Survey: How do you watch TV shows, videos, or movies?

[Yeshuasdaughter]

I have a rabbit ear antenna, for over the air channels. I also have a VCR and a DVD player. But I honestly never use any of those.

I don't watch much tv, but when I do, I primarily use a streaming device, hooked to the back of my tv, to watch videos, listen to music, and occasionally watch movies on YouTube.

But I have used the streaming device to watch shows and movies on other apps.

 

[mysterionz]

Streaming services. For the show I watch most (South Park) the show’s website has all the episodes up to watch that rotate out every Wednesday, the only ones that don’t are the pilot, make love not Warcraft, major boobage, and the chili carnival episode. A certain four letter word is beeped out on the website and when airing on TV (Comedy Central channel) but on HBO Max all the episodes are uncensored (except for super best friends, cartoon wars part 1 and 2, and the episodes 200 and 201 which got banned)

 

[Forest Cat]

I'm just hopelessly old fashion, I still have a satellite dish. And DVDs. I do have Netflix and Amazon Tv and all those things, new TVs come with streaming services built into them now. But I haven't used it as much as my good old satellite dish.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

I read books.

I rarely watch anything on any medium. I find most of it boring. That’s been true all my life, from network TV as a child to today.

I‘ve made a few exceptions over my lifetime. Star Trek original only on regular TV. Star Wars in theaters.

When I was in college there were foreign films.

 

[maycontainthunder]

Mostly Sky. I record the program so I can jab the fast forward to avoid adverts and boring/annoying bits.

 

[Forest Cat]

Mostly Sky. I record the program so I can jab the fast forward to avoid adverts and boring/annoying bits.

In the 80s, Sky and MTV were the two most awesome channels you could have here. Most people didn't have them, some cool kids had MTV but the really cool kids had MTV and Sky. Large groups of kids would gather at the houses where someone had MTV and Sky. I still remember Pat Sharp on Sky.

 

[Outdated]

I have never owned a TV. I can't watch TV or listen to radio, it's all the fake emotional hype from news readers and from adverts, I end up socially burnt out from them very quickly. I love listening to music and I like TV shows and movies but I can only enjoy them under my own terms.

When all these streaming services started becoming popular I was living in a very remote area where internet connectivity was very poor, incredibly expensive, and restricted to a 1 gig a month download limit. So I never even saw a streaming service until a couple of years ago.

I've stuck with what I was doing in the bush, watching downloaded shows on my computer. That's pretty much the only option available for people in remote areas, get friends and relatives that live in a city to download stuff on to harddrives for them.

This also fits with my reading habits, I like to wait for a series to be complete before I read it or watch it, then I can watch the whole lot in one big session with no interruptions.

 

[AprilR]

I use netflix, viki, youtube and such

 

[Mary Terry]

We have satellite television, Netflix and BritBox via Roku, YouTube, and DVD players.

We've signed up for StarLink (Elon Musk's company) for satellite internet service but have no idea when they will actually come install the dish and equipment. They promise it will be sometime in 2023.

By the way, is there such a thing as a DVD player that can hold more than one DVD? It is tiresome to have to get up and change the DVD every time after I watch one.

 

[Outdated]

By the way, is there such a thing as a DVD player that can hold more than one DVD? It is tiresome to have to get up and change the DVD every time after I watch one.

That's another advantage of the way we did things in the bush, large collections of movies and TV shows on an external harddrive plugged in to the TV.

An even better way is to plug the computer in to the TV and use the computer to play movies and shows. This was especially helpful to a lot of older people who have to put their other glasses on to be able to see the buttons on a remote control. The mouse is a much better remote control, it only has 2 buttons and you use the wheel to adjust volume. Much more intuitive.

 

[Princess Viola]

I'll just be blunt and admit it: I pirate the majority of what I watch.

Before you judge me for pirating, keep in mind that most of the shows and movies I watch are Japanese ones that are literally unavailable legally outside Japan, so downloading fansubbed versions is the only way I even can watch this stuff.

Like I'm a huge fan of Super Sentai, which is a long-running Japanese superhero franchise (that would later be adapted to the West as the Power Rangers franchise) that's been on the air since 1975. Yeah, 1975. It's 48 years old this year and has had a series on the year for every year since it began with the exception of 1978. It's 47th and current installment began airing last Sunday.

Out of those 47 seasons, you wanna know how many are available officially outside Japan?

15.

That's it. The 15 seasons released between 1990 and 2005 are the only ones to have an official English-language release so far and those releases only started in 2015 and there was a three year gap between 2019 and 2022 when none were released.

If you only count the 46 seasons that are actually completed (and not the current one that's only on its 2nd episode), that means nearly 70% of entries in this franchise are unavailable to watch officially in English.

Don't get me wrong here, I'd love to support this series (and any other series I enjoy that isn't officially available in English) officially but since I can't for the majority of the seasons, can you really blame me for pirating it instead? (And I do support the official releases when they come out. I mean I haven't bought any of the DVDs yet but the company that released them has released twelve of them for free streaming with ads on their website and Tubi)

 

[Forest Cat]

By the way, is there such a thing as a DVD player that can hold more than one DVD? It is tiresome to have to get up and change the DVD every time after I watch one.

There is such a thing, it's just like those multi-CD players that were so popular for a while back in the 90s.

This is just an example of one, there are several different ones:

https://www.amazon.com/SONY-DVP-NC615-5-Disc-DVD-Changer/dp/B00006AN5I/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=multi-disc+dvd+player&qid=1678628678&refresh=1&sr=8-4

 

[Kisa the tea]

Youtube or Dailymotion. I don't use cable. Far too expensive.

 

[Misery]

Just Youtube.

TV/movies, what I do see of either (from catching bits of them that family members are watching in the main floor, seen/heard whenever I go up there to get food or interact with the dogs) is not exactly appealing, which is putting it mildly, and then there's the ads. HOW does anyone watch TV or whatever with ads/commercials/whatever? From what I do see of it, it looks like it's more ad than show, in most cases!

So... Youtube. With like 3 separate layers of adblockers running at the same time, so NOTHING gets through.

 

[Forest Cat]

HOW does anyone watch TV or whatever with ads/commercials/whatever?

That's when you make food and go to the bathroom and let the cat outside. Small pauses to do other things. But there are way too many commercial breaks on the regular tv channels now and they are too long.

 

[Judge]

Digital cable, Roku and a DVD player. With a tv that luckily has three HDMI ports.

Most of what I watch seems to be on Roku which in itself has an insane amount of free programming to access.

 

[Mary Terry]

There is such a thing, it's just like those multi-CD players that were so popular for a while back in the 90s.

This is just an example of one, there are several different ones:

https://www.amazon.com/SONY-DVP-NC615-5-Disc-DVD-Changer/dp/B00006AN5I/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=multi-disc+dvd+player&qid=1678628678&refresh=1&sr=8-4

Thank you! I need one of those.

 

[Forest Cat]

That one was not only used and old, but appears to be so old that it's merely a progressive scan player with no upconverting capabilities. Meaning no more than 480p resolution, which would look less than pleasing on most current widescreen LCD televisions.

I still have a perfectly good, but very old (ca. 1998) progressive scan DVD player. - Never use it, but it does efficiently take up space in my closet!

It was just meant as an example of the type of player she needed, that multi-disc DVD players exist.

 

[Judge]

Thank you! I need one of those.

Maybe not. Looking over so many itemized features and functions, not surprisingly there seems to be one glaring omission. No evidence of an ability to upconvert progressive scan DVDs to 720 to 1080p resolution.

Meaning for all those attributes advertised, it defaults to playing 480p resolution tops. I still have a Sony progressive scan DVD player which sits perpetually in my closet given how poorly that level of resolution appears on modern widescreen high-definition tvs.

 

[Judge]

It was just meant as an example of the type of player she needed, that multi-disc DVD players exist.

Yeah, they're still out there. The ones for CDs (like a jukebox) can still be a decent value, but old progressive scan DVD players do not put out sufficient resolution to make them a worthwhile acquisition. Even if in perfect condition.

Funny to recall some of the first fancy DVD players with so many "bells and whistles". But they still didn't have high definition video at the time. Just 480p that looked great on a conventional CRT back in the late 90s. So for retailers they're really just trash to get off their shelves once and for all without coming at a total loss.