What do you actually watch on TV - not programmes - sources?
We have all the usual stuff such as Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming, 200 odd TV channels, iplayer, itv player, oh millions of things. And in reality we watch the odd BBC programme, Lewis or Morse on ITV and that's about it.
We do however subscribe to what used to be Lovefilm, and still get a movie a week on DVD/Bluray sent to us for our Saturday night delectation, and that's the best thing we see all week usually. Although last week's "Gakusei romansu: wakaki hi" was blinking hard work I have to say.
I thought Netflix was great when we first had it, but is UK Netflix worth it any more? There seem to be far fewer titles than this time last year, and if you look at the monthly leavers and arrivals, each month there are more going than coming.
However, at work (in my lunchbreak!), I've cheated and will go to hell in a handbasket, as I use mediahint to watch the US Netflix which is a thing of joy. At least I can still see Frasier, which is not available on UK Netflix and has just gone paid only on UK Amazon.
So do you regret your TV choices, however you got to them, or was that money on a Smart TV worth every penny?
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Am I the only person who does not have Sky, cable, satellite or subscribe to anything? More than enough on terrestrial for my requirements. For anything special on sport I prefer to watch it in my local, pint in hand. Which probably works out far more expensive than one of the Sky/BT packages!
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Freeview only here as well, though the Xbox has iPlayer / 4oD built in. TBH though 4oD is so unbearable to use - there are more ads than just watching the program live - that it's rarely touched.
Just not a big TV person.
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Have Freeview and Freesat here, and access of course to any free online sources. Refuse to pay for Blinkbox or Netflix, they are far to late to air with stuff and If I want to pay to see films I will get the proper experience at the cinema.
We get access to any US tv show an hour after being aired in the states, (I am months ahead of the UK in seeing CSI for example) so don't need Sky, and if there is a film to see I can either pay to watch it at the pictures or steal* it off the web.
* I pay for a TV license and sufficient live screenings a year to have a clean consciences about nicking stuff.
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Am I the only person who does not have Sky, cable, satellite or subscribe to anything? More than enough on terrestrial for my requirements.
No me too. I've got so much stacked up on the PVR now I wonder if I'll ever round to watching it too.
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>> At least I can still see Frasier, which is not available on UK Netflix
>> and has just gone paid only on UK Amazon.
But it is repeated at least once a day on Channel 4 - one of Mrs F's favourite programmes, records the weekday morning episodes to cheer her up when she gets in from work later in the afternoon. I do enjoy it as well - brilliant writing and acting (IMO of course), although I've never quite felt comfortable with Daphne's fake northern accent.
Last edited by: Focusless on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 09:04
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>> But it is repeated at least once a day on Channel 4
Ah yes, but I'm the sort of person that needs to see it all, from the first episode in the first series sequentially. I'm up to series five now, but am in waters unknown, as I've not seen it before after this point.
As to writing, don't start me. Wonderful. Yesterday Frasier was lamenting never having achieved an award, other than when he was a member of the existentialist society at school and was voted the member most likely to be.
Made me laugh that did.
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SQ - what is it with people not being able to trim quotes when they reply just lately?
>> Made me laugh that did.
>>
Slightly off topic but randomly Kelsey Grammer is a regular in our town. He married a girl from here a few years back so is seen here every few months visiting her family. He's actually a very good sport and will happily pose for pictures in the pub
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 5 Feb 15 at 01:11
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Really? I'm a little surprised because in an interview I read around the launch of Boss, he came across as an utter a***.
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/23/kelsey-grammer-starting-over
Big disappointment for a longtime Frasier fan, but I suppose it shows the man can act.
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>> Really? I'm a little surprised because in an interview I read around the launch of
>> Boss, he came across as an utter a***.
>> www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/23/kelsey-grammer-starting-over
>> Big disappointment for a longtime Frasier fan, but I suppose it shows the man can
>> act.
>>
Maybe he likes the publicity. Chinese takeaway has something on the wall signed by him as a visitor and local rag are always keen to photograph him when he's in town.
Its become a bit of a Z list celebrity enclave here (and not much happens), so the local free rag has to fill its pages with something other than local primary school kids
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Just freeview, although we do have a £10 NowTv box which we just use for the catch-up players, the odd youtube video and very occasional Sky movie-on-demand. Don't/won't subscribe to anything.
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Hardly watch it. Didn't own a TV until I was in my mid 30s and only then because my wife wanted one. I was subjected to it being on constantly as a child and grew to hate it mostly. Certainly wouldn't pay for extra channels. Prefer the radio in the main.
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Just the Freeview, although do get a couple of films a week from Love Films and download the odd film too. Go to the cinema a couple of times a month and listen to a lot of radio and podcasts. Also read a lot, mainly on the Kindle and have just "discovered" audio books and subscribe to Audible.
We do truly live in a golden age of entertainment.
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SWMBO has basic Virgin cable. The Panasonic has a Freesat tuner but I have not got a dish.
I am happy with Freeview. I can record/ burn DVDs so always something to watch.
Old stuff from Discovery etc is still watchable.
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The only sky we have is blue and sunny today..
Paid for TV is an extravagance.
bah humbug...
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Hardly watch it all so just Freeview. The PVR adds HD whih is good and is also supposed to link to I-player. Latter has stopped working of late, box doesn't seem to cope since i-player web interface was redesigned.
I guess if I was bothered i'd have been on case with LG.
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Well if none of us "oldies" use these services, and no young person would be seen dead with a TV of any description as I understand it - who is buying these Smart TVs, and what do they use them for once they get them?
No shares in LG for me!
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 10:20
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>> who is
>> buying these Smart TVs, and what do they use them for once they get them?
The rather large chunk in between. At 60 am I old? I have a smart TV and use it - smartly.
>> No shares in LG for me!
My Sony BlueRay stopped supporting Iplayer when it was rewritten, Sony say no more updates. Its is 5 years old tho.
The Humax supports it tho and I have the Chromecast which supports it. I am sure a quick check on the LG website would produced a software update.
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I have noticed my house holds viewing habits have changed over the past year.
Live TV (from that spiky thing on the roof) has diminished to watching news and that's about it.
Now I tend to use an Android TV Stick (£40 from Amazon).
Turns my TV into a smart TV and has everything like netflix, youtube etc.
MY misses moans about paying the TV license and I see her point, not really much of a call for it these days.
One observation (Steps kids and children's friends), anyone below the age of 25 dont watch live TV at all.
To them it's streamed content from the web for anything.
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I bought a smart TV before Christmas
Having iPlayer on board is great, less hassle than streaming from my ipad. Occasionally use it for YouTube or to download the odd film
Since a smart TV costs little more than a dumb one its no big deal.
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We watch everything on the lounge TV on Virgin cable. Only University Challenge is watched on terrestrial 'cos the Virgin picture is too wide to see the scores. I've tried setting it a bit narrower but the next time you switch it on it's gone back to broad so can't be a***d any more.
All other tellys in the house/caravan are terre.
I don't record much...that's her job....anything with detectives in, even if she's seen them already. ATM I've got a few Portillos, The world of trams and the Churchill doc. I much prefer to watch interesting or historical stuff like BTC documentaries on the Tube.
Just been watching some USA house fires...by 'eck don't those Yankee wooden houses burn well ? Cracking fire appliances though !
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"The only sky we have is blue and sunny today..."
You have to pay to see that once a year if you live in Manchester.
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I have a smart TV, but only because that's what it happened to be. Mrs R O'R has used it a couple of times to catch up on Wolf Hall, that's about it.
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Sky costs me £71.25 per month.
Watch a bit of football, Golf and the odd Sky channel.
It works nigh on 100% of the time so quite happy - mind you it started off as £8.00 per month in 1994!
No problems other than 1 x Sky+ box failure a day or so after it was installed - not bad for 21 years.
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>> Sky costs me £71.25 per month.
71 quid a month? for Sky?
< shakes head >
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I wouldn't pay £71, but to be fair that is for everything.
www.sky.com/shop
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>> Sky costs me £71.25 per month.
And I thought mine was expensive at £59.49
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We pay about £65 a month for Virgin, and that's not their top package.
But it covers the 200 odd channels we don't watch, the landline we never use and the 100Mb broadband my wifi/ipad combo usually zaps down to between 2 and 10 in the real world, so it's worth every penny.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 13:43
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£71 does seem a lot but when I add up my entertainment spend, £40 at the cinema, £10 Spotify, £7 Audible, around £10 on books and £8 on Love films it comes to £75. If i go to the theatre or a music venue it's going to be over £100 for the month easily.
If you are into sport, which I'm not particularly, I guess the Sky subscription is not a bad deal.
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We don't have sky anymore, had it enjoyed it. I think it cost about £40 a month, then moved and we couldn't have it. Moved again and now we can I'm not fussed, done without a couple of years so I can live without, sometimes I miss not being able to watch the sports channels but that's it. Got a freeview box for Xmas and that's it, not got any of the film/amazon subscription and no smart TV either. The freeview box is plenty for me.
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My mate was telling me on Sunday that his Virgin packages (everything max) is £120 a month. Told him I'd negotiate it down for him for half the savings ( reckon about £80 - £90 os enough).
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>> £71 does seem a lot but when I add up my entertainment spend, £40 at
>> the cinema, £10 Spotify, £7 Audible, around £10 on books and £8 on Love films
>> it comes to £75. If i go to the theatre or a music venue it's
>> going to be over £100 for the month easily.
>>
>> If you are into sport, which I'm not particularly, I guess the Sky subscription is
>> not a bad deal.
Hmm, around 20 pounds month cinema, free spotify, (i refuse to pay for stars drug binges) £0 audibles - speaking books send me to sleep, books - steal them electronically - tho I buy probably one kindle a month say £5, refuse to pay love films for out of date crap.
25 quid a month then - be damned i would pay sky for 200 channels of rubbish (like george galloway pretending to be a chat show host) and 200 channels of rubbish +1.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 15:09
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I guess what seems good value to one person seems expensive to another. Just depends on your interests and income I suppose.
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>Sky costs me £71.25 per month.>>
Ridiculous...:-) You can only watch one channel at once and perhaps record one or two more.
People I know who were paying this sort of price and more have been on to Sky saying they wish to cancel and have been excellent deals to remain, generally paying about half the original subscription.....
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Suppose you watch only Sky and for three hours a day: that's about 90 hours over the month for your £71 - plus of course £12 or whatever for the TV licence. Perhaps it's no wonder Sky subscribers tend to be lardy; they're too fixated on getting their money's worth to move from the sofa.
};---)
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We have a multitude of channels from a variety of sources.
It is *not* because we watch a lot of television. It is so that when we do watch, we can almost always find aomething we want to watch.
So for me an hourly extrapolation doesn't make sense. I am paying for a full time facility, not a number of hours viewing
I don't know what we pay for cable and I think I won't check - there's about 12 set-top boxes in the house so I guess I wouldn't like the answer.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 18:37
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It is so that when we do watch, we can almost always find something we want to watch.
And I think that requirement is almost entirely covered by the on-demand services such as iPlayer. We have a Freeview PVR too, of course, but I seldom bother to set it these days; probably 80% of our viewing is on demand, either on iPlayer or Amazon Prime - although there's precious little on Prime that (a) appeals, and (b) doesn't cost extra.
Live sport, of course, is the exception, and I'll probably reactivate my dormant one-channel Sky sub for the imminent World Cup, so that's another £16.50. I ought to count some of what we pay for BT Infinity too, but I need that for work so I'd buy it anyway.
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One can compare linear programming vs on-demand with radio vs CD.
I find CDs boring, even when its music I like whereas I really enjoy the radio.
Ditto on-demand vs linear tv Programming.
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>> We have a multitude of channels from a variety of sources.
>>
>> It is *not* because we watch a lot of television. It is so that when
>> we do watch, we can almost always find aomething we want to watch.
The problem I have with sky, (and I have access to it) is exactly as you describe. We look at whats on free to air and say, gosh nothing there to watch, so we check up sky and find there is nothing there to watch either.
I don't see the point in paying 71 quid to find out there is nothing worth watching.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 19:42
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>> I don't see the point in paying 71 quid to find out there is nothing
>> worth watching.
I would resent giving all that money to Murdoch - or anyone to be honest.
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If you want to watch first class sport on TV that is what it costs. The sports coverage, particularly football is what costs the money. Not a big sports fan myself but if sport is your thing its not that bad compared with the cost of say buying a ticket for a Premiership game even if you can get hold of one.
Not sure why you should resent paying for entertainment. Nothing is for free and SKY have invested huge amounts in buying rights to show major sports on TV
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>> Sky costs me £71.25 per month.
£850 odd a year!!
Gordon Bennett!
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>> Gordon Bennett!
>>
He left yonks ago!
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 4 Feb 15 at 01:17
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>> >>
>> £850 odd a year!!
>>
>> Gordon Bennett!
>>
Cheaper than going to watch a Premier league match every other week for a season, and a hell of a lot cheaper than if you take family with you. And then you get a lot of other top class sport as well.
I don't pay it, but I used to and I can see why people do.
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Wed 4 Feb 15 at 10:49
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>> Cheaper than going to watch a Premier league match every other week for a season,
>> and a hell of a lot cheaper than if you take family with you.
>> I don't pay it, but I used to and I can see why people do.
>>
I go to watch a Premiership game on average every other week and get paid to do so.
Some 5 or 6 years ago, Sky were doing a deal called IIRC 'Pay once, watch forever' at a cost of £69(?). For that I had a dish and box installed, a few extra programmes thrown in, plus access to all of Sky's free to air channels.
I have never been seriously tempted to pay a subscription.
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>> I go to watch a Premiership game on average every other week and get paid
>> to do so.
>>
How pays you to watch PL matches?
>> I have never been seriously tempted to pay a subscription.
>>
I think it might be different if you liked football but couldn't go to the live games, paying a subscription might seem more appealing.
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I just watch football on-line using Cricfree TV. You can usually get anything that's going on in the World there.......Tiddlywinks from North Korea ? Possibly.
I restrict my own sport viewing to Manchester City or England matches.
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>> How pays you to watch PL matches?
I was being ever so slightly misleading. I was referring to Rugby Union. I steward (verb?), get paid and watch the game. Different kettle of fish from the round ball game. If you have never been, you have no idea. There is no segregation, alcohol is allowed to be taken to the seat, etc.
>> I think it might be different if you liked football but couldn't go to the live games,
You are very probably right. But then, I don't have a subscription to watch those rugby games which are on Sky/BT when I am not stewarding.
Last edited by: Duncan on Wed 4 Feb 15 at 16:20
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No subs here, throwing money away as far as I'm concerned:)
Amazon bought Lovefilm - if you're paying for Prime, make sure you aren't paying twice for the same thing!
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The true cost for Virgin Media for us at one point was over £100 at full price - they were still NTL. I got a good discount off that though. Mind that was for all the channel, three STBs, broadband/phone etc. This was pre HD channel era.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 3 Feb 15 at 14:31
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We seem to have access to about 130 channels in the main room, but only 15 or so on the flat-screen tube in here.
There often seems to be nothing worth looking at on any of them. Nevertheless what with news channels and movie channels one can usually find something to waste one's time.
Something decent on BBC2 at 10 tonight I think.
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>> Something decent on BBC2 at 10 tonight I think.
Rory Bremner's Coalition Report
As the General Election approaches, the impressionist takes a satirical look at the current state of British politics, giving a bite-sized insight at all that's good, bad and indifferent. Rory is joined by John Bird, Matt Forde, Sara Pascoe and Jan Ravens in a mixture of sketches, stand-up and songs, with those under the spotlight including David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
www.radiotimes.com/episode/dfmwtq/rory-bremners-coalition-report
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Rory Bremner? Where's he been? Never really found him very funny. Suppose he's trying to make a a comeback
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Free view only (her indoors). I almost never watch TV. Too much carp although I should seek out better stuff. The problem is after manual work all day if my backside touches a soft chair then I'm asleep. At weekends there's always better stuff to do.
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>>Rory Bremner's Coalition Report>>
Quite funny in parts. Appears that BBC2 have picked it up up some time after Channel4 dropped his Bremner, Bird and Fortune series; sadly Fortune died in December, 2013. Loved the Fortune and Bird "discussions".
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I enjoyed it. Must be hard for satirists these days though - e.g. have you seen the Greens' manifesto?
blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/01/welcome-to-the-bonkers-world-of-the-green-party-manifesto/
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CC - I think you mean alternative TV.. :-)
You've reminded me of a Private Eye cartoon a while back, with a group of teenagers (wearing back-to-front baseball caps and holding smart-phones) making fun of another, who "watches television on a television".
We still do (downstairs) in this house, but were considering a TV for the main bedroom. Mrs JBJ is not keen on wires and we ended up buying a s/h 17" laptop, which is not only a huge improvement on the general purpose one we use for online shopping and Spotify, but works brilliantly with iPlayer, etc, not to mention the occasional DVD.
Not really interested in Sky, or money for old Rupe!
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>> CC - I think you mean alternative TV.. :-)
No, I was meaning the grammar to imply you would perhaps have jettisoned the tv.
I liked your last line pun.
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Alternate TV - legacylad
