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View Full Version : What do you watch on "TV"?



Mike Cutler
12-23-2015, 8:50 PM
A little background.
I made it to 56 years old before I finally bought my first "TV". I moved out of my parents house in '78,and other than watching sports in bars, really haven't watched much TV since then. Played movies on our computer screen, and that's about it.
I bought an LG 55", 4K, OLED, "TV", with a Bose SoundTouch system, and a Blu-Ray Player. Then I got a Universal remote, because having 3 remotes was a pain. I added an Apple TV gizmo and hooked up a Mac-Mini to the setup.

Now for the stupid question. What to watch, and how do you get it?
I don't have cable, except for internet access, and would prefer to just get everything via the net if possible. I added HBO, but unless I'm missing something there doesn't appear to be much on there. A lot of old movies, and I mean really old. 1960's stuff.:eek: I have no idea what the "TV" shows are, except for Game of Thrones.
I'd like to get hockey and maybe some football. When cycling season comes around I definitely want a European feed for the races.

So what are you watching, and how do you get it?
Is Satellite worth considering for sports?

Thanks for the tips.

Lee Schierer
12-23-2015, 8:56 PM
Directv offers lots of sports, but the costs add up pretty quickly for any of the satellite or cable providers.

Jim Becker
12-23-2015, 9:04 PM
I watch the local ABC news in the morning and a few minutes of GMA after that while I try to get my brain in gear. Other than that, I watch Chopped on Food Network as well as MasterChef and American Idol on Fox...oh, and Colbert/Late Show (!)...all recorded on DVR. I have the lowest FiOS TV subscription that includes Food Network. I'm a reader rather than a watcher for the most part...

William Adams
12-23-2015, 10:04 PM
Used to watch _This Old House_ — old episodes are available online. Need to find the time to watch all of _The Woodwright’s Shop_.

Rather enjoy the ability to watch only what I want, w/o commercials on Netflix. I’ve watched a couple of obscure documentaries such as _Ishi: The Last Yahi_, enjoyed _Phinneas & Ferb_, _Arrow_, _Daredevil_, the new Hawaii 5-0, and various movies.

I did build an antenna to facilitate watching OTA broadcasts after the TV stations reduced power when the digital transition was complete.

Art Mann
12-23-2015, 11:10 PM
I watch old network TV series with the commercials removed on Netflix. I sometimes stream movies on Vudu as well. I built an antenna that gets me 10 or so local stations but I usually don't watch it because of all the commercials, bad story lines and biased news reporting. I sometimes miss the do-it-yourself and nature programs but not enough to buy cable service.

John K Jordan
12-23-2015, 11:27 PM
Yikes, since you asked.... I haven't watched an hour of TV in about 9 years. With farm and animals and shop and reading and kids and piano and photography I just won't take the time. Last time I did, nothing good was on. :-)

327816

My wife does like the cooking and house shows and shows where people use unrealistic insight and technology to figure out who killed who. If I did sit down to watch it would probably be something like "How It's Made" or a nature show.

JKJ

Mike Cutler
12-23-2015, 11:38 PM
I watch the local ABC news in the morning and a few minutes of GMA after that while I try to get my brain in gear. Other than that, I watch Chopped on Food Network as well as MasterChef and American Idol on Fox...oh, and Colbert/Late Show (!)...all recorded on DVR. I have the lowest FiOS TV subscription that includes Food Network. I'm a reader rather than a watcher for the most part...

You watch Chopped also??? :cool:
We go to a nice restaurant that has the food network playing, with no sound, on the TV's behind the bar. I'll look for those

Bill Clifton
12-23-2015, 11:55 PM
We watch Fox News, we watch public TV, I watch Sunday Night Football and Kentucky basketball (not going to be a great year.) We have cable at the level to get ESPN which carries the SEC network. Yes, it is expensive.

Mark Blatter
12-24-2015, 12:02 AM
Boy it really depends on what your interest and tastes are in life. If you like dramas, I would suggest West Wing. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest TV shows ever produced. The first four seasons in particular are simply fantastic. Skip pretty much everything from the 80s with the possible exception of The Rockford Files, and that only because James Garner was such a class act.

There are many good shows today, and from the past 10 - 15 years. Food Network, as others have mentioned, has taken the art of food preparation to a new level and made it really interesting.

One of my favorite shows on today is Grimm. New outlook on the fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. I am someone unusual in that I gave up on all sports about 15 years ago. I decided life was too short to spend time on sports. I would rather spend it in the shop or with my wife/kids.

Moses Yoder
12-24-2015, 6:07 AM
The house I am renting now includes free DirectTV. I watch Notre Dame football and Pickers. There is no way I would pay for television just to watch the two things that interest me. I stream Netflix on my computer and have been watching Prison Break. Once you watch a Netflix item they recommend other shows based on what you watch, plus they advertise new movies every day and you can put them on your list to watch. My list to watch right now has various items enough to last several months.

Alan Bienlein
12-24-2015, 7:05 AM
Big bang theory, NCIS, This old house and any good movie that is on.

Curt Harms
12-24-2015, 8:12 AM
Mostly Discovery networks, A&E and PBS. Local channel(s) for football and to see who got shot/stabbed/arrested for child porn/which judge or politician got indicted or is going to jail. That's about it and Merry Christmas to all :D.

Erik Loza
12-24-2015, 9:01 AM
We don't really have TV. We use the Roku to stream movies and so forth. I personally like documentaries, true crime, etc. My wife has her favorite novela-type shows. We just got an indoor antenna so that we can receive local TV for football and news. We recently got rid of our cable service and I don't miss it. 90% channels you will never watch.

Erik

Ole Anderson
12-24-2015, 9:35 AM
Well, you are certainly getting started with a bang-up equipment list! I am hoping to move our temporary 47" flat screen to the basement as soon as the 65" OLED 4k curved screens drop a bit more in price.

We have had cable since it was first introduced around here over 30 years ago. Now it is like an addiction. An expensive one. For some reason my wife and I tend to view shows with a medical examiner or gore: Crossing Jordan on Netflix, NCIS and NCIS New Orleans, Code Black, Criminal Minds. We enjoy the current Blue Bloods, Hawaii Five-O, CSI Cyber, Madam Secretary, Castle. I enjoy most anything filmed north of the border (while my wife knits in her room) and there are currently a bunch of them including Building Alaska and Highway Through Hell (big rig recovery). I really look forward to Chicago Fire, Gold Rush, Ax Men, Deadliest Catch. Kitchen Crashers has the hottest gal on TV, Allison Victoria. We have Comcast with the X1 box and we often take advantage if its ability to record 3 or more shows at a time and then skip the commercials, which account for nearly 20 minutes of an hour show. History Channel, Science Channel, Nat Geo, DIY Network are a couple of my most used channels. Other than Tigers baseball and Michigan State football, I am not much of a sports fan.

Most of that content is available by Internet streaming, usually not streamed until days after it's original broadcast. If you find a series you really like, we have found it fun to start at the beginning on either Netflix or Amazon and see how the whole series progress. We did that with NCIS and had about 8 seasons to catch up on. Same with Flash Point, a very well written Canadian swat team series filmed in Toronto which I believe lasted only 3 seasons. If you get a chance look up and view the short lived SciFi series Firefly with the captain of the intergalactic salvage craft being the same actor now playing Richard Castle.

Jebediah Eckert
12-24-2015, 10:04 AM
Highly recommended HBO Series-

1-Game of Thrones
2-The Sopranos
3-The Wire
4-The Leftovers

The Leftovers just finished the second season, GOT's the 5th, and the other two are long since finished.

Also so I think you can stream Breaking Bad on the AMC app on the TV, another highly recommended series.

That should keep ya busy for the forseable future.

Rich Riddle
12-24-2015, 10:19 AM
Right now, Hee Haw. Also Lawrence Welk, Science of Stupid, Beverly Hillbillies, and a few woodworking shows.

Izzy Camire
12-24-2015, 12:31 PM
I watch a lot of old western TV shows like:

Gunsmoke
Laramie
Virginian (my favorite)
Death Valley Days
Big Valley
Bonanza

I find these on the Encore western station and INSP

Jim Becker
12-25-2015, 8:07 PM
You watch Chopped also??? :cool:
We go to a nice restaurant that has the food network playing, with no sound, on the TV's behind the bar. I'll look for those
Oh, yea...I'm a foodie and believe it or not, Chopped and MasterChef have really helped me think about things differently in the kitchen.

Scripts (who owns FoodNetwork and some other DIY channels) hasn't been terribly friendly to streaming services, but the shows are available to stream from their individual sites, at least on your computer/tablet via browser.

dennis thompson
12-25-2015, 10:30 PM
N.Y Mets
N Y. Giants
Mountain Men - these people are amazing ( I hope it's true, but I'm not completely sure)
Bill O'Reilly- he can drive you nuts but he does make some valid points
I have HBO & Showtime but rarely find anything of interest on them

Bill Orbine
12-26-2015, 3:28 AM
If get hooked on TV, you could have a lot of catching up to do. There's something for everyone (most of 'em anyway)
I like watching Discovery Channel, Science Channel, History Channel and movies.

Tom Stenzel
12-26-2015, 2:50 PM
We dumped cable for Netflix and Hulu plus. My wife and older daughter will watch movies on Netflix and my younger daughter watches TV series on Hulu Plus. Me, I watch broadcast TV. Here in the Detroit area we're really lucky to have all the stations we do. When I first started reading this thread I was watching Perry Mason (METV channel 4.3). Today I watched Combat! (Heroes and Icons channel 2.4).

If you try an antenna for the times your internet goes kaput the OTA choices for Griswold Conn. are pretty slim. It looks like there's three stations available without going to great expense, and two of them are ION (All Serial Killers All The Time!) stations. Also WEDN-DT, the closest PBS station, broadcasts on channel 9, a VHF frequency. Many of the "Digital Television Antennas" that are foisted off to the gullible are for UHF.

-Tom

Erik Loza
12-27-2015, 8:46 AM
We just finished binge-watching the Netflix series "Making a Murderer" (documentary of the case of a WI man who was framed once, exonerated, then possibly framed again by local law sherriffs for homicide). It was gripping. CSI and all that stuff never interested me as much as true crime documentaries. I realize it's TV/edited/one person's narrative/etc. but the fact that it actually happened is 10X more interesting to me. Erik

Mike Cutler
12-27-2015, 11:06 AM
Thank you for the suggestions everyone. I may not try them all, but at least I have a starting point.

Tom Stenzel
Eastern CT is pretty lousy for most transmission broadcast medium. The FM Radio is so bad here, that I never use it.
The content is just awful.
3G, 4G, and wifi boosters are commonly needed. I've helped people select and install many of them in the past 5-10 years.

John K Jordan
12-27-2015, 1:31 PM
3G, 4G, and wifi boosters are commonly needed.

Do you know about Femto Cells? These are tiny cell towers that connect to broadband internet. They don't receive and amplify the cell signal but work over the internet so they work even in areas with zero cell coverage. Great for inside metal buildings. I think the range is advertised at 30 ft but it goes further than that.

My shop is in a low spot and with a metal roof I got very poor cell service inside. I tried the best cell extender with an outside antenna on my roof and it didn't help much. I finally tried a Verizon femto cell and connected it to ethernet. Now I get full bars all of the time, everywhere in the shop. (Another reason to run an ethernet cable to the shop as well as power.)

JKJ

Robert Engel
12-28-2015, 8:12 AM
Don't watch hardly any commercial TV other than the car restoration shows on Velocity and occasional football game.

Some I've watched in the last few years:

Netflix:
1. Lost
2. NCIS
3. Rockford Files
4. Magnum PI

Amazon Prime Video:
1. Blue Bloods
2. NYPD Blue
3. Longmire
4. Justified

Some notably missing: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Seinfeld
I'm not overly impressed with the movie line ups on either one. It seems every time I search for a movie I like, they don't have it.
Amazon is bad about running a movie on Prime for a while then putting it on pay per view.

My question is, if you made it to 56 with no TV, why in hell do you want one now?
They are the biggest waste of time/mind numbers.
I'm 59 never been a huge book reader, but I spent so much time watching youtube videos and such I can't hardly read a book anymore.

My advice: Sell all that stuff and go back to what you were doing with your free time.

Chris Hachet
01-01-2016, 10:57 AM
Absolutely nothing. Last regular TV show I watched was an episode of Pushing Daisy's back in 2006.....before that it was several episodes of joan of arcadia in 2001....before that it was an episode of the Simpsons in about 1989 or 1990....watched one episode of Cosby in 1986 when I was in college....

I basically gave up watching TV in middle school and never looked back. Best decision of my life.

John K Jordan
01-02-2016, 10:29 AM
I basically gave up watching TV in middle school and never looked back. Best decision of my life.

Our mother made that decision for us. We got a used TV in the early 60s and she threw it out when it broke and did not allow another one. Years later someone told me that explained everything when he asked how I managed to do so many things. My original quote for the day: TV will suck the hours right out of your life.

JKJ

Ole Anderson
01-02-2016, 3:28 PM
Then I guess I am just a bad person for enjoying TV.

Jim Becker
01-02-2016, 4:03 PM
Then I guess I am just a bad person for enjoying TV.

Not at all!! We are all different and have various ways that we each derive personal enjoyment. I don't personally watch much TV, but I thoroughly enjoy what I do watch and that's what counts.

Shawn Pixley
01-02-2016, 5:44 PM
For Network TV (The original 3):
I watch Criminal Minds and the occasional football game.

For Cable channels:
Fox Soccer Plus (Bundesliga Games)
ESPN (International Soccer and Curling)
Food Network (Iron Chef)
Science Channel
AMC (Movies that I might like)
BBC America (Sherlock)
History (Vikings)

For Movie and PPV:
Movies on HBO or similar
Game of Thrones

Netflix or Fandor
Movies (Usually Foreign or Film Noire) or The occasional Foreign Series (Jack Taylor, Wallander, etc...)

Looking at this, it seems I don't like television series (I hate sitcoms)

John K Jordan
01-02-2016, 6:06 PM
Then I guess I am just a bad person for enjoying TV.

Heck no, what is good for one is not for another.

I didn't list my original quote for yesterday: "Reading will suck the hours right out of your day!" The occasion was my wife and I commenting on how many hours we spend reading. (She reads things about death and cooking and I read everything else.)

But plenty of things will suck the hours out of life. My shop for one. Lathes, milling machine, welders, microscopes, bee stuff...

There are great shows I would like to watch on TV, like "How It's Made", horse training, animal shows, science. Mostly I got out of the habit of watching but what mostly got me that way is the time usually comes in chunks of 1/2 to 1 hour and it seemed like 25% of that was commercials (and not a one for shop tools!) Even the DVR time shifting/commercial-killing thing was a pain to keep up with my stopping point. With a book I can simply put it down and pick it up later. (I actually went to Kindle electronic readers years ago for 95% of my reading. More convenient and I can carry 100s of books in my back pocket, read in the dark, etc.)

I do enjoy YouTube videos occasionally - a wealth of how-tos from chip-carving to electronics to Tubalcain machining things. I put a TV in my shop along with ethernet/WiFi just for YouTube and for DVDs. And I do like the animated kids movies - probably since I spent years in the then-infant field of 3D graphics and animation. Hard to believe what can be done now.

JKJ

Kevin Russell
01-02-2016, 10:31 PM
I have Cable TV and Internet. For Cable TV, I have a Ceton InfiniTV 4 tuner card with a CableCard installed in a PC running Windows 7 with Media Center. I can record up to 4 shows via cable this way. I also have two 2 tuner HDHomeRun OTA tuners. With these, I can record 4 over the air channels at one time. In total, I can record 8 TV shows at once. I have 10 TVs throughout the house and use an 8x8 Matrix to deliver video from a central location in my basement to 8 of those TVs. The other two rarely get used and when they do, I use a Roku 3. I also use Xbox 360s as Media Center Extenders and watch all my recorded shows and live TV on my main TVs with them. I get the xbox 360s used on ebay.

Before the new TV season starts, I look up all the news shows coming out and I set Media Center to keyword record the program titles. If I like them, I keep them recording. If I don't, I cancel the series.

I also have a Netflix subscription and Amazon Prime. I haven't used Hulu but Cable TV cost rising constantly, I may have to look into it. I rent new movies on Vudu or Amazon Prime Video a couple times a year. I also use Crackle sometimes. It's free but has commercials. I started a free Showtime trial through Amazon so I can catch up on Homeland.

I don't have any cable add-ons such as HBO, Showtime or Cinemax. I provide my own cable modem as well because I refuse to pay a rental fee. I also don't have any cable boxes or DVR service from the cable company.