Just curious because I don’t see people talk about it a lot.
The cost to move to America is quite steep, though, and there are significant drawbacks.
The cost to be born and continue existing in the US is also quite steep and if you hope to avoid these costs, dying is also quite expensive and in some cases illegal.
The transition from analog to digital really hurt my desire to watch OTA TV (you caught me! I’m not under 25).
With analog broadcast, any weak signal or interference produced a little bit of static, but you could still see and hear what was being said. With digital, any weak signal means dropped frames and silence or weird glitches. You completely lose what’s happening. Even with a powered antenna, I have frequent issues with weak signal. I could probably try to get a rooftop antenna installed, but there’s no guarantee it would be any better. It’s just easier to find other entertainment at this point.
Ditto. We went from having five channels, one snowy on a bad day, plus a bonus 6th channel when the stars aligned, to two channels at best.
The broadcasters and regulators took a basic fact about digital signals “We can get a better quality signal with less transmission power” and saw it as a challenge to set up their digital transmitters with the most conservative estimate of minimum power required. I haven’t studied well enough for my amateur radio exam to know if I’m comparing apples to oranges, but I’m still shocked to see descriptions of transmitter power go from 100kW in one case to below 20kW.
I hear that. We have an attic yagi aimed directly at Seattle from 10 miles away, and we still get the occasional dropout even on our strongest signals.
Still when it works, it works really well. We watch Nature and Nova on Sundays, and the wildlife footage looks incredible.
The switch to UHF is also a factor. Compared to VHF, UHF is much more susceptible to blockage by things like leaves. I live in a forest, and 70cm is basically useless while 2m is unaffected and I can work the nation on 6m.
I’m 26+ miles away from the broadcast antennas as the crow flies and I get great reception from an approx $100 antenna mounted in my attic. Some HOAs don’t allow antennas and people might be surprised to learn how good your reception can be from an attic.
Ads, ads everywhere.
Besides there, there is also a 4k OTA standard, ATSC 3.0. Most TVs don’t support it yet, but some do. Worth googling before you buy. You can also get something like an silcondust 4k standalone tuner and plug that into your home network instead. You then load its app to watch over the air TV in 4k.
If you do buy the silicondust tuner, you can go further and get a DVR going. Plenty of free projects that will help you setup and record TV like jellyfin, and many of them will auto-skip the ads too with an application called comskip.
No OTA broadcasts in the US utilize 4k yet. ATSC 3.0 is being utilized some, but not exclusively, but no one is broadcasting 4k unfortunately
I don’t care about cable TV. In Hungary nearly all news broadcasts over here are just propaganda machines and spitting out literal garbage content. Also the ads.
UbO + Internet + torrent goes br
23 year old here btw
See this is what I’m talking about. Cable is not the same as over the air. I’m not sure how your cable works in Hungary content/pricing-wise, but I do find it funny that a lot of younger people in this thread are lumping the two together.
Cable isn’t the same as OTA but from a viewer standpoint they’re both live TV. Live TV in the US is basically unwatchable unless you really like sports or 24/7 news commentary (even then live news is usually also available through phone apps) and don’t mind being interrupted by ads every 2 minutes.
Anything else is better watched with torrents/piracy streaming sites. They don’t stop the show to serve some random combination of medicine, home insurance, and car ads.
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
There being Hungary?
Yep.
What about sports tho?
The ads on over the air programming are so so terrible. And even with a great antenna the many channels aren’t exactly the highest quality content even if they didn’t have ads.
YouTube has taken the place of over the air TV and for good reason.
It has taken the place in people’s behaviour but it has not taken the place functionally. No doubt, you use technology to filter ads out of YouTube viewing, and one could do the same with OTA broadcasts.
Also attempts to make the ads more invasive (louder in this case) are literally legally limited by the federal government.
Yes.
https://fmhy.net/videopiracyguide#live-tv-sports
Although I don’t tune in to live sports, I just share resources to find free livestreams/media with others :P
IPTV is also pretty great
What’s the password for the “UHF” wifi?
Password is WeirdAl.
We’ve got it all on UHF!
SPATULA CITY!
why would I use that when I have a *arr setup?
Nice try, Channel Master.
You can also just pirate
A $10 antenna to watch NFL games is so much more convenient and better quality than any of the pirated streaming options. Broadcast TV trumps Pirating for live shit 100%. Pirate everything else.
Yeah but then you have to watch football. Why go through the suffering? Lol
"Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!"
You can also watch Pluto TV. No sign in or fee. Lots of 24:7 dedicated channels for shows like Midsommer Murders, MST3K, Americas Test Kitchen, etc as well as variety genre channels
Are you my wife? Since we discovered Pluto, our TVs are constantly flipping between America’s Test Kitchen, MST3K, Antiques Roadshow and Jersey Shore if we’re feeling especially rowdy.
There’s also a Mr Rodger’s Neighborhood channel that our we leave running in the mornings for kid and dogs when we leave hah.
(Assuming you mean DVB-T). In some place OTA is just the standard. Where I’m from cable TV is simply unheard of and all terrestrial digital channels are free with varying degree of ads.
Another great example of how things work so different in different parts of the world
So you only pay for the extraterrestrial channels?
You pay a small tax for public channels (that should have no ads) and you pay for satellite tv
So it doesn’t matter if they are human or alien?
Linear TV over an antenna? Well that’s only technically free. You’d need to buy a receiving device - that costs money. You need to watch ads - that costs time.
Well considering many paid tiers of streaming services also serve ads, I consider it free-er than that.
Also, most of the hardware is already inside your TV. You just need a $20 antenna.
I have no TV. I watch all my movies and series via a big PC screen which has no TV functionality.
Ah. Well if your PC is static, a USB tuner isn’t too much. Plus then you have a built-in DVR.
Living in tornado alley, having a TV antenna and a weather radio is almost a requirement. If the Internet gets knocked out, OTA still works. Also, my Internet is shit so I wouldn’t rely on it if a tornado is bearing down on my location, but I do also love watching 9½ hours of nonstop tornado coverage when nasty storms might come my way.
Outside of that, I know to tune in at about :15 past the hour during newscasts to catch the weather report, which gets uploaded to their website later anyway. If the football game is on, I might catch that if I care to watch. I don’t really watch OTA otherwise.
But I’m 32 lol
Vaguely aware that’s a thing you can do, but I have no reason to use it as I don’t really watch anything on regular TV anyway
