Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.

  • egrets@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The cost to move to America is quite steep, though, and there are significant drawbacks.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      Dunno where you are but most countries I’ve visited in Europe have hundreds of free TV channels broadcast over the air. Minimal ads because a lot of the channels are tax subsidised, or like the UK, a loicense innit

      Where I am, you get a TV streaming box from your ISP for a few euros, and streaming is free for about 200 channels; ad breaks are around one minute long every 30 minutes

      • Robert Ian Hawdon@feddit.uk
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        3 months ago

        Heck, here in the UK, we have a TV licence and the OG ad-free service, the BBC.

        Yeah, the BBC has had its fair share of controversies over the years, but I’m still glad it’s there and still ad-free.

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          3 months ago

          People who say the TV licence is a ripoff should be made to watch US cable TV. I nearly gouged my fucking eyes out with a rusty spoon.

          The BBC produces the best quality TV programming on the planet

          An awful lot of shite as well

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          3 months ago

          Not free, tax subsidised. It’s about €120 per year paid through local taxes. If it had the number of ads that cable has, nobody would watch it lol

    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      The cost to be born and continue existing in the US is also quite steep and if you hope to avoid these costs, dying is also quite expensive and in some cases illegal.

  • spizzat2@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    The transition from analog to digital really hurt my desire to watch OTA TV (you caught me! I’m not under 25).

    With analog broadcast, any weak signal or interference produced a little bit of static, but you could still see and hear what was being said. With digital, any weak signal means dropped frames and silence or weird glitches. You completely lose what’s happening. Even with a powered antenna, I have frequent issues with weak signal. I could probably try to get a rooftop antenna installed, but there’s no guarantee it would be any better. It’s just easier to find other entertainment at this point.

    • yannic@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      Ditto. We went from having five channels, one snowy on a bad day, plus a bonus 6th channel when the stars aligned, to two channels at best.

      The broadcasters and regulators took a basic fact about digital signals “We can get a better quality signal with less transmission power” and saw it as a challenge to set up their digital transmitters with the most conservative estimate of minimum power required. I haven’t studied well enough for my amateur radio exam to know if I’m comparing apples to oranges, but I’m still shocked to see descriptions of transmitter power go from 100kW in one case to below 20kW.

    • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      I hear that. We have an attic yagi aimed directly at Seattle from 10 miles away, and we still get the occasional dropout even on our strongest signals.

      Still when it works, it works really well. We watch Nature and Nova on Sundays, and the wildlife footage looks incredible.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The switch to UHF is also a factor. Compared to VHF, UHF is much more susceptible to blockage by things like leaves. I live in a forest, and 70cm is basically useless while 2m is unaffected and I can work the nation on 6m.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’m 26+ miles away from the broadcast antennas as the crow flies and I get great reception from an approx $100 antenna mounted in my attic. Some HOAs don’t allow antennas and people might be surprised to learn how good your reception can be from an attic.

    • meanmon13@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      I guarantee a large rooftop a antenna would out perform anything you have indoors or those terrible small ones. The one you linked is way too small to work properly for the wavelengths used by TV stations.

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
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    3 months ago

    I am aware. I am also aware that I haven’t used cable tv over a decade and I do not regret ditching that garbage

        • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          So to answer the original question, have you tried it and are you under 25?

          • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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            3 months ago

            As someone who meets your criteria, why would I ever put an antenna on my shit again when I can just pirate things or block the ads? An added benefit is that companies think both hurt them as if they are people and subverting their BS fills me with joy.

            Whether the commenters are talking cable or not, both are arguably garbage alternatives to more contemporary methods of streaming media except in special circumstances due to the abundance of cell tower coverage and bandwidth. I wish I could say that radio was not also lumped in with this, but again, 50% of airtime is ads and I find the radio in my car less useful with each passing year.

            You’re allowed to like something and have people younger than you disagree. Fighting and talking down to them isn’t going to change their minds. It’s cool that you still get use out of older technology for free, but not everyone gets the same value from it.

            If anything, don’t blame young people for ruining your technology, blame capitalism for enshittifying it.

  • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Ads, ads everywhere.

    Besides there, there is also a 4k OTA standard, ATSC 3.0. Most TVs don’t support it yet, but some do. Worth googling before you buy. You can also get something like an silcondust 4k standalone tuner and plug that into your home network instead. You then load its app to watch over the air TV in 4k.

    If you do buy the silicondust tuner, you can go further and get a DVR going. Plenty of free projects that will help you setup and record TV like jellyfin, and many of them will auto-skip the ads too with an application called comskip.

        • Ptsf@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Bandwidth is cheaper from the tower since the signal is the “same” for each client and it can then be distributed over a wide area. You send the “DRM” (Just a fancy encryption key) over the network since it’s relatively small and likely unique to each device (probably fingerprinting the device ids to the content invisibily in case of piracy).

          • Kushan@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Multicast is a thing, though it doesn’t seem to be widespread. That would make a lot more sense than this weird DRM broadcast system.

            • Ptsf@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Multicast still requires more expensive less widespread bandwidth than sending out analog signals ota & shooting off a few packets of encryption information every now and then. US infrastructure has rapidly improved over the past few years, but we’re still a farcry from anything robust and reliable enough to serve the people benefiting from this type of content.

          • Fermion@feddit.nl
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            3 months ago

            Having the receiver phone home would have the benefit of generating more accurate viewership data, where broadcast tv has historically relied on representative cohorts.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      No OTA broadcasts in the US utilize 4k yet. ATSC 3.0 is being utilized some, but not exclusively, but no one is broadcasting 4k unfortunately

  • PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    I don’t care about cable TV. In Hungary nearly all news broadcasts over here are just propaganda machines and spitting out literal garbage content. Also the ads.

    UbO + Internet + torrent goes br

    23 year old here btw

    • observes_depths@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      This (applies everywhere). Besides it’s all aimed at boomers and not at all engaging. People who are internet savvy can easily find better free content.

    • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      See this is what I’m talking about. Cable is not the same as over the air. I’m not sure how your cable works in Hungary content/pricing-wise, but I do find it funny that a lot of younger people in this thread are lumping the two together.

      • Zangoose@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Cable isn’t the same as OTA but from a viewer standpoint they’re both live TV. Live TV in the US is basically unwatchable unless you really like sports or 24/7 news commentary (even then live news is usually also available through phone apps) and don’t mind being interrupted by ads every 2 minutes.

        Anything else is better watched with torrents/piracy streaming sites. They don’t stop the show to serve some random combination of medicine, home insurance, and car ads.

    • Luffy879@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Im really glad I moved to germany, aside from all my bad experiences there, the whole place was a shithole from the beginning. I just want to See that place burn

  • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    The ads on over the air programming are so so terrible. And even with a great antenna the many channels aren’t exactly the highest quality content even if they didn’t have ads.

    YouTube has taken the place of over the air TV and for good reason.

    • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      It has taken the place in people’s behaviour but it has not taken the place functionally. No doubt, you use technology to filter ads out of YouTube viewing, and one could do the same with OTA broadcasts.

      • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 months ago

        Also attempts to make the ads more invasive (louder in this case) are literally legally limited by the federal government.

    • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      For like $150, you can get a Tablo DVR or similar that records what you want to watch, auto skips the ads, and streams it over WiFi to your phone or laptop. Just leave it on for a year and boom: entire season of whatever show is now yours forever for free.

        • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          Eh. There’s also the serendipity of it. There’s a half dozen shows that we regularly watch that we only know about because they were randomly on TV.

          • rishado@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I think the overlap of tech literacy and nostalgia for a 90s/00s tv feel is quite small. You found your niche though my man, good work.

        • ch00f@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          You don’t, but that only applies to sports or things that you need to watch live.

          • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            My mum has a Tivo-like box that allows her to record things and catch up with them later. She still watches all of her series live, so she can gossip with her friends about it the next day. The most useful feature of that setup is that she can pause the show if someone calls her or she needs the toilet, but she wont miss a show that was scheduled for that day

  • QuikxSpec@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    You can also watch Pluto TV. No sign in or fee. Lots of 24:7 dedicated channels for shows like Midsommer Murders, MST3K, Americas Test Kitchen, etc as well as variety genre channels

    • lohky@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Are you my wife? Since we discovered Pluto, our TVs are constantly flipping between America’s Test Kitchen, MST3K, Antiques Roadshow and Jersey Shore if we’re feeling especially rowdy.

      There’s also a Mr Rodger’s Neighborhood channel that our we leave running in the mornings for kid and dogs when we leave hah.

  • thepreciousboar@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    (Assuming you mean DVB-T). In some place OTA is just the standard. Where I’m from cable TV is simply unheard of and all terrestrial digital channels are free with varying degree of ads.

    Another great example of how things work so different in different parts of the world