How to you watch TV?

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I have Charter digital cable here in south central Washington. It's OK, but could be a lot better with customer service. Thank god they got rid of those horrible rapping commercials a few months ago. I almost wanted to yank Charter and go with Dish.

Had there been a time machine that could go back to circa 1985-1995, I would have chose "C-Band". Too bad I never experienced the BUDs, before everything went digital. Could have experienced wild feeds galore, superstations, tons of pay per view programming, even the network stations from Denver (which were all uplinked onto satellite for years).
I'll still watch old movies/TV programming on the dozens of VHS tapes I still own. Many factory retail tapes, many home-recorded from the 1980s-2000s.
Sometimes DVDs as well.
Don't plan to ever get Netflix.

I live in the Denver area and remember the days when our TV affiliates were criticised for charging exhorborant rates for commerical time because their stations were being seen in umpteen other states over the "big bird".

Around 1995 I bought someone's C-Band system cheap and the seller moved it to my yard as part of the deal. Before I had internet, I remember being up half the nite playing with the receiver to see what I could pick up. Back then virtually every Canadian channel was still unscrambled. In addition there were NTSC-converted feeds from other far away countries like England and Australia that I could pick up news and sporting events on without deciphering. Sadly this place I was living at was sold at the end of 1997 and when I was forced to move out I did not have the resources to haul the six foot dish with me. I ended up signing with Dish Network in 1998 and they gave me the affiliates of BOTH markets they were carrying in my time zone then, Denver and Salt Lake City. Nowdays out-of-market channels are strictly forbidden.

The last time I checked, some Mountain time zone local channels from Wyoming and New Mexico are still available unscrambled for anyone who has hung on to one of the big dishes.

KTWO 2 Casper (ABC) was uplinked, free-to-air until around '09 when Equity Broadcasting folded (they owned a bunch of low power and low-budget small town stations, including KTWO).
WSEE Erie (CBS) was also uplinked. But it wasn't the main Erie ch 35 feed. It was a special feed for the Caribbean - all local ads were replaced with PSAs/direct-response, all newscasts were replaced with paid programs, and they had "One Caribbean Weather", which included Joey Stevens and his sidekick, Bob the Parrot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5fNkpL6uA

It's mostly network feeds now if you want the big dishes (all digital obviously). Some station have remote feeds for news, or live sports, but you won't see a local station with all the network/syndicated programming that often. Reason? Revenue. If KCNC (CBS 4 Denver, for example) was uplinked in the clear, people in the rural Midwest would view the commercials, therefore losing viewership and advertising dollars.

Canada was practically all in the clear from what I have read. If you went through the Anik satellite, you probably remember CBC's North feed. It was a national feed directed for northern Canada (in other words, the tundra). News was in English and in Inuktitat languages.

According to a 2015 FreeSat site, these stations are still supposed to be "in the clear", including three from my time zone. I assume Puerto Rico would be Eastern...


99.0°W Galaxy 16 C
3736 H 3776 WAPA Puerto Rico 33 36 33
3775 H 3256 KCWY NBC Casper/Cheyenne 4130 4131 4130
3791 H 3256 KCHF Weather Santa Fe/Albuquerque 4130 4131 4130
3811 H 3255 Living Faith TV 4130 4131 4130
3820 V 26000 GDMX 6/2 4:2:2 512 640 128
GDMX 6/3 4:2:2 513 641 129
GDMX 6/4 4:2:2 514 642 130
GDMX 6/5 4:2:2 515 643 131
GDMX 6/6 4:2:2 516 644 133
3844 H 12298 WVXF CBS Virgin Islands 257 258 257
WSJP CW Puerto Rico 513 514 513
WPRU ABC Puerto Rico 769 770 769
WVGN NBC Virgin Islands 1025 1026 1025
WSJX FOX Puerto Rico 1281 1282 1281
3904 H 3124 TSMA. 3 MEXICO 308 256 8190
3919 H 9375 Tandberg Service2 308 256 8190
3927 H 3124 TELEPUERTO VERACRUZ 308 256 8190
3931 H 3124 TSMA. 3 MEXICO 308 256 8190
4000 H 26400 WHT - 1 100 101 8188
LESEA Network 200 201 8189
KWHD WHT Castle Rock/Denver - 2 300 301 8190
4102 V 29126 ABC SD NET-6 4:2:2 512 650 512
ABC SD NET-9 4:2:2 513 660 513
ABC SD NET-5 4:2:2 514 670 514

Yeah, the Puerto Rico affiliates are Eastern time zone.
WVXF used to be CBS, but it's now cable-only in the US Virgin Islands. They now air "This TV" (an over the air network with mostly movies).

Most of the network affiliates are fed via fiber link, so no C-Band/Ku-Band connection is needed.

(UK viewer)

I have Freeview downstairs (digital TV via conventional aerial), Sky Freesat upstairs (basic digital TV via satellite dish). The dish service has deteriorated alarmingly in recent years (unviewable from about May-October due to reception issues). I'll be converting to Freeview upstairs soon - it's an excellent service.

Sometimes I think of having Netflix again. I do have a huge "DVR library".

I don't watch TV, but I buy DVDs from time to time, and I watch stuff on YouTube and LiveLeak.

I watch most of it by paying for Comcast but I do pirate some canceled shows & a couple current 1s by using uTorrent

I was gonna answer "with the sound muted or turned way down" but as it turns out that wasn't the question. So I answer Netflix.

Curled up on my end of the couch, with my husband at his end, and usually a dog in between.

"Other" - Everything is on Youtube.

I can also watch my local newscasts (http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca) and BBC World (via Streema).

I'm a criminal, a peg-legged parrot wielding pirate I download almost everything using torrents.