Posted on 01/15/2019 2:40:05 PM PST by Openurmind
About one in seven American households is watching old-fashioned, over-the-air television broadcasts, an increasingly appealing choice for former cable customers who have “cut the cord” but still want to catch up with their local news and network stations.
The new data from market research firm Nielsen shows that over-the-air viewing increased to 14% of all homes last year from 9% in 2010. At the same time, the percentage of households subscribing to cable or satellite TV peaked at 88% in 2010 and has since sunk to 79%, according to surveys by the Leichtman Research Group. Catching free over-the-air broadcasts simply by adding an antenna that cost $50 or less likely appeals to many cord cutters who dropped cable TV because it was too expensive.
Yes - I have a 24” 1080p TV that I double duty as a monitor on my less used / backup desktop computer. For a cheapy, it’s not too shabby! But this configuration is getting hard to find. And, some older ones do not have enough flexibility in the settings to look good on text. :-(
That sort of “tech” explanation has been a big part of my work for quite some time. (Not so much with regard to TV / video, however.) It’s nice to know I have not completely lost it. I used to be way too wordy, myself. Possibly still sometimes am. Esp. around here. ;-)
Thanks again.
Well a show just came on over the air which I wanted to see.
It is Roswell. On the WB which I get on two different stations.
Well it started out with something in probably the first minute which let me know it was a typical lefty advertisement for hate anything conservative.
She started off with showing her passport although she was 100 miles from the border and threatening to have the ACLU “up their ass”.
I immediately turned it off.
I grew up in a place where you couldn’t get any TV at all. All we had to do was read... It was terrible.
There was spot on a backroad about 3 miles out of town on a hill where we could get TV, one channel kind of snowy. On Saturday evening Dad would load up the generator, huge antenna and pole, and a decent sized TV, and we would go set it up on the side of the road in the pickup. Just at dark the whole town of 25 people would all come up with their own chairs and we would all watch TV until it went off the air.
Those were the good days...
Well you have it down and understand it very well. Right on the money. Even old analog C band LNB’s pass through the new digital signals just fine. A carrier is a carrier. :)
What’s not to like? Free TV, better choice of programs.
Yup!
This one will definitely work:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SVNKT86/ref=emc_b_5_mob_t
I have the 2-loop version, getting around 80 channels 60 miles from Orlando. That one is same brand, 4-loop version. More better. Reviews are spectacular, as they should be.
A couple notes for over the air antennas:
1. The higher, the better. Put it outside, high up.
2. Aim is very important, the farther away you are, the more important it is. There are maps of exactly where the broadcast antennas are. Use google earth to find your house, and the cluster of broadcast antennas in the nearest big city. Use the google map, draw a line from where you will mount your antenna to the broadcast cluster. Find a landmark you can see from your antenna mount that the line runs through, use it to aim your antenna.
3. If you have a helper, use your smart tv to help optimize the signal. They have a setting somewhere that shows signal strength. Tweak your antenna left right up down to maximize signal strength.
4. Set your smart tv to autoscwn for all channels. Delete the stupid ones.
Thank you for that titantv link. That is great.
ROKU has over 3,000 ‘channels’. Google: roku popular apps
My Roku 4 cost about $90. All sorts of tv shows.
I use a tv antenna to get all sorts of stations.
Go to http://www.tvguide.com and click on What’s On at the top and add your zip code the click on Antenna and look at the tv guide for the channels available.
I have Sling tv which is cable tv plus much more. I pay $35/month.
To me, those star trek programs arent old. To me old are shows from the 1950s-60s. Those are the shows i grew up watching (in the 1970s). Im not interested in shows from the 1990s (and very few shows from the 80s). If thats what the free airwaves has to offer, still the cost of cable is well worth what i get to see there.
They actually keep getting better and adding channels.
I would agree, and as I recently watched I had forgotten Steve Austin wore so many leisure suits, they were terrible.
Now I do like watching “The Bionic Woman”, Lindsay Wagner I had a crush on and still do.
I just saw an ad for the Charge Channel and in February they are going to start showing the TV version of “La Femme Nikita”, and I can’t wait. That was a great action show.
“Cable carries local stuff then adds to it. There is no ‘better choice’ of programs.”
—
Better choice in that you don’t have to pay to watch garbage and finance crap programming. Cable’s dying, as people are switching to online sources instead.
“I watched a video on YouTube how to make a digital antenna, I picked up 14 channels, all from metal coat hangers, made another one a year later with 30 “ears” and picked up 23. It was a fun DIY project, i used the signal strength meter on the TV to find the sweet spot on my roof.”
—
I just put the ol’ rabbit ears on top of a bookshelf, need to sometimes point ‘em this way or that, but it’s not a big deal.
Yeah, in the days of regular Tv it was fun experimenting with different materials - coathangers, antenna wires and what-have-you.
I recall the days when, with an indoor antenna how the family had to pretty much stay put when they watched the telly. Somebody moves to across the living room and it could throw the reception off!
For me, a long piece of coaxial cable worked as well as an antenna.
(3 tv’s in the house, 2 with cable)
One thing is the other non network channels are not so sharp as the signal quality is reduced to fit in the available spectrum or they are just cheap.
Example is METV on channel 56.3 here in Los Angeles area. I watch some shows and it looks like I am watching a lousy youtube 360 quality show and not 1080.
“...a long piece of coaxial cable worked as well as an antenna.”
Sounds interesting. How exactly did you do that? Did you run the coax from tv input to just lying on a windowsill or up a wall? And worked as good as an antenna?
Just what I watched growing up. I did not know what color Enterprise phasers were until college.
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