Posted on 07/13/2026 5:46:21 AM PDT by Red Badger
In less than two years, the era of free, open over-the-air TV will come to an end and be replaced by a PPV-like experience.
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[SNIP]
It feels like a golden era of free consumer media choice. But this brilliant, high-definition view comes with a ticking clock. In the corridors of the FCC, local broadcasters are vigorously pushing a plan to permanently shut down our current broadcasting standard called Advanced Television Systems Committee 1.0 (ATSC 1.0). If media conglomerates get their way, February 2028 will mark the sudden end of free, open television as we know it, instantly transforming millions of perfectly functional smart TVs and local streaming tuners into a mountain of electronic waste -- unless, of course, you pay a monthly fee.
The culprit is the impending forced migration from our reliable, foundational television standard, ATSC 1.0, to a new format known as ATSC 3.0, or NextGen TV. On its surface, the television industry markets NextGen TV as a highly progressive technological leap. Advertisements promise dazzling native 4K video, deep cinematic theater sound, and interactive, customized digital layouts. What the glitzy marketing completely omits, however, is that this entire ecosystem is wrapped inside a Trojan horse called Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off!' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'"
Even Orwell could not imagine that people, brainwashed by letist and degenerate propaganda from a talking box in their homes, would actually complain that the free degeneracy would come to an end.
Everyone in America has the privilege to turn it off, not just members of the Inner Party like O'Brien.
Try it sometime.
Half the ads I get on Youtube are them telling me if I gave them some money I’d get no ads. These days most “free” stuff is running the crack marketing model, only free until you’re hooked.
Even O’Brien admitted that it was only a temporary privilege and he would have to turn it back on after a short period of time else he would come under suspicion as well..................
Thanks! Doesn’t sound too difficult. “So easy, even a caveman can do it”. Heh. 😆
Yes, you don’t have to pay for it.......for now..............
... and many of us are watching old TV shows because new TV sucks.
Correct. No one will be controlling that...yet
I cut cable 5 years ago. I don’t need to watch any of the pure crap that’s on TV anyway.
It's not. My wife and I got to be in the studio audience just before Bob Barker retired. They have wranglers roam the waiting lines of people, doing mini-interviews. My wife so wanted to be picked, but wasn't.
If you have a DVD player hooked to your TV it will work just fine as a monitor only.
There is a problem in some places where we just don’t recieve enough of “over the airwaves” TV broadcasts, apparently due to our outlying locations.. What we DO get is pay TV with mostly reruns, Pay-extra-for, excess commercials, & other crap that is virtually useless. Except for a few reruns I will watch, I may as well scratch our TV here completely off my list. Their subscription rate is certainly no bargain for this nothingness.
Why all the complication? Use the DVD player connected directly to the TV. If you have a fairly new TV, say 15 years old or newer, it will have HDMI ports on the back as will any DVD player. It’s totally plug and play. Plug the cable to the DVD player and then to the TV. Go to inputs on the TV using your remote and set the TV to the input the cable is connected to and you’re good. No need to copy to a computer and then download to a USB drive.
I put up an antenna and got 48 channels. I’m looking forward to the football season.
Well it was never “Free”. Broadcasting was paid for by advertising, and that was paid for, the cost rolled into the price of all that stuff we buy. We paid for it, just not directly.
Cable TV big selling point when it was rolled out nationwide was “No commercials!”. That didn’t last too long. Now they get $200+ a month plus endless offensive commercials too. People pay money, a lot of money, to watch commercials.
Pretty neat trick if you think about it.
Good point. I just went totally digital over 10 years ago. I still have a big box full of DVDs in my garage but I have everything saved digitally on a couple of external hard drives. I wasn’t thinking of plugging the DVD player right into the TV. You’re right in that that would skip some steps.
I remember ON-TV, which was over the air, but the picture was scrambled, so you had to get their descrambler to watch it.
They would show pornos, and sometimes, the scrambled picture was just unscrambled enough to see “stuff”, or so I was told.
Doesn't that make Kamala the best politician of all times?
She’s right on up there with the best of them!..............
You’re lucky. I get a million ads for Blue Chew for ED and the ad where the old woman says she didn’t care about politics but she got livid when she saw how much my grandkids will have to pay. I guess I’m in the target demographic to have ED and to be old and ignorant about politics until it affects my grandkids.
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