I mostly just watch YouTube. Man do I not ever miss TV.

I haven’t had access to cable since like 2003 when I lived with my parents. I, like many others here, pirate a bunch of stuff (plus some physical media for independent media and stuff I want to support)

That said I recently got an iptv subscription bc my partner got into sports and the available options are either stupid, prohibitively expensive, or both. NBA streaming package is not crazy at $10/mo but it has a blackout for your local team, so you can’t watch games of your team, forcing you to a cable provider if you follow them. Anything for local sports is minimum like $60 a month and often double that. absurd. Iptv is super piracy but it’s like $70/yr for all the games of all the teams of all the sports plus all the channels of all the countries plus a huge library of content.

I watched tv for like a day with it and it was insane how terrible it was. Most networks just marathon random episodes of mid shows with obnoxious ad breaks. So it’s like comedy central- 6 hours of family guy, 3 hours of american dad, 4 hours of south park, 3 bad movies, 6 more hours of family guy, 4 hours of infomercials, repeat. Maybe there’s like one episode of new content every few days, and it’s something low effort like the daily show. Or another network like hln that literally just shows forensic files and informercials 24/7.

The news is toxic bullshit. Hyper focus on rage bait and propping up anything that gets ratings (which is basically trump and elon nonsense).

It’s insane. It’s just streaming networks where you can’t pick what you watch. They realized people like binge watching and leaned into that, hard. The advantage they had is creating new content but there’s none of that the overwhelming majority of the time. They’ve given up and are propped up solely by sports

I will say some of the other countries have decent programming at least. Tbs from Japan has some good shit (although you have to speak Japanese of course). They tend to have better news too

I had hated the commercials on local TV (and their insipid local newscasters), and the way Cable networks chopped up films to the point where a 90-minute film took 2-1/2 hours to watch. NOT to mention their 200+ channels with 7 worth watching (for many $$$).

When they shut down analog TV in 2009, that was it for me. I didn't even grab a ~~free HDTV converter for local stuff. Nothing but Internet ever since. Music? HUNDREDS of online stations.

Absolutely. I was tired of watching regurgitated bullshit. If your media is making me check my phone ever 5 minutes or less your media is garbage. I can go to an EDM show and listen from 5 to 8 hours of music and forget I even have a phone.

I did that 20 years ago. It's great!

I never liked being told when to watch a certain show or have to deal with ad breaks, so as soon as I found out I could just Pirate things, I stopped watching normal tv, every so often if I'm at someone's house or somewhere I'll stare at it but mostly I haven't watched tv in over 2 decades.

The internet tells me things going on in the world and my mate loves ranting about world news to me so I have my own news show.

You mean broadcast tv? Only for sports. Cut the cable years ago. Streaming and piracy only, now. There are some amazing shows available right now. Don't watch the news.

I have. If there something that is really good I wait to hear about it from word of mouth then totally find a “legitimate” source for it.

I’ve been living completely without TV until recently, but after finding out that things on TV is worthless, I stopped watching it.

I’m surprised many of you still watch TVs. Maybe the quality of contents is different between countries. In my country, TV sucks.

Haven't had an antenna connected to my TV for... 17 years.

Haven't missed a single thing of worth. Can pick and choose from the net

OTA, no. Cable, no. $$ for streaming, no. Ads, no. I watch a lot of shows from many countries (AKA I read a lot of shows), but rarely from the US. I hate US tv, it's so formulaic and boring. I don't even watch very many movies anymore. Mostly documentaries.

The TV is for the wife, but even she gets annoyed with the amount of ads and reruns to increasingly turn to streaming.

Yep, stopped probably 7 years ago when we moved into our place and cut the antenna cable. We pretty much watch political commentators on YouTube and the odd movie on stream, as well as whatever's in our DVD collection.

I haven’t watched regular tv in 15-20 years, with the occasional exception if I’m in a hotel. Mostly just stuck to streaming platforms in the last ten years, however my attention span for those has dwindled and I also just don’t really have the time or mental energy to watch much. I probably watch 1 movie per month, with one or two shows here and there. As a result, I’ve just cancelled almost all of my streaming packages.

Yep that's me!

I never watched it growing up. I do watch a lot of Youtube though

Gave up watching broadcast TV a couple of years ago. I have a decent enough laptop running Pop!_OS, an internet connection, and a 32" monotor. I can find what I want/need with that.

I'm 47 and never had a television. Computers, projector, tablets yes but never watched linear TV at my place.

Well, TV rotted sometime in the 2000s. The History channel started running shit like Orange County Pawn Truckers and kinda took Discovery with it with Dirty Crab Busters, The Sci-Fi channel started playing wrestling, any fictional TV shows went gritty heartburn drama for 20 solid goddamn years, so I gave up.

I binged a few TV series, often years after they were made, first on DVD and then on Netflix. And as Netflix started losing content to the "It's just not available anywhere anymore" hole or the "We're making our own streaming service" hole, I preferred to just do without. So I do, and have for at least 10 years now.

I love TV but the content is so terrible,

I will rent movies and television shows from the library. I don't watch broadcast TV unless I'm forced to at the gym. Speaking of, I don't understand why gyms subject people to watching the shitty news while on cardio machines. I wish they would turn them off or just show random inspirational stuff instead.

I gave up TV for a while, but built an automated Plex server about a year ago and have fallen in love with it. I find myself watching more shows than in probably the past decade. My wife was less than thrilled about the initial cost (and the fact that she lost some closet space to the server) but now she uses it every day and refuses to ever let me get rid of it.

For the unaware, Plex is a program that allows you to self-host a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu. You add media to the server, and it will automatically match it to the relevant show, download metadata, and make it available to your client devices to stream. The free version is fine for most small setups, but there is a paid license you can get to unlock all of the functionality; Most users opt to just get a lifetime license, so it’s not an ongoing cost.

If you prefer open source, Jellyfin is a good alternative. There’s a little bit more of a learning curve, because the client apps aren’t widely available and it often requires using something like Kodi to stream instead. But the idea is the same; Host a server, throw media at it, and be able to stream.

Automating the media collection is possible, and is what takes it from “this is a cool side hobby that I’ll abandon in a few months because the upkeep is a pain in the ass” to “this is now my go-to for shows I want to watch, and the upkeep is minimal.” Programs exist that allow your server to automatically search for ~~media~~ Linux ISOs, download it, and add it to your server. So adding new ~~media~~ Linux ISOs is simply a matter of requesting it to be added, and then the server handles all the rest automatically and you’ll have it available as soon as the download finishes.

My one big complaint about Plex is actually the lack of live IPTV support. You can integrate a digital TV tuner into your server to be able to automatically DVR live content. But Plex used to support an IPTV extension, which allowed you to add your own IPTV channels and stream them on any device. Plex did away with that extension support, because they have been pushing their own IPTV channels and they didn’t want to compete with the extension.

Welcome to the club. I used to watch tv only because my ex wanted to. I would fall asleep anyways. Movies are boring. Rather make shit and have more fun building stuff. Making art building electronics kind of thing.

I have a good working flat screen from like early 2000s somewhere. I also have a couple broken TVs I want to fix for fun. Once I fix my big tv I plan to use it as a display monitor.

That being said I do have these two stacked 32 inch monitors. Only use them for like 15 minutes a day of YouTube.

I watch stuff in the background to satisfy my ADHD. And when I'm burnt out I watch stuff as it keeps me entertained while not taking much mental energy.

Not since like ... almost 10 years ago. Even before I moved out. Last time my family moved, we just didn't bother to set it up. Literally everything you could want is available online, with less hassle, and no ads.

At least in my country, yes since 2016 after our election.

It's almost just kiddie shows and news back then, but now after our next election in 2022 it I stopped watching news, since its almost all yapping about the dictator's son

When our TV broke along with the storm in December that year I stopped watching it altogether

Of course it's over-the-air TV. My higher-ups refuse to install cable/sattelite TV that time before

I have entirely replaced tv with doom scrolling

Yay?

My wife still watches some television. I stopped altogether several years ago. I do like YouTube though, which I suppose scratches the same itch.

Don’t even have one anymore. The number of books I’ve read in the past few years exceeds that of the rest of my life, or at least comes close.

Yeah I haven't owned a television in years

At least 7 years ago. Cable company tried giving me a free setup with Internet and I refused

Like regular TV? Ditched that when it went to digital and our TV didn't work, never watched much though.

Netflix and stuff? Streaming? One or two nights a week. We are watching Arcane now, just finished Preacher. I go very slowly through these, husband watches an hour of "TV" every night to relax, but I have to get away from screens before bed to relax.

yup. cable got too damn expensive to have just to be able to get the local channels (only way to get them where i am). really should've dumped them years before i finally did. haven't had a streaming sub in a couple years either. i mainly watch old recordings (some on tape, even), discs, and other things i have here. and maybe once or twice a month, i'll look for something different or 'new to me' on a free service. i get enough news and current events from public radio when i'm in the car or when the radio is on at the office.

Haven't had TV in years. Cable news is pointless and biased. I already spend allmy time doing other things.