[QUOTE=johnpost;14808759
www.tvfool.com
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A good link. I now know that WESH has a broadcast power of only 55kw, while the other commercial stations are from 600 to 1000 kw.
Q. Why do some people not own a Tv?
A. So they can tell everyone that they don’t own one.
I’m not yet willing to give up live sports and watch Tv on a laptop.
I actually have cable, but only because it comes with my HOA dues, and I’m not going to let them charge me without providing the service. I haven’t looked at it since checking to make sure it worked when they hooked it up a few months ago, though. It’s mostly there in case I have guests who want to watch something.
I have media PCs hooked up to my TVs instead, so I can watch stuff (streaming, stored on my file server, or just browsing the net) on a big screen if I feel like it. Handy for club meetings and gaming sessions, too, since I can just pull up documents and such on a screen where everyone can see them at once.
I wasn’t being serious, in case that was in question.
Basic cable used to be pretty cheap in the states. I remember paying $16/mo. back in the 90s. The way you guys are talking maybe that changed. It’s AU$70/mo. for the cheapest FOXTEL package I found via Google right away, which jibes with what I’ve heard-- and it’s AU$92 for the sports package.
Digital Free to Air in my area has maybe 20 channels, which is decent. I believe the show selection is comparable to what I might get in the US, although not every US show-- probably not even half-- make it. There’s a sports channel, called One, if I recall, but it’s pretty weak compared to cable. SBS will have the World Cup and the Ashes, I guess, and maybe the Superbowl.
Internet TV is better. We hooked our Bravia up to the modem and there’s a ton of kid’s shows on the ABC station. No commercials, not even the annoying “tune in at 4:15 for Thomas the Tank Engine!” ones. ABC is also good for the odd doco, and so is SBS, although the comedies are, IMO, terrible. Good foreign dramas like Breaking Bad don’t seem to make it to internet TV for some reason, even though they’re on broadcast. There’s an internet movie channel called QuikFlix or something that’s OK. I had a look the other day and I could’ve watched Ghostbusters or A Clockwork Orange if I felt like it.
It’s good that internet TV is decent because Australia is still badly off when it comes to things like Hulu.com. And yeah, we sometimes will buy a series we want to watch, although it has been a while. The trick seems to be to wait a year or more (probably until a more recent one has been released) before buying a season. Done OK picking them up at pawn shops but it’s not a major bargain and there is the risk that the disc won’t work, even if it looks fine. Sure, there’s a 7 day return policy, but it’s not like I’m going to pick up a year’s worth of shows and watch them all right away. Plus, pawn shops must get a lot of dirtbag customers because they always act like I’m trying to put one over on them when I return something.
I’ve rambled on already, but I wanted to touch on the “I don’t have a TV” thing. I know it’s a stereotype that Dopers are prone to claim to only watch TV while stuck in a waiting room when they forgot to charge their e-reader and thus couldn’t peruse the latest issue of Utne (which conveniently allows them to cluck over the shocking idiocy of the common herd), but that’s got to be a dead horse given how much TV talk goes on in Cafe Society.