Are you watching free OTA digital TV

[W2R]

Yeah, but I can watch the original Star Trek for FREEE via OTA. I don't care what episode, I'm not that picky. I love the experience of discovering that it is on, when it is on - - wouldn't rob myself of that joy, either. I dunno; like I said, I'm weird.

They show Star Trek late at night on Decades (which is a multiplex digital channel of CBS). Just save it on your subscription-free DVR and voila! Free Star Trek.

Sorry that you can only get Star Trek late at night! It's on during Prime Time here, so I guess I'm very lucky that I live in a good location for TV reception OTA.

I don't need or want to spend a bunch of $$$$$ on a DVR, or on streaming video, or anything at all whatsoever in order to happily watch Star Trek for FREEEEEE!!! I guess nobody but me quite "gets it" about not wanting to substitute paying for something else instead of paying for cable. That's OK, I'm weird, I know it.

 

[easysurfer]

Yeah, but I can watch the original Star Trek for FREEE via OTA. I don't care what episode, I'm not that picky. I love the experience of discovering that it is on, when it is on - - wouldn't rob myself of that joy, either. I dunno; like I said, I'm weird.

I do see what you say about the joy just watching what is on.

As I mentioned in another post, sometimes I prefer to just listen to baseball on the radio. Well, at least not during the playoffs .

 

[W2R]

I do see what you say about the joy just watching what is on.

As I mentioned in another post, sometimes I prefer to just listen to baseball on the radio. Well, at least not during the playoffs .

My grampa used to love listening to baseball on the radio, when he was alive. He was totally blind, but the announcers did such a good job that he could visualize the game pretty easily.

 

[MichaelB]

"Naked OTA" has to be one of the best values available, especially for people living in urban areas with loads of signals.

 

[Chuckanut]

And something they may not be aware of, and might be surprised at - the 'free' OTA provides a higher quality signal than cable! The cable providers do a lot of compression to get those 500 channels with nothing on.

With OTA, each station has enough bandwidth for for a very high quality 1080i signal.

-ERD50

Thanks for making a good point. I have had people come over who subscribe to cable, and they remark that my TV's picture just looks a 'little better'.

 

[Chuckanut]

Do you have to pay a subscription to use the Tivo OTA recorder ?

The normal deal is to pay $15 a month for the guide service. The guide is what let's you see what is on TV, easily program recordings, etc. You don't have to have the guide, you can have a listing of TV shows from another source, and program recordings using the old date-time method. The guide also works to show if any shows you search for are on Netflix/Amazon/etc.

However, I bought my Tivo when they offered a deal - $50 for the Tivo and $250 for lifetime guide service (the Tivo's life, not mine). Considering that the only two likely points of failure are the disk drive and the power supply, and both are easily replaceable, that is not a bad deal. I break even in 17 months. But I would still pay the $15 a month if I had to rather than the cable bills my neighbors have to pay.

 

[Chuckanut]

FWIW, I also have a ChromeCast device hooked up to my TV. When I find something interesting to watch over the Internet I can 'cast' it to my TV using the Chrome browser and the ChromeCast device. Very nice.

The Spanish stations do show many sports program OTA. During the World Cup I would put on the Spanish station broadcast, mute the TV and then play the radio coverage. There was about a 1 minute difference so at times it was a bit confusing, but it worked!

 

[Car-Guy]

I'm pretty far from away from civilization so picking up OTA TV is a challenge. I've tried several different antennas and"sometimes" I can pickup 3 OTA channels but usually only one or two. Luckily the one channel I can pickup regularly is the Retro Channel which I'll keep on in my shop.

 

[MoneyCat]

Sorry that you can only get Star Trek late at night! It's on during Prime Time here, so I guess I'm very lucky that I live in a good location for TV reception OTA.

I don't need or want to spend a bunch of $$$$$ on a DVR, or on streaming video, or anything at all whatsoever in order to happily watch Star Trek for FREEEEEE!!! I guess nobody but me quite "gets it" about not wanting to substitute paying for something else instead of paying for cable. That's OK, I'm weird, I know it.

Why wouldn't you want a DVR? After you pay the purchase price, it's absolutely free and now you can record and watch your shows whenever you want and skip all the commercials (and skipping commercials does actually affect spending habits. My spending dropped by several hundred dollars a month once I eliminated advertising from most of my life.)


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[MoneyCat]

I'm pretty far from away from civilization so picking up OTA TV is a challenge. I've tried several different antennas and"sometimes" I can pickup 3 OTA channels but usually only one or two. Luckily the one channel I can pickup regularly is the Retro Channel which I'll keep on in my shop.

You could try Hulu instead since you are having trouble getting an OTA signal. Typically, it costs (I think) $8/mo and you can watch new episodes of Fox, NBC, ABC, CW, and many cable channels the day after they air. If you are a member of Bing Rewards, you can get a free month of Hulu for every 680 points you earn for using Bing as your search engine instead of Google. (Membership in Bing Rewards is free.)


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[misshathaway]

I live in MA within 5 miles of Boston. I haven't had cable TV for at least 10 years. I get more than 25 channels with good reception using just a Radio Shack indoor antenna. I had a Mohu Leaf but for some reason it needed constant repositioning. The rabbit ears work better.

I have the rabbit ears hooked up to a HDHomeRun digital tuner, and use EyeTV software on the Mac to record or watch from the HDHomeRun. The Mac has a second monitor that can be turned to an easy chair for viewing or turned toward the computer for normal computer work.

EyeTV works with the free TitanTV listing service so that when you select something to record, it enters the data directly in to the EyeTV software. I just go through the week's TV listings and pick out what I want to record.

I have Netflix but am really only interested in watching recent movies. Tons of stuff in both of my queues but very little that is any better than what I can record OTA. If Netflix gets any more expensive I will drop it and do RedBox, which I can walk to.

 

[Dawg52]

If you have the will power to not add on stuff, then OTA if you have good reception is the way to go to save. Otherwise, before long, add a bit here, a bit there before long, the price ends up the same or more if you didn't cut the cord.
.

If saving money was the only motivator in my happiness, then I would drop my golf club membership, sell my vacation condo, never travel anywhere and just sit on my back porch and watch the birds fly by. But enjoy doing those things along with watching sports channels that I can't get via OTA. Vue gives me those channels at a reduced price. So I'm happy.

 

[MoneyCat]

If saving money was the only motivator in my happiness, then I would drop my golf club membership, sell my vacation condo, never travel anywhere and just sit on my back porch and watch the birds fly by. But enjoy doing those things along with watching sports channels that I can't get via OTA. Vue gives me those channels at a reduced price. So I'm happy.

Everyone has different priorities, but I've found that cutting back from 200 channels of cable TV to 60 channels of OTA and Netflix not only saved me a lot of money, but it also freed up a lot of my time to do more constructive stuff. Now I PLAY sports for five days a week and watch sports only on weekends for free OTA. My health has improved tremendously and I don't really miss sitting around watching midweek games anymore.


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[Jack_Pine]

If saving money was the only motivator in my happiness, then I would drop my golf club membership, sell my vacation condo, never travel anywhere and just sit on my back porch and watch the birds fly by. But enjoy doing those things along with watching sports channels that I can't get via OTA. Vue gives me those channels at a reduced price. So I'm happy.

I will have to look at Vue but agree with you. Following my favorite teams makes me happy and willing to pay for it.

 

[easysurfer]

If saving money was the only motivator in my happiness, then I would drop my golf club membership, sell my vacation condo, never travel anywhere and just sit on my back porch and watch the birds fly by. But enjoy doing those things along with watching sports channels that I can't get via OTA. Vue gives me those channels at a reduced price. So I'm happy.

+1. Like Moneycat said too about everyone having priorities.

One person's splurge is another's happiness.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

+1. Like Moneycat said too about everyone having priorities.

One person's splurge is another's happiness.

Quite true.

I am pretty happy that I am not a big sports fan. On occasion I will watch a playoff game or something and even go to a baseball game (cheap seats!) a couple of times a year, but that's about it. I think a lot of the reason cable is so expensive is because of the hard core sports fans and as I understand it, the biggest reason why we can't have ala carte pricing for cable TV.

 

[easysurfer]

Yeah, but I can watch the original Star Trek for FREEE via OTA. I don't care what episode, I'm not that picky. I love the experience of discovering that it is on, when it is on - - wouldn't rob myself of that joy, either. I dunno; like I said, I'm weird.

One advantage of watching streamed over OTA is watching some programs that aren't over OTA. For example, at this moment I'm watching the coverage of the Muhammad Ali funeral procession, which is not one regular, OTA TV.

 

[hesperus]

Yes, have been watching OTA TV for at least five years now. After a bad experience with DirecTV following a move and them forcing me to pay hundreds in 'fees', I swore I'd never go back to them again. I've kept my word, and have watched gleefully as they continue to lose subscribers. No they're not bankrupt yet, but their antiquated business model is getting hammered by the rise of online TV

So, currently we have OTA, netflix, and slingTV

 

[W2R]

When the price of Netflix starts going up rapidly (which I am convinced that it will at some point), I think the result may be a lot of misery and upset people on the forum.

Not for me, though. I'll just happily continue enjoying free digital TV and the multitude of other free (non-TV) forms of entertainment that I have available to me.

Life is a bowl of cherries.

 

[Dawg52]

Here's another service coming soon. Similar to Sling and VUE. Nice to have some options if one does not want to go with OTA channels only.

SFN TV: A New Live TV Streaming Service is Coming & It Could Be One of the Best… Starting at $5 Per Month | Cord Cutters News

 

[easysurfer]

Here's another service coming soon. Similar to Sling and VUE. Nice to have some options if one does not want to go with OTA channels only.

SFN TV: A New Live TV Streaming Service is Coming & It Could Be One of the Best… Starting at $5 Per Month | Cord Cutters News

Competition is a good thing. The more the merrier. Not sure about the other options, but when I used Sling last fall, was happy that I could quit anytime, as I did when baseball season for me officially ended and I could easily go back to OTA only (not including Amazon Prime).

 

[Sunset]

When the price of Netflix starts going up rapidly (which I am convinced that it will at some point), I think the result may be a lot of misery and upset people on the forum.

Not for me, though. I'll just happily continue enjoying free digital TV and the multitude of other free (non-TV) forms of entertainment that I have available to me. ....

Not for me either, as I have had netflix for years and have watched most of what I want to watch when I want to watch it for only $8/mo.

So when they jack up the price, I can stop it, as I have experience doing that same thing with cable, and I will have watched what I wanted.