Just need to vent...

Re TV:

I have an antenna atop the house. Pulls in local broadcast stations....the ABC, NBC of the world. Have an LG TV, which includes free access to hundreds of LG channels, which includes movies, tv series of the past and present (google LG channels).

Also sprung $20 USD for ROKU, which plugs into the TV and gives access to hundreds more. The Roku fee is one time only.

Keeps me happy enough. Beats the seven or so broadcast channels I grew up with in the 1960s in Los Angeles.

Bought an LG 43" flatscreen for a $204 at Target two years ago. Also beats the Sears BLACK\WHITE TV 15" screen I grew up with...with built-in rabbit ears, of course. But I miss going to the local drug store to buy replacement tubes for the TV.

 

I also have an antenna atop of the house, and a pretty good one at that: Advantage 60 Outdoor Digital Antenna | Channel Master
But what I won't have are local broadcast stations.

My computer is hooked up to my TV, so it's kind of like a Roku (and no, I don't have a "smart" TV). But just having a computer hooked to a TV doesn't get me the Super Bowl for free (or any major sports for free, at least not legally).

I did try to sign up for the Peacock streaming service once to watch the Super Bowl. But it kept cutting out and I missed the half time show and last half of the game.

 

have not seen the Rose Bowl for years...

 

I saw the last Rose Bowl, right on TV.

So I guess no more bowls for me, Super Bowls, Rose Bowls, bean dip bowls, etc. Unless I pay for cable or satellite or some sort of subscription service.

 

Outside antennas, one optimized for uhf (most hd channels with full power) and one for vhf channels (hd with reduced power).



Uses a passive Diplexer (special coax combiner with frequency filters to avoid duplicate out of phase signals) to feed signal down. The uhf antenna is powered through the coax. This rig was less than $150 many years ago and still picks up over 20 channels from Austin and San Antonio including eight commercial free PBS primary and secondary subchannels (4 each from each market). The other major networks also have subchannels.

All this is cabled into a Tablo four tuner dvr purchased about 8 years ago with no recurring costs. The dvr function then connects to ethernet back to my wifi router where it is available on all smart TVs with a Tablo app or addon box's like Apple TV.

Live TV Guide through Tablo Antenna DVR



Recent Recordings (yellow check means commercial skip was successful)


I do have free on demand movies using Kanopy app (supplied by local library) and free on demand PBS productions through their app.

I pay for Amazon Prime shipping which comes with Amazon Prime movies, some commercial free, some with front end commercials.

 

I wonder how to sell my outdoor TV antenna and how much I'd get for it now that it's going to be useless here.

It works extremely well, I get all the channels in my area and even pick up a few that I'm not supposed to get without even needing to turn it. (Which are also going to be discontinued. So don't go telling me that my TV antenna will be useful for anything in the future.)

 

I have tried Sling for "cable" tv over the internet. It's decent and allows you to do a little mix and match of the channels you pay for. You get a limited cloud dvr function.

I have also tried Youtube tv which is very good especially in terms of reliability and unlimited dvr (cloud based). You largely buy it all with limited options.

Sling has a free version with lots of second tier commercial based channels. 10 hours dvr.

 

Sadly, the same entity that is decommissioning the TV repeaters is also going to decommission the FM radio repeaters. There is at least one local station that wouldn't be affected, but I think NPR and a few others are going to be gone. I don't know what CBC is.

There is one AM station from the next county over that comes in during the day. More AM stations come in at night.

I've been trying some streaming from off the internet for the past few days, and I do believe we've come to the conclusion that our internet service isn't fast enough. So we'd have to go from $30 per month to at least $72 per month just for the internet to be hopefully fast enough. That's looking at all the internet options in our area. And on top of that some internet TV services require a subscription, especially if I want to watch the Super Bowl. So I'm wondering now what the difference would be between doing that and going with satellite TV.

But in the end, I don't think I'll do anything about it. In reality, we don't watch much TV, and with the price of things I'm not wanting to spend money on satellite, or better internet, or subscriptions or the like. If I ever have enough money to buy a house, then I'll think about it. But I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

 

I'm -- 25 -- well, um, OK, 34.

We grew up with a 19-inch, no remote control CRT TV with a rooftop antenna. We received five channels.

We lived on the edge of town. One direction was fast food, movies, stores and school. Other direction was trails, ponds, a stream, snake dens and turkeys, coyotes, bears and bobcats. We did not watch much TV. I do not think we missed out. AND we seldom complained of being bored as mom and/or dad would find something for us to do....mom usually slapped us with boring tasks.

Often, dad would take us into the woods and teach us about newts and owls or how to load and fire a rifle.
kris

 

The theme of this thread is antithetical to discussing joys of owl study (play). Newts (for me) are 'just OK' primitive tetrapods that turned their low expectations into a survival superpower.

Newts generally make toxins in skin and at least one species makes tetrodotoxin. So, pufferfish with legs

We have yet to complain (enough) here about the fabulous range of toxins/poisons/venoms that animals use against others.

 

I can count on one hand the people I've known to use the word 'fabulous' when complaining.

And have fingers to spare.

 

Many rural Oregon children get the gun and Rough-skinned newt talk. Stop, don't touch...

One little guy is in big trouble, the Crater Lake subspecies of the Rough-skinned newt.

 

Wanna come to Australia, if it isn't trying to kill you, it will probably kill you if you eat it or even touch it ..... but enough about the people here, the wild life is even worse

We lost VHF and UHF many moons ago, it's all digital and the signal is flat plain ..... but depending on where you are, that plain is either horizontal or vertical. But we do have sort of free to air satellite, but you have to buy a box and dish antenna, do an astronomers degree to figure out just where the satellite you are looking for is, get your card registered and if you don't use it for a mths so, you have to go through the whole registration B/S again

When travelling, the internet is not a sure thing, trees are your enemy, and if the dish is on the roof and the wind is howling, the movement of the motorhome will cause hit and miss with satellites and internet base stations .....

But ..... Aussies being the inventive type, have mastered using a collapsible tuna pole (10 to 15 mtrs) with a Yagi antenna and find an open WiFi network within the range of the Yagi antenna you have, and watch all you want for free company ones at the best, no one really monitors how much is being used, or they have unlimited accounts and just don't care ....

At the moment, it's all through our mobile phones, the phone call part is free and we pool our data between our two mobile accounts and never use all we have each mth anyway .... so, if we can find a tower with Optus on it with the Yagi if we are outside the normal coverage area, we watch what ever we want on the 'puters or phone

T1 Terry

 

Yagis are highly directional.
Make sure you include a rotator.

For a 2.5gHz signal I would expect a 50' Yagi to be good for less than 100km - AT BEST - which in the NWT is probably about the distance of a leisurely drive in the country.
I do not claim to know whether you were sold out by the government like we were with ATSC X.X but TV signals always faced a more 'uphill battle' down under because Australia and the continental US are about the same size - but you only have roughly the same population as our California - and it's likewise distributed.
Meaning you're mostly 'city dwellers' that live near the sea.

Even with analogue broadcasting that still leaves vast swathes of your nation/continent....underserved.

Starlink or SpaceSail or Kuiper......

 

We had a good fibre network started by the labour govt called the NBN, National Broadband Network, a change of govt resulted in this system being virtually destroyed by shifting money from the public sector to the private sector to buy worthless assets, like the copper cable telephone network from Telstra for crazy money, but it was basically worthless because the cabling was so old it all needed to be replaced.
So, it down graded from fibre to the home to fibre to the node, and copper to the home from there, a hopelessly slow and congested system. With no money left in the kitty when the govt changed back, it is just a long running joke now .... as slow as the NBN .....

These Telcos invested the money they got into the digital wireless network, and it has great coverage .... as long as you can switch between networks to make the most of which network works in a particular area while the other network suffers serious blackspot or over subscribed towers ....

The shut down the analog network was shut down in 1999 in the cities and eventually by the end of 2000 it was shut down completely in the country areas as well. The signal might have been poor, but you could still get a connect over a long distance, but it took up a lot of band width and was later referred to as 1G.
This was replaced by the digital 2G, then 3G and 2G was phased out, Then 4G and 3G has recently been completely shut down now ...... so a new phone required each time with a smaller range.
There is 5G in the major cities, but it requires towers every city block, remarkably fast, but limited in range ..... Australia is simply too big to operate a 5G network outside the capitols and bigger cities, so a good network like 2G and 3G were sacrificed for this great city centric high speed wireless digital platform .....

There are plenty of satellite interweb providers, but it requires stopping and setting up the satellite, not worth the hassle as far as we are concerned, so if we are going to be somewhere for at least a few days, I set up the Yagi and rotate it till I get the most bars on the phone and lock it there, 10 mins and we are back on the air .....

T1 Terry

 

One thing about 'wireless networks', starlink etc. - they are exciting and the new wave but.....

it wasn't too long ago that the entire southeastern and midwestern US 911 systems, emergency communications and normal communications were rendered useless by a monkeyshine software update that went wrong.

Our old fashioned - waste of money-stupid-hard wired land line was unaffected.

 

When my family moved to Colorado Springs there was no tv available. No one watched tv there was none. No tv, no cell phone, no computer. People will change going forward into what no one knows.

 

Even on the low bands (20 m - 160 m full wave antenna), digital signals can be transmitted / received - and they work VERY long distances. But like uhf/vhf/microwave - there can always be issues of reliability.