to the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group. Mr. Sisco, an M.B.A. student in Provo, Utah, made his discovery after inviting friends over to watch the Super Bowl in 2014. The online stream he found to watch the game didn't have regular commercials -- disappointing half of his guests who were only interested in the ads. "An antenna was not even on my radar," he says. He went online and discovered he could buy one for $20 and watch major networks like ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS free.
The anecdotes in this article are quite funny.
green marker, it greatly improves the picture quality.
Article is Paywalled. Alternate Source?
I grew up using an antenna for all of my TV needs. Now I have a TiVo Roamio OTA with a lifetime subscription (which I got a for a couple hundred dollars) for all of my DVR and app (Netflix, Hulu, etc) needs.
What the fuck.
And they said that MBA's were useless. Sure showed them.
Or are people really stupid enough to not know about broadcast fucking TV?
an M.B.A student
Oh, nevermind.
Seriously, this whole "article" has to be some sort of joke.
Get a HDHomeRun and you can watch broadcast TV from pretty much any modern device. Each one has two tuners, and they can be split across devices. Want to record? Connect a cheap NAS. Want more than two channels at once? Just get another one -- they work in tandem.
Been using these for about a decade now and couldn't be happier. The quality is even better than basic cable because you don't need to deal with their re-encoding antics.
Yes, if you want to sit through 18 minutes of advertisements (average) per 60 minutes of programming, sure, use broadcast television. If you work out the amount of television / streaming content the average person consumes versus the cost of fully-paid streaming, then your "savings" put the value of your time at far less than that of a fourth-world sweatshop worker. But whatever floats your boat.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Wasn't terrestrial analog television switched off many years ago in most countries?
this is hilarious! what is old is new again. Now think back to something that's fallen out of favor and capitalize on it!
The only problem with OTA HDTV in Silicon Valley is that all the clear channels are in foreign languages. English channels are whitewashed in static.
Antennas are cool and all, but did the headline have to be sarcastic and condescending to millennials?
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Modern HD antennas are amazing. Of course us older millenilals grew up in a world with lots of antennas, and the technology has improved dramatically. They used to be awful and snowy that you had to constantly adjust unless it was mounted on your roof. Now, it's definitely worthy as a cable alternative especially in a world with Hulu and Netflix.
For real.
"We interviewed some dumbshit kid and he said some dumbshit things! Millenails are turning society on it's head!"
Correction, it allows one to watch commercials on networks like ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS for free. Awesome.
In the UK, "digital terrestrial broadcasting" still requires the use of an antenna, which is usually mounted somewhere on the roof. Although it's called "Freeview", you still have to pay an annual TV license (and almost all non-BBC channels have adverts). You get a selection of HD channels and even more SD channels, but if it's even more free channels you're after, something like a sat dish is probably the way to go in the UK.
It's not free in the UK. You still need to buy a TV licence. The sad part, is that you can still purchase a black&white licence!
I've cut back all the extra cable channels I never watch, and it even gives me songs and anime in Spanish and Mandarin and Japanese.
It's super cool. Who knew that your local PBS station broadcasts on three frequencies, or that all the soccer games are on Telemundo in higher quality (1080p) instead of the lower definition 1080i you get from Comcast? And then you turn on SAP on the Spanish soccer game and you hear English!!
It totally rocks!
Add Crunchyroll Premium to that and you're a winner!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Does his head explode from the cognitive dissonance?
"Talk?!?! On a iPHONE?!?!?"
Because you KNOW he has an iPhone...
You can use a toothbrush to clean your teeth, and there's a thing called a comb which is very handy for arranging your hair.... This story belongs on the Onion. I'd mod it for sarcasm, but I'm commenting...
Enjoy the ads, which take up half your viewing time and assume you are an idiot. I would not say I am "grateful" for our online marketing overlords, per se, but at least there's a slim chance that streaming ads are relevant.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I count 36 OTA channels in my current lineup. That's about as many as I got on my first cable service in the 1980s. Admittedly, most of the channels are crap, but so are most of the channels on cable.
My favorite way to set it up is to get one of those huge outdoor antennas and just throw it on top of the fiberglass in the attic, generally pointed at the transmitters. I've always gotten flawless reception that way (much better than rabbit ears), without having an ugly lightning magnet on the outside of the house.
I feel like this is an onion story that WSJ picked up accidentally.
You are all a bunch of idots.
The Wall Street Journal article still managed to screw it up. Antennas known as rabbit ears were for receiving UHF channels. The antennas that pick up network broadcasts were never called that.
they will discover "radio" and forsake the AUX in jack they all live by...
I would switch to a over the air antenna, but I live where the nearest broadcast tower is over 60 miles away and line of sight to that tower is blocked by hills. A neighbor down the block had a antenna hooked up to a TV in his garage, three channels (one major network, one PBS and one off brand) were watchable and it worked fairly well most of the time. He ran cable and a receiver into the garage and took down the antenna. Now he can watch what he wants. The downsides of living away from a major metropolitan area still have not counteracted the upsides of not living in one.
Passionately Indifferent
Does this mean using TV antenna is a hipster thing now? Would that make all us old fuds hipsters before hipsters were cool? Or do you to be using the antenna ironically?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You might be shocked about someone discovering OTA programming in the year 2017.
I'm more shocked over the fact that he didn't know about a free product, which is a clear violation of the Millennial Manifesto.
I used to get about 10 channels through my old antenna - sometimes with a little snow, but serviceable. But when things changed over to digital, I found that I get only a single digital channel in the boonies of NH. Digital is all or nothing, and what I get is pretty much nothing.
I strongly recommend the bow-tie type of antenna. Works very well and doesn't break the bank (I think it's about $35 on amazon).
If you get a smallish one, be sure to be aware of where your local broadcast towers are and point it towards those.
But it's about those wacky millenials!
My girlfriend is 42 and was raised with cable TV and she never knew about using an antenna until she met me. The commercials suck but that's what the mute button is for.
The only down side I've found is that if you have spotty reception, it's choppy (kind of like buffering). Whereas pre-DTV spotty reception was static but tolerable.
Too bad the FCC just held an auction for a lot of the spectrum that these TV stations use. In many markets, half of the stations you can get over the air with "bunny ears" will go dark or cable-only within the next year. The spectrum is being sold off to the cell phone companies.
No way!?!?
How big a CPU do you need for this new "Rabbit Eye" technology?
My dad talks about old TV from back in the day. Next you'll be telling me we can still get radio in our cars!
[Personally I think it was all downhill once they took the build requirement out of the ham radio license exam.]
50 miles west of Chicago, I get about 40 digital channels, most with perfect pictures from my attic antenna.
Free, but some channels are in Spanish and Polish !
The transition to digital was painless and good,
more channels, better picture.
Yes, yes they are. When I first saw this ad I had to rewatch it several times because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "Thanks to a federal government mandate, broadcasters must broadcast their shows... for free!" (I have a DVR - which doesn't always play nicely with antennae if you need to adjust them to get a signal! Which is why I naven't completely cut the cord from cable myself yet!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This was posted here on slashdot years ago... I followed the instructions and it worked EXTREMELY well. When I hooked it up, it picked up 30-40 stations around the Phoenix metro area without a glitch. I used a scrap piece of 2x4, so I put the ugly thing up in the attic, and my entire house can hook into it. Less than $10 out of pocket (needed some washers, screws, and a UHF/VHF transformer from Radio Shack.)
Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna
What's that, like 10 antennae?
Next someone will discovery this can hook up a rotary box to their rooftop antenna and get more channels. God millennials are dumb.
CRT monitors have better quality still compared to lcd's
We still use CRT's for graphic design since you get true black and higher resolution.
CRT have no "native resoution" grab a .24 or .22 pitch crt and crank that resolution as high as your card can go.
you'll fry your video card before you'll out do the resolution on a crt
disappointing half of his guests who were only interested in the ads. "An antenna was not even on my radar,"
Says a lot about the USA today.
Adverts are the devil incarnate IMHO.
Well at least millennials will get to experience the joys of constantly re-positioning an antenna to get a decent signal. The difference is they can tweet about it to the word instead of complaining about it to the people in the room.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Reads like an Onion article
OTA TV has gone through something of a resurgence after the switchover to digital. There are way more channels on the air today then there were 10 years ago. This happened at the same time cable started raising their prices unsustainably so people are coming back and finding all sorts of channels that they would actually watch. Combine this with inexpensive online streaming options and Cable's $70+ monthly price point is a bad joke.
In my area we have all of the big networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, 7 PBS channels), plus Cozi, MeTV, Charge, Comet, TBI, Bounce, Justice, GetTV, Grit, Escape, MyTV, Movies, HgI, Retro, ion, ThisTV, and a ton of foreign channels. The only things I'm missing even a little are FX and AMC.
I read the internet for the articles.
My favorite part of this story is that they're doing it so they can see the commercials. Cable company execs are probably losing their minds over this.
Nope, no sig
Anyone who is 'disappointed' not to see commercials on TV needs to re-evaluate her/his life. Or is this a new 'millenial' hipster trend?
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
I'll assume Mr. Sisco was hatched recently. That would explain why he has no parents to talk to or any friends that could tell him about the PFM (Pure fucking magic) protocol that allows Radio and TV signal to travel in thin air (insert open mouth emoji thing).
I wonder how many TV show execs have forgotten about over-the-air broadcasting and will be surprised to hear this.
On the other hand, you need to be in a good location to receive a view-able signal. While we still have an antenna on the roof of our house, we located in a marginal area for reception. With analog broadcasting, just meant a little random "snow" in the image. Now that broadcasting has gone all digital, we get a lot of freezes and "pixel blocking", making the image unview-able. (I still try the antenna signal a few times per year. At night, with clear skies, I can get a marginally view-able image - at best.)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
But does it have layers?
Lunch is over, time for a parfait.
#DeleteFacebook
A few years ago, an acquaintance was between jobs, controlling his budget, and had dropped his cable subscription. He knew about broadcast TV, but the thought of getting an exterior antenna (more money), mounting it on a roof, wiring it, aiming, etc. was daunting. I told him that where I lived, a plain old FM dipole antenna was sufficient to pull in all of the major local channels, since FM radio is close to TV channel 6. I could get sufficient signal for testing a new TV, say, just by pinning the dipole to the ceiling in the correct orientation. I had several FM dipoles sitting in a box, from various receivers I'd had over the years. I gave him one of mine and he was back in business, at least for the basics.
Years ago, I built a log periodic VHF antenna out of some random wooden stakes, some string, and some extra wire I had, put it in an unused upstairs bedroom, and aimed it at the nearest large city's towers. That was more than sufficient and cost practically nothing. We renamed the room the antenna room.
Yea Millenials... For the most part it isn't that they found a new discovery, it is just with the Antenna they can watch local show, and use streaming services for the rest.
The way it was written made it seem like it was really a new thing... However there are few things about the newer technology that we should realize.
1. Most New TVs do not come built in with an Antenna.
2. Old TVs with Antenna normally will not support our current digital standards.
Both 1 and 2 means the person will need to make a conscious decision to go with an Antenna. Vs. the good old day which it was the default state of having a TV.
3. Late Boomers and Early Gen-X who birth the Millennials with their wonderful middle class life style and salaries and cost of living mostly designed for the middle class, could afford Cable TV so their kids grew up with Cable TV as the normal for life.
4. These Millenials are starting to move out of their parents house as the economy is getting better and college debts are getting paid. So they getting their own place, and will need to get their own TV's and other things, thus making a decision on what to use.
5. Cable TV has gown down the tubes. (No pun attended) BBC America Plays mostly Star Trek, and Doctor Who. Lifetime keeps on playing My 600 lbs life... All the channels seems to be stuck on a binge watch loop, which I don't want on my broadcast TV, that is what streaming is for. I want to see variety, so if I am board I can channel surf and find something new. Back in the older days, Cable TV had variety, BBC America played British Shows. Discover had educational content. History channel had historical documentaries.....
6. Local Channels are still competitive. Being the Cable stations stink, the Local Channels are still producing new content. So you get the channels you want to view over the Antenna.
This story isn't how Millenials are discovering the Antenna, but are choosing it over the alternatives.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This evidence is proof. Idiocracy will rain supreme. Maybe humans are the next dodo?
Some TV manufacturers disable OTA reception in the TV settings, and you have to download a code. The code is free, but it probably won't always be.
Avoid manufacturers that do this.
Once again, I'm 'cool' before something was 'cool' to start with.
..and NOW they're seeing the light? LOL. Welcome to the OTA Broadcast Master Race, Millennials! ;-)
TEN YEARS AGO, roughly, I dumped cable, and built an HDTV antenna, with supplies from Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and the Dollar Store (plastic cutting board, to cut insulators out of). I was unemployed and decided to cut my expenses. One of the best decision I ever made.
These days I have a commercially-made antenna with twice as many elements. Also a great investment. Need to add a small VHF antenna and a diplexer to it though, for the two channels that are still in that band.
Get a powered signal amplifier
They are $25 bucks on Amazon for a decent one.
I lived rurally for many years. Makes a hell of a difference.
Blah Blah Blah.
Is that everything is so restricted and monetized in today's world that they don't understand how broadcast could possibly exist and be free.
Superbowl commercials have been a *thing* for a long while now. It's been the carrot dangled in front of non-sport watching spouses and friends for a good decade, or two.
Just saying...
I have a way also to record this new fangled antennae signal to disk with a perfectly legal hacking hardware https://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/ a hacker controlled piece of software . https://www.mythtv.org/
They don't want you to know about this tip.
You couldn't get me back to radio kicking and screaming. I don't need no stinkin' payola fueled music. If all else fails I've got 30 gigs of ripped CDs on a 64gb card in my phone. Plus I've got podcasts for all my hobbies/political leanings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it sucks having to wait for a specific time for a show to come on. streaming has spoiled me. (the sunday news shows are the only thing i'll tune to the antennae for anyway.)
I urge anyone who's considering going the antenna route to check with neighbors to find someone else who tried. My wife and I own a summer house in a location that's in the NE US, but (as we now know) may as well be on the moon in terms of antenna usability. We were considering buying one, when I noticed a couple of neighbors with outdoor antennae. I asked, and everyone said they were totally useless due to the distance and terrain involved.
I have DishNetwork, and the signal craps out during rain or snow. Thankfully, I still have a 'rabbit ears' antenna that works fairly well. But in the old days of analog TV, if the signal wavered, I got a little snow. But with today's digital signals the picture stutters, tears and gets all sorts of weird effects! Give me an analog signal anytime!
Please stop expressing disbelief, people.
I got a nice antenna at Radio Shack when my wife and I got pissed at the ninth time our cable company raised the monthly a few bucks and we realized it had gone up over 20%, vewy, vewy quietwy. ("Elmer Fudd increases", we called them). It was a period of our lives when that extra $100+ per month was significant. So for anybody where >$1000/year is real money all the time, the shock is that more people haven't discovered this, so I hope that article gets wide play.
That was about 3 years ago, and everybody who's seen the antenna asks about it and expresses surprise that it exists, that we have one, that we get along with that as enough. This is people old and young. People haven't forgotten the *technology*, but they have forgotten the *practice* of using an antenna.
It always gives me a chance to express one of my favourite rants, which is that OTA broadcasts have a *regulated quality*, so they always look good, whereas all the private media, (where the provider owns the transmission infrastructure, be it cable, phone or satellite), are allowed to throw you any resolution JUUUUST good enough to keep you from cancelling. 8Mb/s for the Superbowl, sure, but for less-popular shows, they'll run the bandwidth down until somebody's nose is a single big pixel....and back up 10% when people actually leave.
When idealogues rant about privatization and government can't do anything right, I just show them OTA transmissions. TV quality has been publicly regulated and privately regulated and you can see what it does.
Firstly, due to federal policy, all broadcasters are effectively discouraged from operating digital subchannels on their stations, despite the fact that we use the same television standards as Americans, by requiring a multitude of regulatory hurdles to be cleared before you can get permission to do so. Furthermore, due to almost all major broadcasters being vertically integrated with pay television providers, there is little incentive to actually invest in over-the-air television beyond mandatory carriage in the markets where they do end up operating, since it's more profitable to collect subscriber fees for a "new" channel where 90% of the content is literally just recycled from its sister channels, forcibly bundled alongside 2-5 more channels (despite being required to do so, providers also discourage a la carte options by making them as unattractive as possible and giving them little promotion). Hence, we do not have the wide array of options over-the-air as there are in the U.S. or the United Kingdom (given how consolidated the networks are here, maybe a model closer to Freeview could work here). Additionally, because the majority have pay TV here, broadcasters largely cut down on their OTA transmitters during the digital transition to save costs..
Where are my hourly stories about what Trump has done today? Slashdot might as well just repost all his tweets as stories. That way I get up to the minute Trump news scattered with week old tech news.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
One of the benefits of analog signals is that they "degenerated" more gracefully than the compressed digital signals now in use for broadcast in most areas.
The analog signal may be snowy or have streaks under poor signals, but you could still see most of the image. With compressed signals, signal loss often results in ungodly distortions from a Cubists' nightmare. Faces can look really grotesque as the cubist distortions move with the head's movement. When I first saw it I questioned the contents of my salad and drank lots of water.
Table-ized A.I.
Millennials declare they discovered a cure for a healthy life: that there's such thing as free water.
And it tastes better,
In the UK, we have Freeview "digital" TV. The old analog terrestial signals were shut down and everyone forced to get a digital decoder box for reception. They also had to get a larger aerial plus signal amplifier. The good side was that you could get dozens of channels, but these varied from region to region as different transmitters carry different stations.
Linux does have digital TV and you need a USB DVB-T signal converter in order to receive and record video on a Linux PC. That requires a channel scan to be done first (w_scan).
https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/i...
Some USB receivers have mini antennae, but I've never found them to work in any location, not even in the countryside or a downtown hotel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Tinfoil makes the signal clearer. But only if you fold it just right. A lost art....
Only LUDDITES watch LUDDITE TV with a LUDDITE antenna! Modern app appers only app apps with other apps!
Apps!
I have tried half a dozen different antennaes, with and without the amplifier. Our reception is little better than UCPenguin describes. And we live at the edge town; not out in the boonies or up in the mountains. Digital broadcast sucks.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
All of my TV watching is OTA broadcast. I used to record analog with TV capture cards. I also used them to 'digitize' my old VHS tape recordings so I could get rid of the VHS tapes. (Digitizing preserved the recordings, and also allowed quicker access since I didn't have to fast forward to watch something recorded on the tail end of a 6 or 8 hour tape.)
When the USA switched to digital by mandate, I had to adjust. It took some doing and maybe I can offer some useful tips. A lot of stuff is European which uses a different system than the USA which uses ATSC. So, if you're European, or if you're searching the 'net and come across some European software like say kaffeine, beware.
MythTV gets a lot of attention. I never got it to work and it seems like overkill to me anyway. What I use is me-tv. That's an unfortunate name because if you google me-tv you get a lot of false hits.
Me-tv doesn't work well with ubuntu (something about gui libraries.) It also doesn't work very well with pclinuxos. But it works very well with Mint and Devuan! It's not really good for watching 'live'. But, you can start it recording and then watch the recording while it's being recorded with vlc or mplayer or something like that, and, depending on when you start watching or how far you've skipped ahead, you may be only seconds behind the live broadcast. Also with those players you can pause, go back, whatever, while it's continuing to record the program.
When you've installed me-tv and first start it up, you do a scan and it finds the local TV stations. Then edit the channels list it created. Also be sure to edit the preferences as the default settings can be pretty wrongheaded, like starting a recording 5 minutes in advance and continuing after you've specified it should stop. You can put it in your 'startup applications' with the invocation /usr/bin/me-tv -s -m. This way it will start up automatically in the background and quietly record programs you have specified. But, if you're using a USB stick that has custom firmware this might not work because the OS has to find and configure the USB before it starts me-tv. My pcHDTV hardware has no problem because it's hardware support is build into the kernel, but with my Hauppauge TV stick, I have to worry about timing.
Some stations will broadcast several programs at once and you can record several at a time if they use the same base carrier signal. If the station is broadcasting in full HDTV you get a nice high res picture. If they multiplex several shows, which happens a lot for local community and religious stations, you'll get a lower res picture. But there's a lot out there. If you like some of the PBS programs like 'Nova', it's nice to get the high resolution videos of nature. (Just so you won't think I'm too much of a culture vulture, I also watch 'Supernatural', and see it in all its 1280 by 1024 glory.)
If you use a hauppauge tv tuner stick you have to copy a small file to /lib/firmware to get it to work. For my particular hauppauge the file name is xc3028-v27.fw, but it probably varies dpending on whihc model you have. Besides hauppauge, I've used pcHDTV which works 'out of the box' on newer systems.
I hope this saves some of you some of the pain I went through getting all of this to work.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Broadcast TV used to work fine almost everywhere where I live until the networks switched from analog to HD. Now I only get three channels...in Spanish. Sigh. I've tried everything from positioning to signal boosters - I have the hardware for a pretty sweet broadcast TV receiver setup. Regardless, I'm unfortunately located just outside the range of strong broadcast TV signals. Analog TV would still arrive but be a bit snowy (i.e. tolerable). HD, on the other hand, requires near-perfect signal strength and so I get nada.
Killing off Aereo was one of the dumbest things that the Supreme Court ever did. I was looking forward to them coming to my area. Now, because of the idiotic Supreme Court decision, I can't even legally have a friend who lives much closer to the antennas redirect a signal to me over their Internet connection.
In the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, there is very little to see OTA, unless you want to watch reruns of 60's sit-coms (Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, etc) or westerns, so interspersed with adds for senior citizens (literally: "I've fallen and I can't get up", walk in bath tubs, scooter chairs, etc.)
I've watched a bit for nostalgia (that's what was on daytime TV when I was a kid), and the cheesiness was unsettling, but it is not something that I would call "entertainment".
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Is the Wall Street journal becoming The Onion?
Another dirty little secret is that at least around here, the quality (i.e., avoidance of compression artifacts) of broadcast TV is better than what Comcast offers, and that's not even taking into account reliability.
"I wonder how many TV show execs have forgotten about over-the-air broadcasting and will be surprised to hear this."
And how surprised they will be if they discover that all those stations stream their program free over the internet.
Not need to spend money on rabbit ears.
Setting up the account was asked if I wanted local TV and said No, theres an antenna input in it's rear. Was told how surprised I'd be at many didn't know they could do that.
In the UK, you also need a TV license if you use one and the companies that sell them are required by law to notify the TV licensing agency of your address when you do. You'll then be harassed by the company that the government outsources license fee collection to until you either pay, let them inspect your house to verify that you're not receiving broadcast TV, or take them to court.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I recently upgraded from a 10-year-old TiVo HD to a Bolt. Both of them allow fast-forward commercial skipping, and the Bolt's SkipMode makes commercials disappear completely.
Yes, monthly service is expensive, as is lifetime service. TiVo was kind/desperate enough recently to move my lifetime service from the old machine to the new one for $100.
I never watch commercial TV live.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Most TVs in the Analog era did not come with an antenna either. You either had the coax connector or going even older school the flat cable 300ohm separate vhf / uhf screw terminals. The only analog era TVs I ever remember with built in antennas were portable hand helds, or "portable" smaller than 13" or so TVs. Even some of those were't truly built in. They had a hole on the top of the TV that the antenna fit into, and then a cable pigtail from the antenna to run down to the coax or screw terminal connectors on the TV
1. Most New TVs do not come built in with an Antenna.
Most old TVs did not come with a built-in antenna. You used rabbit ears externally.
Being the Cable stations stink, the Local Channels are still producing new content.
Other than local news programs or a few really bottom rate local celebrity shows ("Rick Dancer TV", e.g., or "Betty Snowden", both local to here. One Portland station has a version of "Today" that is much better, but they're the exception to the rule.), local stations produce nothing but profit by showing either network programming or by striping reruns of popular network programming. Or infomercials.
So you get the channels you want to view over the Antenna.
Depending on conditions, I get anywhere from four to six channels. Four of those (the always ones) are four streams of PBS programming from the transmitter about ten miles away on the local mountaintop. The others are occasional CW and Fox.
Yes, get an amplifier, it "works wonders" one person said. Amplifying noise results in noise. Amplifying the local signal results in distorted signal that doesn't decode properly. I love digital OTA.
Dear WSJ,
Evil H4x0rz have fucked with DNS and pointed WSJ,com at The Onion's servers. Yer Welcum,
Best Regards,
Anon Coward
Yeah, I haven't been able to get a decent OTA signal since the switchover (if I can get a signal at all). On the other hand, that got me to pretty much stop watching TV, so there's an upside.
You can can also make whole pots of coffee for less than a dollar instead of buying it buy the venti for $4+
Could you name and shame the ISP that refused business service to you when you told the ISP you want a business connection because you work from home?
Most old TVs did not come with a built-in antenna. You used rabbit ears externally.
Wha? I remember pretty much all TVs coming with a built-in antenna, usually of the telescoping variety. Cheap ones would come with an external antenna you had to snap on.
I only use the Tivo OTA Roamio to DVR my over the air stations
A lot of people don't have $750 in a single month to pay for a $200 TiVo DVR and a $550 All-In Plan. The All-In Plan alone could pay for several years of the difference between home Internet-only service and home Internet with bundled TV.
Wha? I remember pretty much all TVs coming with a built-in antenna, usually of the telescoping variety.
Only some portable TVs. The good, sturdy ones that came in a large wooden box had connectors on the back for an external antenna. That's because the tube amplifiers inside needed more signal than an internal antenna could provide.
I'm replying to my own post because I feel I should have explained more about using a USB stick, which is probably what a lot of people would do.
In my experience, the OS has to boot up and load the firmware before you even plug in the USB stick. This means, for example, that if I set up my computer to turn on in the middle of night (setting this up in the BIOS) just so it can record a late night movie, I have to use my pcHDTV card. Because I won't be there to plug in the USB stick after the thing has booted up. Also, having me-tv autostart won't work. If I plug in the usb stick after me-tv is running, me-tv won't see it. I have to kill me-tv and restart it.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Free? no not free at all. Added benefit yes and after the net neutrality rules get thrown out its going to cost a lot more to get those shows, corporations profits first everyone else who cares.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I'm not a millenial, I'm a full-blown X-gen (born in 1971), and have been cord-free from 2009, (if it wasn't for the free cable TV my employer gave me for free, I'd be a cord-never. Even then, I had a VHS deck hooked up to an antenna for free TV. I've been recording and watching OTA for the last 10-15 years, and it's not that expensive. Buy an OTA antenna (not the preamplified shit), and some kind of DVR (channelmaster or build your own, One machine is running BeyondTV, I'm building a MythTV one), pair that with a Netflix subscrition and all the related online services, and I've got more TV hours to watch than I'll live.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I thought that with ATSC virtual channel numbers, stations could just move to an available frequency in the UHF band and keep their channel number branding.
This should be "How Millenials are Killing Cable TV with this ONE WEIRD TRICK"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For the 29% who don't know OTA TV is free, you should also know there is no such thing as an 'High Definition Antenna'
They also had to get a larger aerial plus signal amplifier.
We didn't all have to.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Living Across the Pond in rainy old England, this comes across as an April Fool 123 days late. But then suggestions in 2016 that Trump would win would also come across as April 1 jokes too.
John_Chalisque
Next they might discover the special box where you can get music and news absolutely free and you don't have to subscribe to anything to use it! Some of these exotic devices can run off of a single "AAA" battery! The only downsides is that you can't change the playlist, and there are usually commercials, but I bet the millennials will crap their pants in amazement when they discover radio!
Get a powered signal amplifier
They are $25 bucks on Amazon for a decent one.
I lived rurally for many years. Makes a hell of a difference.
The problem with amplifiers is that they amplify both the signal and the noise.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Make sure your antenna receives UHF in addition to VHF. Lots of older antennas were VHF-only (channels 2-13).
Remember that the digital channel number shown on the screen now doesn't necessarily correlate to the actual radio channel. In our area, digital channel 7 (7.1, 7.2, 7.3) is transmitted at the pre-digital channel 21 frequency band.
An outdoor antenna with an outdoor amplifier is also recommended for fringe or rural areas.
Broadcast TV works pretty well in our rural area. Lots of people have dumped $60-120/month satellite subscriptions.
...because Centurylink had a 36+ hour total outage in my area, starting Saturday night.
To this day no explanation, no apology, no rebate or refund for service not delivered. When my 'contract', triggered by signing up for automatic pay, expires, they will see me gone. I would rather have DirecTV than Prism ever again.
Ever. I just won't pay extra to leave.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"An antenna was not even on my radar," he says
Can't have been a very good radar then, can it?
Wait, so you really did mean antenna, not tuner?
Or ignore them. I've been getting letters addressed to 'The Legal Occupier' for years telling me they are starting an investigation, proceeding with an investigation or even 'an agent will be visiting your address on this date'. I ignore them all and have yet to have a visit from anyone. I guess putting a letter in the bin every few months could be considered annoying, but not sure I'd count it as harassment (it does bring me pleasure though, so maybe I'm just odd).
If they want into my house they can bring me the court order otherwise they have no more legal right to enter my house than any other random stranger. For the record I have bought a couple of antenna in the last couple of years from Amazon (for someone else, I don't watch over the air tv) but I can't say its made any difference to their 'investigations'.
In the old days the over-the-air broadcasts in the US had 9 minutes of advertisements per hour (15%), versus today of 16 minutes (26.7%). Also you could see three hours of cartoons every Saturday morning from about 7am to 10am, it gave kids a reason to wake up early. And before the mid 1990's they were not lame edutainment series, but awesome cartoons designed to sell kids awesome toys.
I only use antenna TV for NFL football. I would use it for ALOT more viewing if I could reliably record it, but I can't.
You see, the major networks have antennas located in 3-4 different locations in my area.
In order to watch a station, I must first aim the antenna in the direction of the antenna. Then I must do small tweaks because if it isn't exactly right, the signal goes in an out. (and this being digital, we aren't talking about a little snow). And inexplicably the "perfect" location for the antenna seems to vary from one day to the next.
And of course one station uses VHF (rabbit ears) and the rest use UHF (bow ties), but that's just one more headache I won't get into here.
Anyone in my situation and did you manage to solve it so that you can set up a DVR reliably?
"I wonder how many TV show execs have forgotten about over-the-air broadcasting and will be surprised to hear this."
And how surprised they will be if they discover that all those stations stream their program free over the internet.
Not need to spend money on rabbit ears.
Shhhh!
Don't remind them; or they'll start making us USians get a "TV License" like the UKians have to...
ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS; people watch that crap?
I guess it's better than the reality TV wasteland of MTV and A&E, but not by much.
Make sure your antenna receives UHF in addition to VHF. Lots of older antennas were VHF-only (channels 2-13).
Remember that the digital channel number shown on the screen now doesn't necessarily correlate to the actual radio channel. In our area, digital channel 7 (7.1, 7.2, 7.3) is transmitted at the pre-digital channel 21 frequency band.
An outdoor antenna with an outdoor amplifier is also recommended for fringe or rural areas.
Broadcast TV works pretty well in our rural area. Lots of people have dumped $60-120/month satellite subscriptions.
Speaking of this, most of the indoor "DTV" antennas sold into US markets concentrate on UHF reception almost exclusively. If they get VHF at ALL, it's generally an afterthought.
Unfortunately, where I live, one of the major network affiliates (the CBS one) is still broadcasting on VHF, and the "DTV" antenna I purchased just BARELY picks it up. Flat terrain, no tall buildings or other things between me and the transmitting antenna, and the transmitter is only about 15 miles away.
So, do you (or other Slashdotters) have any suggestions regarding an INDOOR, amplified antenna that gets good reception on what's left of the VHF band, and the other UHF-bands that DTV in the U.S. is using? Bonus points if it passes the FM Radio Broadcast band, too...
Not an indoor antenna, but the RCA 751 is only 3 ft long and works great. It can be mounted on a wall, under the eaves of a house. It even comes with the mount, which is identical to the common sat TV mount.
I don't think this is your issue, but I've been using rabbit ears since HDTV was introduced. My Gen I TV/Tuner had horrible reception. My Gen II TV/Tuner circa 2007 was much better. My last TV tuner(2011-ish) is even better at capturing signals. I'm not sure what they did to the tuner chip, but if you have an old TV, a newer one may have better reception with the same rabbit ears.
I'll plug the ChannelMaster DVR... uses your external HDD, so you can use that spare one pulled from your lappie when you converted to SSD. The program guide is optional (over your internet) but free, and no ongoing fees unlike Tivo, which was the dealbreaker for me.
Note very well: has some internet streaming options including Sling and Youtube, but you CANNOT record those, just the OTA TV.
Boomer here. You sound like a Gen X'er who's having a little difficulty with the generational succession thing; let me help you out.
On the plus side, your're older and wiser now. Congratulations. That's something you should feel proud of.
On the minus side you are no longer cool. You are the opposite of cool. It happens almost overnight. Yesterday you and your cohort were on top of the world, the center of attention, the apple of the media's eye; but when you woke up to day you didn't realize it, but you'd become the generational equivalent of a fish left out on the counter over a hot summer's night.
So the millennials have discovered something you've known all along. You laugh, and look around and notice nobody is laughing with you. That's because you haven't figured it out yet: knowledge isn't cool until someone cool knows it. And that's not you. Nor for practical purposes anyone else over 30.
Now I suppose you could console yourself with the idea that the millennials will learn this very same lesson, but I say wish them well and let them enjoy their fleeting moment as the center of the universe, because soon you'll be feeling the icy winds of mortality at your back. That's a reminder to focus on what's important.
And what people think of you just isn't very important. What people think of other people is even less so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yup, I was thinking it read like an April Fools story.
That's why my mother got satellite, because when the broadcasters went digital she no longer got reception for anything except one channel that was spotty. Analog works great, and it has a gradual loss of quality instead of a rapid dropoff that digital has. She wasn't in a position to experiment with powered antennas or installing them, or even knowing they existed.
I remember that. Bought a TV card from Dixons, had to fill in the pink form at checkout. Got the spelling wrong, and of course my address received a notification from TV Licensing. Fortunately, already had a license. But changed rented apartments anyway.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I'm old enough to remember days before cable, during and now the post cable days.
Funny as this is, digital over the air is a really great complement to your netflix/prime subscriptions. Watch your local news or maybe a few stupid shows while you make dinner and before getting into something worth paying attention to
We knew about it, the poorer of us grew up with it, we just don't use outdated shit like that to watch trash TV and suffer through life alert ads.
You must live in Podunk then. I live in a major city and get broadcast TV just fine.
Also, millennials are fucking idiots.
Wow, I thought you were joking but I just looked it up and yeah, in the UK you have to pay £147 for a colour and £49.50 for a black and white TV Licence. That is absolutely idiotic and unbelievable. It's just completely and utterly baffling at how retarded shit is in the UK and how enslaved British people are.
Who the fuck do they think they are trying to extort money from people for passively receiving signals that are already passing through their home? Maybe if they don't want people "stealing" their precision TV broadcast, they should stop broadcasting publicly.
I'm glad we don't have any of that nonsense here in the US. Anything that is broadcast over the airwaves is fair game and cost free (excluding the cost of buying receiving equipment), including TV, AM radio, FM radio and even police radios.
For several good reasons.
KTEH
PBS
NHK
KNLA (gotta have my Nirvana in Fire)
He went online and discovered he could buy one for $20 and watch major networks like ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS free.
Or build your own for even less. Like for $10 if you buy all new parts rather than use stuff that's lying around.
With the analog-to-digital transition now pretty much done in the US, (and the nominal channel numbers no longer related to the actual frequencies, like portable phone numbers being unrelated to the phone's actual location), essentially all the TV stations are in the UHF band.
Perhaps the best broadband antenna design for UHF is the "Gray Hoverman", which was open sourced by the patent holder and can be built quite cheaply. Google it and you'll find lots of how-tos. Since you only need UHF you don't even need to do the extra-element tweaks to get VHF signals. Just build the basic double-tripple-u.
I'm in Silicon valley and all the stations I can get at all here (with one exception) moved to one of three towers. One north of me (in San Francisco), one south (on the hills near Fremont - and a naked-eye object from my yard), and one over a ridge to the north-east. With most of them either north or south I also left out the reflector, so the antenna would be bi-directional. (And the major lobe is broad, so it gets the third tower's signals as well.) Threw it together with a hunk of wood, a few screw, a couple lengths of #14 copper wire from some Romex I pulled in the last remodel, and a balun. Stuffed it behind the TV set and it gets all the stations just fine.
(With one exception: A legacy analog VHF station in the mountains south of San Jose, run by a church. It's on analog channel 6 so that the audio can also be received by FM tuners - just right for shut-ins who want to attend the services virtually.)
A nice thing about digital TV is that signals don't get crummy as the strength drops. They are either received correctly or drop out intermittently or completely. So you don't have to have your antenna get really good reception to get really good results on screen. Sticking such an antenna in the attic is just fine - and what I'd have done if the reception in the TV room was weak enough that some stations were flakey or missing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Don't give them an excuse. The only way they didn't know about broadcast TV is if they skipped history classes! Why do we know about washboards, panning for gold, morse code, sailing ships, star navigation, making fire without matches, etc
This makes me think of the word "Lostech" that I learned from a game when I was a teen. I have adopted it into my vocabulary and it is amazing how much once state of the art wondrous technology is getting lost to time as it is replaced. Think of the Vacuum Tube that lead to transistors and microchips. They almost seem like magic now (even though I know the basic physics behind them). Or the Cathode Ray Tube that lead to color tube TV's being everywhere at one time and now you can hardly find one as they have all been replaced by LCD's or other flat panels.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lost...
Nevermore.
Not an indoor antenna, but the RCA 751 is only 3 ft long and works great. It can be mounted on a wall, under the eaves of a house. It even comes with the mount, which is identical to the common sat TV mount.
Hmmm. It's a Yagi; so very directional. Great for range; but I need something a little more omnidirectional...
And more "indoor" ;-)
Yes, antenna. Typically, there were two telescoping antennae that would pull up out of the TV's cabinet to form rabbit ears.
Yes, but even with those, antennae usually came with them. At least, in over 90% of the sets that I saw when I was younger.
I'm not millenial - I grew up with an antenna and we could barely get PBS in a big city (so the first 100 times I saw Monty Python's Holy Grail on Betamax tape there was a lot of interference - it was normal back then)
But I hadn't used an antenna in about 25 years and didn't believe I could get reception - the websites that purport to tell you if you can and what kind of antenna you should get didn't have a whole lot of data for my area.
But Amazon tempted me one night after a few beers and I spent $15-20 certain that I'd return it almost as soon as I got it. It claims to have a 50 mile range and I'm about 60 miles outside the metropolitan market. I was surprised - I got 25 "channels". Now granted most of that was religious and home shopping crap but I get Fox and one of two PBS stations and Antenna TV - No ABC, CBS or NBC which I never watched even when I had cable.
What I've discovered is that there isn't anything on PBS that I couldn't already get on demand online. I've either been asleep or forgot to watch The Simpsons and all the other animated crap on Fox (basically the only reason I watched Fox) and Antenna TV sure has a ton of commercials although it was kind of fun watching old episodes of Hazel and I Dream of Jeannie.
Just checking now:
PBS: Some kids show
FOX: Commercials
Antenna TV: Commercials
And this is how it is almost every time I tune in.
5 years without cable TV and if I happen to be bored, awake, at home and remember to I might watch Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons and whatever else they air for a couple of hours on Sunday but so far that doesn't seem to be very convenient for me. But I could record it, right? Well, I guess I could - somehow, but
I don't even bother to watch The Simpsons online even though I think I can. I stopped watching even before I dropped cable TV.
Between Netflix and Amazon I have more than I can ever watch and the list just keeps getting longer. I finally watched Season 1 of The Wire - took me about 10 days because I don't have the time or patience to sit and watch 13 hours of TV in one sitting. That's 15 year old stuff and while I didn't have HBO for most of that time it shows how far behind I am.
So even for free (minus the one-time cost of a cheap antenna) I'm not really into watching broadcast TV anymore.
What I found really funny though is that I found myself trying to stop the "stream" before I turned the TV off. But I don't have to do that anymore - it's just always there! In fact I can't do that.
You are the opposite of cool. It happens almost overnight.
Indeed. I remember the day it happened to me!
I am amused by all this millennial hate. The generational wars have always been with us and will always be with us, and they're always stupid.
As a wise (older and deeply uncool) man once told me: every generation thinks:
1) That they invented sex
2) That the generation before them are corrupt idiots
3) That the generation after them are lazy idiots
4) That their generation is the last reasonable one before the collapse of civilization
All of those things are just as true now as they were a thousand years ago. Which is to say, not even a little bit true. But it amuses me to see the tradition carrying on.
In that case get a satellite dish. There should be plenty of free to air satellite programming available.
> an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV
Yeah, yeah, I've seen the spam. And the infomercials, and the ads in Facebook. All pretending like this is, like, a new and wonderful thing that people have just discovered.
Someone said it just the other day. I despair for humanity.
(It so happen, in our area, that most of the local channels originate from a huge cluster of antennas on a nearby mountain top. A farmhouse-grade TV antenna picks up 20+ channels including sidebands. I guess that millennials don't know this shouldn't be surprising.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
We will not survive this generation
The only thing I've watched that was available OTA in the past year, was off and on a little of the Super Bowl.
Nothing on the OTA networks interests me.
There's not much worthwhile for free.
For a generational reference, I'm over 50. I don't have a land line phone. I have basic cable because it's cheaper to get basic cable and internet, than just internet.
Raspbian was a programming language, plus many other inaccuracies.
Needless to say, none of my students signed up to attend that particular university.
I was having similar issues due to living in suburbs where houses are built 8 - 10 ft apart. I was about to throw in the towel and look for an exterior antenna when I took it off the wall and placed it on the floor (concrete slab foundation). To my amazement I've never had so good reception. It rarely glitches these days.
It's always amusing when Americans illustrate their inability to understand alternative solutions to problems. I happily pay for a TV license to avoid the blight of advertising and marketing, which is slowly eating everything from the inside out - like, for example, any form of meaningful journalism in the US of A.
In the 60s, we connected our TVs to the large antenna outside the house on the roof. In the 70s, TVs started coming with telescoping rabbit ears. (Both the low-end random TVs and the high-end Sony sets had the built-in rabbit ears.)
I'm not sure who had the separately purchased rabbit ears, which usually were mounted on a little box with a dial control (which maybe varied something electronic in the box and/or physically rotated the antenna). I think it was for when you were in a bad reception area and the normal antenna didn't work (and you were not connecting to the outside antenna).
It originally started with the original valve based TV sets. In order to tune your TV into the radio transmitter signal, you had to adjust the very basic radio reception circuit boards which themselves gave off harmonic signals. Due to negative feedback loops, you could end up jamming your neighbors TV set. So "TV licenses" were invented. You got a little card to fill out with your name and address, and if anyone had problems with their TV, the technicians would know where to look. And it was convenient for the authorities to keep track of technology and to keep the BBC on a leash.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
You sound like a boomer who wrecked our fucking economy and robbed the government coffers for your own gains. I refuse to listen to you asshats. That cold wind of mortality can't become the icy grip of death fast enough for you guys. We tired of your stupid conservatism. We're tired of your hate and nostalgia about how awesome shit used to be. Shit always sucked. You are what's wrong. Don't lecture us about change, you are the ones who refuse to adapt to the times.
Are they really that stupid that the don't know what an antenna is? Really? Wow.
Blame mom and dad for raising such stupid life forms.
Is this all digital tv or are there still some analog stations?
Some USB receivers have mini antennae, but I've never found them to work in any location, not even in the countryside or a downtown hotel.
I recently read that the reason they don't work well is that they need a ground plane. Notice how they have a really nice magnet? You need to stick that to a big piece of metal, like the roof of a car, for the antenna to work properly. Otherwise you might as well just jam a long piece of wire (like 2m-5m) into the connector and move it around until you get good reception.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
So you get no commercials?
To say that I am sick of millennials 'discovering' things the rest of us have known about for decades would be an understatement beyond all reckoning. Their parents should all be shot for raising them in such a bubble. Most annoying generation? Absolutely.
I have been using antennas to get over the air FREE tv for over 12+ years. I NEVER paid for Cable. I get over 14 channels free over the air. In larger cities in my motorhome I can get 20+ channels. All for free! And since they are all digital - the quality is pretty darn good!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Want to watch the (Viagra, prescription drug, schlock cutlery, life insurance for seniors, etc.) commercials? During prime time, on major networks, the commercials seem to be limited to 15-20 minutes per hour (also on PBS), but off-peak they can be over 1/2 of the time, especially on the off channels, but also to a significant degree on the networks. To PBS's credit, they bunch all the commercials (pardon me, enhanced sponsorship identification) at the end of the show, so you figure that the 1-hour show will last 45 minutes then you can do whatever for 15 before coming back (if you want to) for the next one. Commercial TV still interrupts the show every 5 or 10 minutes, just like when us curmudgeons were kids.
So hook up a few of them in different directions or locations.
Or are people really stupid enough to not know about broadcast fucking TV?
It's not magic?
I'm talking about these tables. Why is it that the All-In Plan is so much more expensive for every model other than the Roamio OTA 1 TB?
Next up, Millennials will "discover" an amazing hack to reading the news -- buying a printed newspaper from a newspaper stand! More at 11!
FILM at 11! Used to be that, before videotape camcorders appeared in the early 1980s, the local news was filmed. The news anchors of the 6:PM news would say, "Major car crash at..., film at 11." It would take until 11:PM for the film to be developed, dried, and edited.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The UK fee is cheaper than most of the EU. They're so lucky...
> All of those things are just as true now as they were a thousand years ago.
A thousand years? As soon as writing was invented, it was used to complain about how this newfangled writing will ruin everything.
Gen X'er here. I stopped thinking "being cool" was "cool" when I became an adult. Don't you think it's time for you to also become an adult?
Not sure if this is true, but people commonly seem to be upset about alleged "free riders" in any situation where they are getting hurt. There sure is a lot of propaganda to this end, no matter what area (piracy, taxes etc).
From what I have heard (and seen on South Park) about cable operators in the US, they probably got a lot of butt-hurt.
Soothing the pain with excuses about how they "..would not have to do this to people if it wasn't for those dirty free riders"!
That's crazy. So do you pay for radio too? Is there a cool breeze licensing fee for when the wind blows? How about a tanning fee for when the sun shines? Rain fee for when it rains and waters any grass or plants you may own?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
They are like HMRC, don't ignore them and they don't bother you (much).
Just took a phone call to tell them that I didn't own a TV and then every year or so do a declaration online that I still don't have a TV (or in the last one, watch iPlayer).
They've never shown up to my house in the 10+ years that I've not had a TV license.
Name one of those television models then.
I remember full-size televisions ALWAYS having Belling Lee coax, type "F" coax or twin lead connectors for the aerial/antenna.
Aside from portables, no television had built-in antennas. Antennas were attached to a base, which clipped on to the television, so you're confused and thinking that the clipped on antennas were actually part of the TV when they weren't.
Because TV cable here costs $4.50 with over 150 channels.
But it is really hit and miss as to whether it would work or not , depending on whether you were on a high floor of a building as well as on a hill.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I don't see any mention, so I thought I'd add that Kodi (formerly XBMC) seems to be the way to go now for FOSS media centre software. To be honest, I haven't tried it myself, but it will be the first thing I try when I get a round tuit one of these days...
see also
Speaking as a millennial who has always used broadcast TV, this sort of condesending tripe article can only be expected from Boomers. Frankly the sooner they're gone from positions of power the better.
Correct. The license fee goes to pay for the BBC which is commercial-free.
The license fee pays for the BBC programming (though a lot of BBC programming also benefits greatly from selling it to US networks). Shows like Doctor Who are paid for by this, and are broadcast commercial-free. It also goes to fund the BBC news.
While I don't live in England any more, I appreciate greatly this "socialized" TV. Thanks to this business model, the BBC produces quality commercial free TV and news without a significant political bias... though they do have a slight lean toward the current governmental makeup but it tends to not be extreme except for certain shows.
The major networks have antennas located in 3 different locations in my area.
In order to watch a station, I must first aim the antenna in the direction of the antenna. Then I must do small tweaks because if it isn't exactly right, the signal goes in an out. (and this being digital, we aren't talking about a little snow). And inexplicably the "perfect" location for the antenna seems to vary from one day to the next.
And of course one station uses VHF (rabbit ears) and the rest use UHF (bow ties), but that's just one more headache I won't get into here.
Anyone in my situation and did you manage to solve it so that you can use a DVR reliably?
Many TVs had a mounting hole where the rabbit ear antenna could be mounted. With the increasing popularity of UHF the additional loop antenna was mounted either directly onto the screw terminals or, if your TV was fancy, clipped onto one of the rabbit ears.
At which point you get shows like Top Gear that are basically 90 minute car commercials.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Lately they seem to have acquired a heavy LGBT bias, that has even invaded Dr. Who. Expect the first female Dr. to have plenty of lesbian scenes.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My oldest came back from college, years ago, and was giggling over a fellow student who had "discovered" a "Green Clothes Drying Method".
Better known as a clothesline. . . .
So you only get one OTA channel? That's pretty fucking lame. I get like 60+.
Also, shouldn't that mean that anything the BBC broadcasts is public domain? I mean it's paid for completely by taxation, so it should be.
We have KCET and PBS here, which have several channels each, perhaps 7 or 8 channels total, all without commercials and all supported by donations, not extortion.
Do you still need a license to watch ITV, or other independent broadcast channels that DO have commercials?
Fueling inter-generational derision? Unexpected.
ok I wasn't sure if this was a joke until I hit "antenna was not on my radar" .... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I'm in my 30's. I grew up on only the channels the antenna on the top of my parents house could pick up because they didn't want to buy cable. After cable modems became available, I bought the service myself and paid to have the installation done. It was great and I got a slew of TV channels along with it.
Fast forward now. I don't have time to watch the 1000s of channels on TV. When I do have time, I am interested in catching up on the shows I want to watch and the local news. Three years ago, I bought my first place and had a cable modem installed. I bought an indoor/outdoor antenna and signed up for Netflix and Amazon Video and never looked back. I haven't had cable TV and don't need it. And the HD TV from over the antenna is so much more vivid than a standard cable account I get from my local cable provider anyway.
It probably should switch off incremental rendering if a key frame was not received correctly. Just leave the last good image paused until a good key frame arrives (with regular sound pace, assuming good sound).
Maybe they should also send a lower-res key frame (LRKF) in case the regular one comes messed up. Don't put the LRKF adjacent to the regular KF because signal gaps tend to bunch together. Maybe put the LRKF about 1/3 the way thru. Example:
KF // regular key frame #23 // incremental update // low-res key frame version of #23 at 1/3 of cycle // regular key frame #24 // low-res key frame version of #24
IU
IU
LRKF
IU
IU
IU
IU
KF
IU
IU
LRKF
IU
etc...
(IU frequency is only an example and may vary per picture complexity.)
This way if KF#23 is messed up, the screen pauses until it reaches LRKF#23 as a consolation prize. The chance of both KF#23 and LRKF#23 being messed up is relatively small. If they both are by chance, then the pic just pauses at the last good set (KF#22 + IU's) rather than force render the incremental updates like the current standards seem to.
A bad KF would then just usually cause a slight pause for 1/3 of a cycle and then use a somewhat blurry key frame (LRKF) image for the other 2/3.
Table-ized A.I.
After the first year you should've been telling them to fuck off and stop harassing you.
Get a decent antenna, trying half a dozen crappy antennas isn't going to help get a good signal. A decent long range antenna will cost you upwards of $100. Then put it high enough to have line of sight to your transmission towers and tune appropriately. I was receiving off-axis digital broadcasts from over 70 miles away at the last house, no problems. My current residence is closer, and the antenna is going up this weekend.
IOW, the digital broadcasts are fine, it's likely your antenna or cabling that's the culprit.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I bought a good long-range antennae, just under $100, has mounts for placing it in the attic, and could even go outside if the weather isn't horrible.
It gave the exact same performance as the plastic square one you tape to the wall. Granted it was in the same general place as that plastic square one, but the performance shouldn't be just as bad, in just the same way, as all the others I tried.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
First, the first antenna I bought was $130. It didn't work super well but still gave reasonable reception. The clamps and attic mounting stuff was another $30. I then switched to a $80 ($40 on sale) outdoor antenna, but that thing was HUGE (about 7x9 ft square, and 3 ft in height. It still fit in my attic. It captured everything.
The next obvious question is: do you have clear line of sight (electromagnetically) between your antenna placement and your towers? No radiation shielding in your attic tiles, no power lines or other broadcasting antenna near enough to line of sight or the house itself to cause interference, no water towers, hills, tall buildings, bridges, etc? Because there's no reason a decent antenna shouldn't be able to pull an OTA broadcast signal from 80+ miles away given a clear line of sight.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Interesting comments in this thread, all began when millennials discovered antennas. Boomer here, old enough to remember aiming the antenna at one station but get ghosts on the others. Was too poor and lazy to install a rotor (which always break down the evening when showing a good movie, and weather terrible and lost the ladder). Nowadays amazed to watch these 60s shows like Batman and all the details I never saw. Still hate when they tilted the camera for the crooks hideout.
Regarding generations, someone on a forum went on a endless diatribes how millennials are destroying the car industry, housing market, etc by not buying any of these things. I responded (a quote from one of you slashdotters), "Hey Socrates, youth still terrible these days?"
mfwright@batnet.com
5) That the whole world is flawed, and needs to be radically transformed
6) That Conservative ideas are stupid
7) That their college professors know what they are talking about (later, they discover, those who can't "do", "teach")
8) That Management is EASY, it's just barking orders at people
9) That the best strategy is to live hard and die young
10. That people like Che Guevara are cool! (They are actually murdering sociopaths)
Murphy was an optimist
I have a DVB-T USB thing for linux and it doesn't work, though I only tried the absolutely tiny antenna included with it (one penis length) and not bothered to try plugging into the antenna plug in the wall.
The issue is, you spend an hour doing crap in the command line and you don't know if it works or not as it shows random numbers or lack of numbers, and when you try to run a GUI program supposed to decode TV or radio you don't know if it works or not either, because you don't know if it's compatible.
My first goal was/is to receive FM radio which I assume should be easy since it's analog and I know the frequencies exactly. Any phone can receive radio using a jack cable as antenna (phone doesn't receive radio? you shouldn't have bought it), radio receivers and CD/USB etc. players receive radio by plugging a fork into the antenna plug on the back.
I had forgotten about it. Need to find my antenna cable - used to be you could find them everywhere, like e.g. old newspaper. I once had to go outside and pick a newspaper in the trash (going as far as the closest metro station), instead of picking it on the ground or at home - the old saying being, you use newspaper to clean a mirror.
I've just noticed that in a 90s movie, there was at some point a newspaper the protagonists retrieve as the maid/cooking aide has informed of some news which turns the whole thing around. She had used the newspaper to contain the vegetable peels.
Packing glassware? Use newspaper.
Next step in canceling recurring auto-billed fees would be the Internet subscriptions. So that millennials (which I don't know if I'm one or not) can buy newspaper. One of the causes of fake news is we don't buy newspapers. It might be too late for old media to recover, but as we stopped to buy newspaper so as to pay for Internet instead, it's no wonder journalists got no money and the evil billionaires and corporations stepped in to buy journalism power for pennies on the dollar.
Type in your ZIP code on tvfool.com to see what channels are available and where they're coming from. Then use a compass to AIM your antenna at that souce!
is it iOS and Android compatible?
#2, #3 - is true; the older you get, the lazier you get; the more your vig depends on getting paid for not working.
#4 - is true; when you're older generation is parasitically living off the young, due to extension of life.
die, already, you corrupt, lazy parasitic octogenarians.
I think The Raven was talking about Set-Top Boxes, DVRs, etc. rather than antennae. An antenna isn't capable of receiving and decoding a TV broadcast signal.
Your approach to the "money with menaces" letters is correct. They do send round doorsteppers - at least in town. And their doorsteppers do not have right of entry. So no matter how foul the weather outside, the correct response is "get off my property and come back with a search warrant" and the police officers to validate and enforce it". The "validate" bit is important - you'll comply with the law, but do not trust the doorsteppers themselves. The "police officers" bit is important - the police do not have the resources to attend (PCSOs are not police officers, BTW). And the "search warrant" bit is important because it would destroy any hope of profit for the doorstepping company from the encounter.
IME, they send the doorsteppers round on dark and stormy nights, and will appeal to you to "let us in to get out of the weather. Don't - once they're in, they can search and seize. Refuse entry, point-blank, then order them off your property, then shut the door in their faces.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The radio reception license was folded into the TV license fee around the mid-1980s, IIRC. You can't purchase a separate radio license any more - I tried in the mid-1990s.
There is no cool breeze licensing fee or tanning fee, since possession of cool breeze receptors or melanocyte cells were not considered as spying equipment during WW2. (That's why radio receivers were registered devices during the War, extended to add TV in 1948.)
In the mid-1990s, when the water utilities were sold off for profit, they tried to sue people who installed water butts to collect the rain water from their roofs for use in the garden. They came pretty close to succeeding too, but in his summing up the judge started going down the path that the water utility (Severn-Trent, I think it was) had established it's ownership of all rainfall from the moment it touched a roof or the ground. But the utility company barrister saw the trap that was being primed and withdrew the case with seconds to spare. The trap being that, if the water utility owned the water as soon as it touched the ground, then they were liable for any damage that it caused - such as by running through leaky roofs or drowning people in rivers. But yes, they (the privatised, for-profit) water utilities did try to establish what would have been a "rain fee".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
People tried the "I only use the TV to watch ITV" defence repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s. It has never been accepted, because the legislation was written to cover any equipment regardless of what (if anything) was being broadcast. And the legislation used to cover radio reception equipment too, until the mid-80s when they gave up on that.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I'd get a visit from the doorsteppers about 1 year in 2.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So high? When I had satellite (3 years ago now), it was £37/mo, so about USD 45/mo?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
In France there's a check box you use when you're doing your taxes ("conveniently" assuming you have a TV : you need to check the box to say you don't have one)
Interestingly, you don't have to pay the TV license if you're 65 year old or older.
Amazingly law was clarified years ago to say you don't need to pay for receiving TV on a computer. I think you might even use a 40" computer monitor with a DSL set top box and they won't bother you even though it's even closer to using a TV.
There are next to no inspections i.e. these days they may employ like two inspectors for a department.
Living in PAL/SECAM land with a central government known to be very top down about these things and much everything else, TV was of amazing quality! Except the sixth channel, only at our home.
Nowadays I can watch some older shows on illegal streaming at 240p, or perhaps fluctuating between 144p and 360p depending on bad wifi. Before that it was downloaded xvid, which is a bit better. Before that there was .wmv at very low bitrate or early divx of amateur VHS recordings posted to the internet.
So, it's the other way around for me as I watched stuff on SECAM 576i as a child! Of course legal TV and DVD about match it. Not necessarily though, the CRT TV sets had good color, roughly same colors from one set to another (no hue control, you could set the saturation on late 80s / early 90s set and of course brightness/contrast). Speakers were decent too (not always). So it takes a calibrated LCD with no light bleeding I suppose, and half decent sound which is not impossible but rare in contemporary TVs/monitors.
Low bitrate legal TV will still not look as good as best condition analog TV. When DTV first came out, it was MPEG2 SD and did look good but had some MPEG2-size compression artifacts sometimes so it was both a bit better and a bit worse. We watched both, tended to use the DTV only for the new channels - which were mostly cheap, like they filmed one or two TV hosts in a broom closet converted to a studio and had a digital VCR to air cheap 80s crap.
In Europe or just my largeish country a fair bit smaller than Texas it kept being the roof antenna forever and to this day. It can simply expected anywhere you might buy or rent to dwell into be it a 200-year-old house, 70s ghetto or 2010s brand new or renovated thing.
I've looked out my window right now and could see five antenna masts. Hum, seven or even eight if I take a closer look as some are a bit obstructed unless I stand higher. Two or three antennas per mast. If I were in a high rise I might likely count hundreds if not more.
Made for a rather easy transition to DTV as very many places, likely a majority did not need any antenna tweaking! of course some needed to be done in other places.
Still that silly hassle of using two remotes - made a come back as MPEG2 was deprecated, so e.g. a friend has a 16:9 fluorescent lights LCD TV with a separate crappy tuner box while another has a 16:9 LED LCD TV which works on its own.
I'm a millennial. Maybe an "older millennial" but I remember going over to Grandma's house and them having a console CRT with an antenna that had big dial that would move the antenna to get better signal. I must of been 8 or 9 years old. When I got my first apartment, I had dish satellite for about a year. The quality sucked and HD channels were limited (This was around 2006) I went to OTA and never looked back.
You must be new here...
One minute of content, three minutes of advertisements.
News shows are laughable, being mostly Weather and Traffic reports, with obsequious celebrity gossip and sports fanboy drooling, with very little in the way of useful news reports about important subjects. The constant barrage of stories about killings, traffic accidents, and fires don't really count as news and only serve to keep the populace in a constant state of fear of one's neighbors.
Many so-called new stories are thinly veiled advertisements for local businesses, masquerading as news. The FCC apparently no longer requires TV and radio stations to air real political debates or to give all candidates access to unpaid time to inform the population of their viewpoints and proposed political policies.
On the other hand, there is no shortage of paid political attacks on all of the candidates during the nearly full-time campaign cycle.
Unscripted "reality" shows are now the go-to summertime replacements for what used to be reruns of written dramas.
Unlike Netflix (which has no advertisements and is well worth the monthly fees, IMO) and the other paid internet services, the paid cable services give you many channels, but most of them provide you with advertisement-laden excuses for actual content for the privilege of paying for their overpriced bundles of boring and unwatchable cat-and-dog videos and home shopping programs.
Give me a good library any day!
PlaynBass
Some changes have been good and this is one of them. Who needs TV anyway - 54 year old Gen Xer.
Wow, you really do type without any thought at all don't. What's the matter, couldn't afford your brain licence.
Make sure your antenna receives UHF in addition to VHF. Lots of older antennas were VHF-only (channels 2-13).
Before analog broadcasting ended, we had 2 (analog) UHF stations - 23 and 58 - that we could receive better than the VHF stations.
I tried adding a UHF booster amp at the top of the mast. It only exacerbated the problems, (We live in one of the northern suburbs of our area. The TV stations are in the southern suburbs. I'm assuming our neighborhood is a victim of the combined RF noise of the intervening city.)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
It's not your generation. It's just you. You're the fucking idiot.
I think I might get my own antenna when I move out. It would mostly be for novelty as I don't really watch cable. There are a few shows I like to watch live so the cost of setup seems worth it.
Yeah, I haven't been able to get a decent OTA signal since the switchover (if I can get a signal at all). On the other hand, that got me to pretty much stop watching TV, so there's an upside.
yeah...we basically did the same thing. Digital OTA was such crap that it was quickly dropped. Fully predictable
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
"You can't purchase a separate radio license any more - I tried in the mid-1990s."
Is your name Eric and do you have a cat detector van?