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 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.
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
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.
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?
(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
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!"
Nice try, Channel Master.
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.
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
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.
If you have a TV, you likely already have the receiving device. Antenna can cost, or you can play around with wire length and orientation.
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
People would be talking about it if there was anything actually worth watching on OTA channels
Have you looked? A bunch of the new shows on Hulu are broadcast. Lots of reality TV. PBS rules.
Also a bunch of movies. Especially shitty Christmas movies around the holidays which are a personal favorite.
