Television

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I got rid of my TV and now I watch a few things on Netflix instead. Net savings: about $50. Am I the only one without a TV?

I have a TV set but no cable, no Netflix account, etc. Everything I watch, I just buy on DVD or Blu-ray.

I also have an antenna, but haven't used it since I bought it a few years ago.

I also get a ton of stuff off the net, like YouTube shows and public domain movies that I can download for free and put on a memory stick and watch on my TV via PS3.

As I don't like most TV shows, movies, music etc, I didn't have a TV. However, when TV's were on special at Dick Smith's a few years ago, I thought I might as well get one while it's cheap just in case. I still have it but I turned it on only once when I tested it.

I use a digital antenna (retail: $22 http://www.amazon.com/RCA-ANT1450BF-Mul ... B001GE6T9A ). The one-time expense has given me HD-quality for about 30 channels (local broadcasters and their national affiliates (like AntennaTV and MeTV). I get ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, HSN, ION, NBC, PBS, QUBO, QVC, SHOP, all their various digital channels, and at least one digital radio station. With more than 100 Blu-Ray and DVD disks, I get more TV programming than I actually need or want.

Digital antennas work in most populated areas. Best part: no cable or dish fees. It is all free.

Archive.org has a lot of them, and YouTube is filled with them. Anything that's in the public domain has no copyright and can be legally distributed anywhere, so they're not hard to find. You can do a Google search for a list of public domain movies, or look for public domain movie channels on YouTube. Archive.org will usually just have an MP4 file for you to download, but with YouTube, you'll need to download and install some kind of YouTube downloader to your browser, which will add a Download button below the YouTube viewing window that lets you download the file in MP4.



A lot of modern HDTVs have USB ports, including mine, but I've never been able to play video files off a memory stick that way, so I just use my PS3. It has USB ports and can play MP4 video files that are stored on the stick, or you can copy them to the PS3 hard drive and play them from there.

Of course, you don't need to play them on your TV; you can watch this stuff in a computer browser, on an iPhone or iPad, etc. But I prefer to watch movies and TV shows on my HDTV, so I use the PS3's ability to do that.

^^ @Jory: Oh, Boy----I "copied and pasted" that, to keep.....

A THOUSAND thankyous!!

If you don't want to buy a PS3 just to watch a bunch of old public domain movies on your TV, I can highly recommend Mill Creek's DVD sets. They basically just gather together a bunch of these old public domain movies and package them by genre in sets with 50 movies for about $10 to $15.

There's no catch, other than the cheap packaging which just stacks 12 discs in paper sleeves inside the box. I have lots of them and love them; even though I can download these movies and watch them off the hard drive, it's nice having them on disc in a set that I can put on my shelf. They also license some newer stuff, including TV shows (That 70's Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun, you name it) that sell in complete series sets for $15 to $30.

I put some sample images below so you can have an idea of what they sell, but there's a lot more, including Blu-rays. You can go to their website or search Amazon for Mill Creek DVD and you'll find just about everything.

Of course you're going to get a lot of crap mixed in with the gems, and the picture quality isn't going to be any better than the versions you can download online, but $10 is a steal for the good stuff you get. The horror set, for instance, comes with Nosferatu, Night of the Living Dead, The House on Haunted Hill, The Little Shop of Horrors, Metropolis, Carnival of Souls, The Phantom of the Opera, Dementia 13, White Zombie, and The Last Man on Earth, and those alone are worth ten bucks. Even the cheesy crap like The Beast of Yucca Flats, Indestructible Man, and Attack of the Giant Leeches are fun in their own way, terrible though they are.

For approximately the first twelve years of my life, we had this ancient CRT TV. It wasn't hooked up to cable or anything, so we only watched movies on it occasionally.

I think that I'm a better person due to growing up without network television.

When I lived alone in Dalton I didn't have any cable or antenna, just some movies. Once I get my own place I don't plan to have cable.

I don't have TV anymore. They screwed the signal up when they changed to digital and my people here at home didn't want to pay extra just to re-get the television we used to have. I'm hardly worse off for it though, even if I do sometimes wonder what's playing these days. The thing is, TV in New Zealand just wasn't good. They always had the most boring lineups of uninspired garbage every freaking day, and there's no way I'd pay for that. I've got a good old internet to keep me going!

I don't have a tv either.
I only watch some youtube documentaries while falling asleep.

Sometimes when things are difficult I go into TV-coma mode and I was a little worried about that when I got rid of the TV. But I'm doing just fine - Netflix is terrific. I'm in Canada and it took a few years for them to get something watchable up here. The thing is, I don't have garbage. Just my favourite shows. What a brave new world. Last night I watched Chinatown and Last Tango in Halifax (PBS?). Movies were impossible for me, but on a 4" screen I can watch them just fine.

I do have a TV at home, however I mainly get my entertainment fix through Netflix and Viewster as most shows on right now are reruns or just very poor quality ( what is it with having 100+ TV channels and having nothing good to watch!).