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Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna (wsj.com)

Posted by msmash on from the eureka dept.

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.

17 of 564 comments (clear)

  1. Using a TV antenna to watch TV by scourfish · · Score: 5, Funny

    And they said that MBA's were useless. Sure showed them.

  2. Is this sarcasm? by clonehappy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or are people really stupid enough to not know about broadcast fucking TV?

    an M.B.A student

    Oh, nevermind.

    1. Re:Is this sarcasm? by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or are people really stupid enough to not know about broadcast [expletive] TV?

      It's quite easy to not know about a technology from before your time. It's not like kids are born knowing how to wash clothes on a washboard either. Some of them don't even know how to wash clothes with modern technology by the time they go to college. I've known brilliant people who didn't know how to use a mop because nobody had ever taught them.

      --
      Real lawyers write in C++
    2. Re:Is this sarcasm? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or are people really stupid enough to not know about broadcast fucking TV?

      Sadly, this is a real phenomenon, and it isn't limited to Millennials.

      My folks had a couple in their mid-40s over for dinner a few years back (2014ish, I think). At some point during the conversation it came up that my parents used an antenna to watch TV, rather than subscribing to cable. The wife insisted that TV channels aren't available for free, so no matter what my parents called it, what they were really doing was stealing TV from the cable companies. It took my parents and her husband a good 20 minutes to convince her that it was not, in fact, a form of theft and that OTA TV is, in fact, freely available to anyone willing to put up an antenna.

      Mind you, this woman was old enough that she wouldn't have grown up with cable TV in her home, since it wasn't widely available during her childhood. The fact that she didn't remember that or know that it was still a thing was astounding.

      So yes, these sorts of people really exist, and it's not just MBAs.

    3. Re:Is this sarcasm? by Gilgaron · · Score: 5, Funny

      So... how long did you wait to start mailing her invoices for the radio subscription in her car?

    4. Re:Is this sarcasm? by c6gunner · · Score: 5, Funny

      In order to look something up you have to know it exists.

      You've obviously never gotten lost on a wikipedia excursion. After a few hours not only do you find things you had no clue existed, you find things you would have never wanted to know about.

    5. Re:Is this sarcasm? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd say that's more an example of how effective the MPAA/RIAA have been at brainwashing people into thinking that they should have to pay for every movie/TV show they watch and every song they hear. Because if you don't, it's piracy!

  3. Seriously? Look at SiliconDust by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Seriously? Look at SiliconDust by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Get a HDHomeRun [silicondust.com] 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.

      I actually look into this, and found that the cost to buy a computer and put something like MythTV on it or whatever, to get DVR capability along with the HDHomerun (I used to use these awhile back)....was GREATER and more of a hassle than to just buy a Tivo OTA DVR/tuner unit...

      The Tivo comes with 4 tuners, 1TB DVR storage and lifetime "service"...for about $399.

      I set up one of these with Tivo mini units throughout the house for every TV I have...for my over the air needs. I used Amazon FireTV for streaming Playstation VUE, Netflx, etc....

      But do look into the Tivo OTA unit....it was plug and play, 4 tuners and less $$ than the DIY route with HDHomeRun.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:Seriously? Look at SiliconDust by PhotoJim · · Score: 5, Informative

      The advantage of the HDHomeRun solution, at least with Plex (if not with its own software) is that you get unencrypted feeds recorded on your hard disk. You can do what you want with them - you can generate DVDs or Blu-Ray discs from them, stream them, put them on a flash drive and share them... it's not trapped inside your box.

  4. Re:This is not news, news for nerds, or interestin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For real.

    "We interviewed some dumbshit kid and he said some dumbshit things! Millenails are turning society on it's head!"

  5. More than half a dozen by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. In another 5 years by drewsup · · Score: 5, Insightful

    they will discover "radio" and forsake the AUX in jack they all live by...

  7. Better option - build your own! It's super easy by bjdevil66 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  8. Re:Free TV? Who knew? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reads like an Onion article

  9. Re: Paywalled by bestweasel · · Score: 5, Funny

    I tried one of those. Fairly low resolution but huge screen size for a portable; manual zoom and the other controls are basic but work well, though not when it's windy for some reason. Easy to read in bright sunlight but sadly there's no backlight. Water resistance is poor though I saw someone using one as a makeshift hat in a downpour! Annotations can be made with an ink or graphite stylus. Cut and Paste works but is messy and Copy is quite slow. I've had mine for several weeks and as far as I can tell, it never needs recharging. I can't get the updates to work though.

  10. Advice for beginners who use linux by shoor · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)