They’re small services that you load your libraries into, and select content you want to get and the quality of that content. Then the service goes out and finds the torrents for you and adds them to your library.
Ah, my bad. I’m so used to it all that I can’t help but spit out jargon with no context sometimes 😅
I’m referring to apps like Sonarr, which basically keeps an eye on torrent/usenet providers and downloads episodes for you automatically. So you tell it you want some show, optionally set the quality you want it at, and it takes care of everything so that the episodes just show up on Jellyfin/Plex after they air and it grabs them. There’s also Radarr for movies and a whole bunch of related ones.
Tbh JF is faaaaaaaar from a ‘great UI’, it suffers from the ‘open source design’ of developers who have no idea how to design a good UI as the designers for the UI. I shouldn’t need to click vaguely in the direction of where I think the X (close) button is to make it appear in the first place. The settings for a user should be in the same location as the admin settings. The main screen shouldn’t look like it came straight out of 2000, it should have the categories all visible by default, it should be easier to setup https (plex was WAY easier in this regard), ota channel guides shouldn’t be outsourced to a paid project, there is no built-in import/export (I recently moved to a docker image and found that out, yay)…
It ‘works’, but fuck me it’s so rough around the edges that it draws blood. Plex has issues (downloading content from a server is wonky, metadata can grab the wrong movies, paid sub/lifetime etc) but it’s so, so, so much closer to what an all-in-one media platform should be, imo.
That’s because it’s a fork of Emby from 13+ years ago, still running 90% of that old code. They’ve kept it functional, that’s about it.
If you want something that’s actually still being developed/improved look to Emby or Plex. Emby is more focused on ‘personal’ media servers with your own content and users under your own control; plex is more focused on cloud services, integrating content they can run advertising on and requiring your users to authenticate through their public servers to be able to access your local/private server.
I’ve had plex running on my nas for 6+ years now, and have it set to where all the cloud stuff is available but out of the way, as I have a small collection so I don’t need to lean into the cloud streaming. I remember trying Emby in my evaluation of Plex, but as I recall the UI was bleh and it too followed a paid model. I know of Kodi but I haven’t looked into it in a long time, and I never ended up actually trying it.
Plex is fine for my needs, but I decided to get setup with JF just ‘in case’ plex takes a sharp new direction or something (I’ve had it installed since the whole ‘watch stuff free with ads’ kicked off), so if/when I can just be like ‘hey all plex did [stupid thing] so I just need you all to uninstall plex, grab this jellyfin app, and login with [credentials] and we will be all set’.
Emby used to be entirely open source, it’s free to use the base product (server software and the built in web browser based app) but requires a license for the installable apps and some server features so that the developers have some income from their work and incentive to keep spending their time+efforts on it.
Some people don’t like paying others for their hard work so they’d regularly fork Emby as it releases updates so they could remove those paywalls.
Unwilling to continue supporting this, Emby went closed source so their work could no longer be stolen. Jellyfin is the final fork of emby before it officially closed its source code. They have since kept it running, but have made little to no improvements or changes beyond that.
I’m not arguing that any of your complaints are invalid. I just want to say that I use jellyfin to organize my movies and TV shows and access them from other computers on my home network. It works, is easy, was free. I like it.
Yeah, there’s a reason I keep it installed and at the ready, but it’s just less user-friendly and that is essential when my users aren’t tech savvy, they just want things to ‘work’. If JF reaches feature parity I’ll migrate my users, but I can’t be asked to explain why they need to pay a monthly fee for ota guides or why everything looks different, if I also need to explain that features are missing and why can’t I move their watch history. It’s got to be easy for them, but also for me too.
I’ve found that most FOSS projects just have a “for us, by us” mentality where nobody cares about making things easy to use to the point that it’s not even possible if you’re not an experienced coder AND have strong knowledge of networking.
Not to mention the setup for hardware encoding which basically expects deep knowledge of the matter to even get it to run, let alone run well. Plex on the other hand hides it behind a license but it JUST WORKS, there’s no setup or anything.
I really wanted to use Jellyfin, but there’s just too many pain points
I highly discourage 1337x. They got caught not banning a user who intentionally uploaded malware. Forgive the reddit link, but there aren’t a lot of piracy news sites.
Damn. Just learned that trusting 1337x and IGGGAMES was a bad idea. Trying to teach my little pirate how to be safe on the high seas only to find out the places and people I thought were safe aren’t so.
Realdebrid just finds the torrents for you though, right? You’d still need a VPN since you’re technically downloading the movie to watch it. I know a lot of ISPs send notices if you torrent a copyrighted movie
Nope. It also downloads the torrent for you and gives you download link or stream link to the video. Most of the time, the torrent is already on their cache, so it’s instantly available to you.
They’re more like a private storage server. You can’t see what movies they have. Technically you can only download what you ‘add’ there, but they cache everybody else’s downloads too, so your download is readily available. I’m not sure of all technicalities, but there are a few different debrid services, so there must be some way they are able to do this.
There’s now a whole ecosystem of applications to streamline the download of series (sonarr) and movies (radarr) using torrents or Usenet (prowlarr). Pair those with a good player like Jellyfin or Plex and you have a nice media center that for sure won’t stop working everytime your family tries to watch a movie…
But it’s totally free. You don’t need app unlocks, you can have as many devices as you want, and you can hardware transcode without paying for premium.
Paid ~$100 for the lifetime license 9 years ago. So less than 93 pennies a month.
Throughout that time Emby has constantly been developed bringing bug fixes, UI improvements, and new features; while also providing excellent support as needed on the forums.
TBH I think I’ve vastly underpaid and plan to donate to the project shortly.
In that same time, I’ve seen very few meaningful updates to jellyfin. Just scrolling through their changelogs it’s mostly filled with:
Facts. I run both but JF is not ‘family-ready’ and thus sits on my server, receiving updates and idling until that changes. Plex took 5 minutes of explaining and the folks have been happily using it for a few years now.
Plex and Jellyfin are two ways to host your own content. Basically, instead of streaming from a Netflix server, you’re streaming from your own server.
Plex was the original, and Jellyfin is the FOSS alternative. In short, you run the program on a computer somewhere, and tell that program where all of your media is stored. It’ll scan your media depending on the library type (movies, TV shows, music, etc,) automatically pair it with the appropriate metadata, and make it available for streaming via the computer.
You can combine this with the *arr suite (Radarr, Sonarr, etc) to have your torrent client automatically download new content as it comes out. Basically, the appropriate *arr program listens for when new content gets released, then automatically tells your torrent client to search for that content (based on specific rules like language, bitrate, capture method, etc) and download it automatically. This pairs nicely with Plex/Jellyfin because you can use automatic torrent management to drop the files directly into the right folders for your server to scan and make available.
It does have a few drawbacks. One of the most annoying is port forwarding. Lots of VPNs have stopped offering port forwarding, because some creeps figured out how to use it to share/trade CSAM anonymously. But Plex and Jellyfin require an open port in order to be made available outside of your network, and you don’t want to run the server+torrents without a VPN. Some VPNs allow port forwarding, but randomly assign the port every time you connect. So it may work fine for a while, but will require occasional attention when that port changes.
There’s also the issue with needing a computer that’s turned on all the time. Some people (like myself) just run it on their home desktop. But that means I needed to set up Wake On LAN to be able to boot my computer up remotely, or just be okay with letting it idle all the time and never sleep. Personally, I chose to enable WOL, so I just remote into my network and send a magic packet before trying to stream. But that’s an extra step some people won’t want to do every time. If you have an old computer sitting around gathering dust, it can be a great weekend project.
Plex is actually a fork of Kodi (XBMC). Kodi is still actively developed, and easily supports both local media (for example, downloaded using one of the *arrs) and streaming from various sources using addons.
You can literally say the same thing about any fork, and yet nobody ever does. I’ll reiterate, Kodi is XBMC - there was no fork, no split in development, only a rename.
Higher quality and more reliable. I spent like 2 hours trying to find a site to stream the show I’m currently watching that didn’t have excessive audio issues. Were I a true pirate, I could simply download the highest quality available, and watch it whenever I want.
I wouldn’t want to use Plex, though. If you know what you want to watch and it’s already downloaded, just throw it on a flash drive or transfer it to your phone, no need to stream. If you want a netflix-style 2 terabytes of stuff that you may or may not ever watch, just… Spend the money on Netflix. Your time is worth more than that subscription fee. If Netflix doesn’t have the show you want, do the thing I said in the first paragraph.
Last Exile. I like obscure old anime, so it’s been on my list for a minute. I needed something to watch, so I checked Hulu. At some point in the last few months, they stopped streaming it.
So I definitely didn’t go to theindex.moe, and I super didn’t click on every damn streaming site they link to. I “promise” I didn’t settle on animeflix dot live, and I definitely didn’t put up with awful audio issues until I realized that the default server it streams from is in SD so you have to click the gear and set it to one of the HD servers instead.
Which sites are those? From my experience it’s hard to find 4k/Dolby Vision on those free streaming sites, which is where pirating and streaming your own stuff is the better option.
The main benefit for me is the app accessibility (easier to search through an app than a file system), the convenience of not needing to carry around a bunch of data all the time, and the ease of sharing it with family.
If I understand your setup, when you decide you want to a new movie you have to download it, pull the hdd over to the machine, transfer it to the hdd, rename, perhaps even transcode, and then put the drive back on the TV.
In the type of setup described above or like mine, I can pull out my phone and using a very simple search all of the file handling and such is taken care of for me. I don’t ever have to worry if I have the right filetype for the device I’m on, and I can watch that from any device on my local network, or just about any device that has an internet connection. Also, while I’m watching one thing, several other people can be watching whatever else they want on their devices.
I have a smart TV where you can just plug in a NTFS formatted USB drive and it plays perfectly. Never had to rename or transcode anything. It plays 4K files more smoothly than most computers I’ve had.
The only problem I’ve had is when I’m watching a foreign film and the subtitle file is in the wrong file format.
That covers a small subset of the reason a lot of us set it up the way we have. I mean, if that is working for you, great. But you still have to move a physical device, and the ability to watch media is still limited to the location of said device.
The better free streaming sites are my go-to, because I have plausible deniability, I don’t with a torrent. And unfortunately my VPN throttles you unless you start paying. Which I am thinking about going ahead and doing.
I’ll tell you, I have my setup to the point where I go to one website, subscribe to a show, and episodes of that show appear to watch on my TV same day they are released.
I also set myself up to get email alerts telling me what new episodes I have to watch when they are done being downloaded.
… Setting all that up took me awhile and will take tech skills. But now that it’s set up, it’s zero touch aside from adding new shows.
Plus, I never have to worry about trying to find where to stream at it and even if my Internet goes out I can still watch my shows
(even if the computer is yours, whereas you have created your own ‘mini cloud’. I hate that term, it’s just a machine running software. It’s all just machines, consuming us all. screams … anyway)
Where can I find good tutorials for the *arr suite? I have Jackett installed for easier searching in Qbit, but I half assed that somehow into working. I would love to have auto downloads for content, especially those shows that still release episodes like a drop feed. An almost fully automated Plex would be amazing the TV show requests I get.
I’m like you, hadn’t pirated outside of games since early 2000s and just started again. Wait until you see the shit we have now, it’s mind-blowing how far it’s come.
And with Jellyfin if you have the upload speeds you can even host for family etc, so anyone sharing your Netflix now can just login to your Jellyfin server, for them it will be a comparable experience.
I’m still maining plex, and at least there, they just create a plex account, you grant access to that account, and that’s it. Don’t even have to open ports. My guess is with JF since there isn’t a central account host, you’d probably have expose some ports on your network to be able to login without a VPN.
Pirating games is basically unheard of for me, unless it’s a product not readily available on a modern storefront.
Nintendo has a problem with me playing Pokemon Omega Ruby on a 3DS emulator? they are free to offer a switch version.
This is because steam is not an asshole, which is a big reason why I kind of got disappointed when they stopped offering movies. I like having those on the same platform
Nevermind that shit, Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid. I’m fucking done with these greedy-ass companies. I was paying Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Paramount , MLB.tv and HBO, and pretty content to do so, and they all continually removed content and adjusted their pricing to reduce what I was getting for my money. They finally pushed me beyond my tolerance limit a few months ago and I’ve been back to sailing the high seas for the first time in 20 years.
I have more content now, all at acceptable quality options, all with good subtitles instead of the mess HBO was, and all on the same platform instead of having to jump between 7 different apps. I’m done with them and I’ll stay done with them until they pull their heads out of their asses.
Edit: if you get a cheap computer, a Chromecast, a FireTV, or what I have - an Nvidia Shield TV, then you get even get a nifty remote controller and a good standard browsing platform for everything.
Just set this up on a cheap Onn 4k box from Walmart. Works fantastic. Also setup the Trakt integration to keep up with what I watch across multiple devices.
I’ve tested jellyfin this week on my dedicated server. It’s cool but most of my files need transcoding to be played on the browser, which my weak server CPU cannot handle. The best option I found to stream any file format without eating up all server resources on this machine is to set up a simple nginx server with autoindex streaming the files to VLC. I use the “Open with VLC” browser extension to quickly open the links. Playback performance is quite good (scrubbing is fast) and everything plays well.
I dont get how that blows your mind. Families typically dont have the time to jump through loops so they pretty much have to pay for some kind of streaming service. I use to sail the seas all the time but between work, family, and trying to find time to myself there’s no time.
But they’re jumping through hoops having to pay a bunch of different companies subscription fees to use their apps that have no common interface so its literally nothing but hoops.
All you have to do is ask c/piracy or any community really where to get some Plex or jellyfin access
It blows my mind that you think the average streamer knows anything about pirating. It’s so much easier for the average person to download the app, put in your email, link a payment, and you’re in. Majority of streamers have never even heard of Plex or jellyfin, let alone participate in any pirating communities.
People need to learn how, but I doubt most people with a full-time job would care to learn. It ain’t really jumping through hoops when it’s easy to subscribe to a streaming service.
I can only speak for myself, but I started buying blu-rays a lot more once I dropped streaming services in favor of piracy. I’ll happily throw some cash toward the creators of things I like, and that’s a more direct way to do so.
When it comes to indie stuff or blockbusters that were huge risks for the studios like Dune, you should pay for it if you have the ability. Pirating doesn’t directly hurt most of the people who worked on the film, as they usually get payment upfront. It does hurt them in the future, as studios won’t finance similar future projects or projects with those creators. This is why you should pay for risky movies that are of higher quality.
If Dune didn’t make the money it did, the franchise would have ended there. I was surprised it did as well as it did, as while I never doubted that it would be a good movie considering the people that made it, I was convinced it wasn’t something most people would appreciate. The director’s last film, Blade Runner 2049, was better than the first movie, but not enough people saw it in theaters. I was blindsided by Dune even getting made, let alone being a financial success.
Bottom line, pay for movies you want people to make more of if possible. Pirate shit you don’t care about. If you can’t pay for media because of financial hardship, pirate away. Investors have made streaming services suck for consumers while squeezing workers into having little disposable income or time. They deserve piracy, as it’s the harvest they have sown. Property is a social contract, and by not letting workers see the benefits of ownership, they have every right to not respect it.
I cancelled back on the first price hike they did. Just wasn’t enough for the handful of times I used it per year. They had me at the point where I kinda didn’t care I was paying, but the price hike gave me a wake up call. Since then they’ve continued to up the prices and I’ve continued to not give a shit. Netflix originally won me back from bothering to pirate stuff cause it was so good and easy, now the opposite is true in the streaming space.
So right after I signed up at the beginning of this year, they switched from HBOMax to “Max.” I paid for a year in advance, and of course when I signed up there was nothing about them switching to a new brand. All of a sudden it was full of trash reality shows and ID Discovery true crime. I have no idea what possessed them to do that.
Then once it switched over I stopped being able to stream any new HBO shows on mobile and customer service won’t refund me any amount. Not that I can even communicate with them effectively. It’s all “chat” with AI or people who have no idea what I’m saying. Half the shows still won’t play on mobile for me.
TL;DR I paid for a year of HBO. They changed their selection a few months in. I lost mobile access to a bunch of their shows. And now I’m losing even more features before the year is up. That’s quite literally not what I paid for.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
There are government websites you can report this to, though I do not know what effect that will have.
IANAL, but my understanding is that if you paid for a year for a certain set of services they have to give you those services for the whole year, or refund you your money.
Until each and every one of us reading this commits to expending the energy, and sacrificing the leisure time, to actually pursue what small options we have, this is only going to get worse.
Ask them for a refund, in writing, document everything, and if they refuse, take it to your state’s AG office. Obviously I can’t speak for every state, but mine has slapped around whirlpool when they refused to fix a defective fridge, dell when they refused to replace a monitor with dead pixels, etc. I’ve never had a bad experience. It’s amazing how a letter from your local AG’s office will suddenly make companies be less shitty to you.
What we really need is an instance of GPT-4 trained on every court case in history as well as Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Clark Howard, Rosemary Shahan, etc, and instructed to act like a small town genius lawyer in a John Grisham novel.
Basically a chatbot absolutely full of ideas about how to punish corporations for shitty business practices. A resource center for consumer advocacy.
I had purchased a year in advance last fall and when it switched over, it only didn’t play on m9bile for me for a week, then I was able to stream on mobile regularly. However, with their changes, I chose not to renew my subscription. Their quality is degrading quite a bit, it was no longer worth it.
If you paid for a service you were not rendered, presumably with a credit card, and attempted remediation with the company, hopefully in writing or recorded in some form, you can do a charge back with your credit card.
The only way this becomes less likely in the future is if you sue them. Given you’re locked into a year contract, a lawsuit is the only kind of consequences they might face.
I’m old enough to remember when HBO’s entire point was you paid for cable so you wouldn’t have ads. That was their business model.
Then sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (I dunno, that decade’s kind of a blur) they started sneaking ads in between shows, but not in the middle of shows. But you were paying a higher price, with a few ads. Then they started showing ads to everyone, and still making you pay. I’m still salty about that.
This was always going to happen. They’ll compound paying PLUS ads, and you’ll like it, because what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.
It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.
e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.
e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.
That’s a false belief that keeps getting spread, cable TV started as the same channels with clear reception instead of having to rely on antennas, so no people didn’t pay not to have ads, they paid to be able to have a good reception of the same channels then had access to for free with bad reception, then some exclusive channels started appearing without commercials, but it wasn’t the norm.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
First phrase: Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948.
The majority of channels has commercials, the ones you paid extra for (like HBO) didn’t, they weren’t the majority and the point of paying for cable wasn’t too remove ads, you still had them on the majority of the channels because they were the same as what you got with antennas.
You’re not the only one who lived it buddy, you just don’t remember it properly.
So far I’m the only one providing sources, an anecdote of when you were a kid isn’t reliable.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable. Cable exclusive channels weren’t a thing before 1970 (when there’s was 10m subscribers already) and ads on a cable exclusive channel first started in 1977 with nearly all of them having ads in the in the 80s.
7 years of commercial free cable exclusive channels that were a minority of channels available at the time. No, people weren’t paying not to see adverts and no it wasn’t the point of cable TV like you said, the point of creating cable TV was to allow people to reliably watch TV by broadcasting the signal in a way that wasn’t affected by all sorts of elements out of the control of the broadcasters.
Again, how old are you? Do you actually remember this time? I gave one anecdote, but ask literally anyone my age and they’ll say the same. You certainly know people my age, don’t take my word for it, ask them what sleepovers were like before and after cable tv became a thing. Everyone my age remembers a massive shift, especially with Showtime.
With/without cable wasn’t an easy change. Lots of people didn’t accept it easily because it seemed technically complex. That’s part of why my family was an early adopter: my dad was an aerospace engineer, so it was a no-brainier.
The televisions sold in the late 70s were not set up for cable, so you needed a cable box and to configure your tv a certain way – typically by setting one of your two dials to channel 2, 4, or I think UHF 12 (?it’s been a while, but it depended on your tv, and you’d have an auxiliary dongle, too), you had to plug a cable box into your tv (which was nowhere near as simple as now), and then maybe sacrifice a goat. I joke, but the wiring out of the back of those things wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clear ports with matching inputs, but more like in the back of old school audio speakers, but more of them.
That doesn’t sound hard, but for most people the tv was a magic box that pictures came out of. These were your grandparents, they weren’t good at technology.
The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable.
In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about the era of Nickelodeon and the height of Showtime/Cinemax porn. I’m talking about more than a decade before that.
Yes, by that point, cable had settled into the subscription + ad model I’m saying was the down slide. I’m talking about way before that, when it hadn’t yet devolved.
Again, I’m not making this up, and I kinda wonder what you think my motivation would be to do so, but I’m very curious how old you are and if you’re just going on things you’ve read or if you were alive for this.
Can confirm, lol. And for cable you had to have coax from the wall to the cable box, and again from the cable box to an adapter that went into one of the existing ports. Later, you plugged your cable box coax straight into the TV, but that was late 80s if I remember correctly. Waaaaay before “Skinemax”, lol.
And even then not everyone had cable. It was an added expense, and there was a LOT more going out for entertainment because it was cheap and affordable. For example, I saw The Police in 1983 for $15 general seating (still prevalent in the southeast even after The Who thing in Ohio in 1979) and I saw many shows in exactly the same way: Asia, Loverboy, even the Stones. In the 70s dance was HUGE, as were bicycles and skateboards, and then later in the 80s you had malls and bowling and mini golf and whatever blew your skirt up. Pandemic aside, this thing where everyone stays inside and never goes out is the exact opposite of how it was then, so you saved your money for what YOU wanted to do, which was rarely sit home and watch TV. In my group of friends, among a dozen of us or so, maybe two had cable in the early 80s, but that grew, especially with MTV.
As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.
. As an aside, I have to ask: Did you ever get sent up to the roof by your parents after a storm to reset the antenna? Or be the unpaid holder of the rabbit ears by the TV, moving this way and that so your old man could watch his game with the least amount of snow and rolling horizontal lines? I did.
I was a weird nerd, and some of my fondest memories are helping my dad do engine work on our wood-sided station wagon (I was such a cliché) and going with him to the tv shop to pick up vacuum tubes for the tv after a loud pop and faint waft of smoke, then shimmying ass-upwards on the wall like spider man to hold the flashlight at the correct angle whilst my dad pulled the particle-board (I think, maybe cardboard) back off the television and taught me what every single part inside did.
Best time of my young life, hands down.
e: I’ve never been afraid of technology or learning things in my adult life. Thanks, dad.
(And if you’re raising your child like this, thank you. You’re helping to make good people that way.)
That is so cool. I learned those things, but only after I left. Started on TRS-80s (“trash 80s”) with the heavily armored clacky keyboard and then got into early PCs. I still remember Pong, lol.
Speaking of which, it was probably masonite or some kind of hard board on the back of the tv; it’s older than you think, and was on the back of a lot of those wonderful Art Deco radios of the 30s and 40s even before it was on the backs of televisions. The tv we had when I was a young kid was almost the size of a couch, so I have no idea what was on the back of it because I could never have moved it. But I remember the vacuum tubes, radios had those as well. And plugging a bad fuse with a penny, which probably wasn’t the best idea in the world but everybody did it.
(We had the faux-wood sided station wagon too, lol. Or maybe it was real wood? I don’t know. It was just genuine ugly.)
almost the size of a couch, so I have no idea what was on the back of it because I could never have moved it.
Oh yeah! Exactly! Mine was very similar to this, but a bit narrower. It was a behemoth, plus the cord was very short.
Thus the shimmying ass-upwards to hold the torch. There was scant space back there, and making more was work.
it was probably masonite or some kind of hard board on the back of the tv
I think you’re right. It was a dark, dense, and very thick board, but not actual wood. I had a radio or clock or something with the same backing, now you mention it. I hadn’t paid much attention except it was thicker than the ikea shit, lol.
Missing it might also be why you actually made it all the way to adulthood, lol. It’s dangerous as hell, but it’s something people used to do on knob and tube wiring in old houses. Codes changed after any number of fires, and they actually made a change to how circuit breakers were built so it wouldn’t work anymore, but essentially a fuse was a round thing that had two (I think?) wires crossing the center; if those overloaded they simply burnt out and that was the mechanism of circuit breaking. The hole in the center was exactly the size of a penny, and copper is an excellent conductor, and people put more and more appliances on house wiring that had not been upgraded since the dawn of electricity so they didn’t have available power, but they usually did have a penny.
If you lived in a new(er) house you probably never saw this, but for those of us in older neighborhoods and post WWII starter houses saw a lot of it. You were supposed to replace it as soon as you could (this was in the days of actually going to the hardware store and buying it in person during business hours) but shit happens, people forget, and houses go boom. So they stopped making it so that anyone could do that at all, which is probably a good thing.
God, yeah, that tv console, lol. That one is solid 70s, with the dark finish and heavy pseudo-Spanish turned posts; I think ours was a good eight or ten years older because it was more mid-century modern, blonde wood with sort of gold/beige fabric screen over the speakers, but yeah. That pic gave me a good chuckle, thanks.
And listening to good music with your head stuck between two physical speakers is almost mystical. They also produced it, specifically, for stereo as well as for listenability on little transistors, so there was a lot of thought given behind the scenes to those notes hopscotching across brain cells from left to right and back again. It’s meditative is what it is: thinking about nothing else, nowhere you had to be, maybe a little bored, and putting your head between the speakers. Pink Floyd was awesome that way, but so was a lot of music: everything from Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra to Kiss to Wild Cherry, whatever you got your groove on. It’s a holy thing.
BTW, I think your detractor is probably too scared to take me on lest they get hit with an avalanche of reminiscences and maybe a game of “what’s this?” with a pic or two of a 45 record adapter or something, lol. As well they should be. Thanks for making me think of these things. Those were good times.
You will know if your house has knob and tube: go up to the attic or down into the basement, and look for exposed wiring. Chances are excellent you have a mix of older and newer wiring, if it was not upgraded after the mid-80s or so. I couldn’t tell you exactly when myself, but at some point municipalities started moving away from a “pull it onto the lot, plug it in” housing code toward actually requiring that ANY electrical work not be approved unless the entire house was brought up to code.
But save your heart attack for a good steak, because knob and tube is not inherently dangerous. It’s what people were doing with it that was winning Darwin Awards. (You could probably do a search for “plugging a fuse with a penny” and see what you get.) I was in a 1948 house in 2015 that still had it: the basic wiring was mostly knob and tube, but the breaker box was modern and it was actually up to code.
So really, no worries about sleeping outside tonight, you still have time to look over your house’s paperwork, seen when it was modified (and whether they pulled permits or did it the I-don’t-need-no-permits way) and then get a real electrician to look it over for you. Chances are good that you’re well within code if you’ve had any serious remodeling or repair work done within the last 30 years or so. When you find nothing objectively unsafe, try not to hate me for making you look. Just don’t stick any loose change into the fuse box, lol.
Apologies for the scare. Did not mean to do that.
EDITED TO ADD: Here’s what knob and tube wiring looks like. You may even have newer wiring running right next to older knob and tube, or knob and tube that’s still there but not actually connected to anything because someone didn’t want to spend an extra half day pulling it out. Your mains/breaker/circuit box is a much better indicator of whether you need to be concerned.
BTW, I think your detractor is probably too scared to take me on
You sound just like a COVID denier, hope you realise that? “My experience is true, people who researched the subject and found sources from those in the industry are wrong. Let me show you with anecdotes instead of sources to back my point!”
While it is kind of sad you don’t know how to parse anecdotal evidence and it’s probably because you are completely unable to trust your own experiences and instinct to the point you require external validation for everything, I am enough of an asshole to admit that I have greatly enjoyed watching you stomp your feet and cry. And then wake up and stomp and cry some more the next day, lol. I love that we matter that much to you, and that we infuriate you so much you have to throw link after link at us and call us names, like anything you do matters at all.
But now I’m hanging up and leaving it off the hook. I’ll leave it to you to find some links that tell you what that phrase means so that you can validate the experience externally before you accept it. Have a nice day.
No, I’m talking about before the 70s when cable exclusive didn’t exist, the only “exclusives” that existed before then was signal from far away local stations that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible with regular antennas, but they were still channels available without cable in their local community. Heck, the FCC ended up forcing cable companies to carry local stations!
Also the number of subscribers might have been lower, but the number of TVs too. Cable subscribers before the 70s still represented a high enough portion of TV watchers that local stations put pressure on the FCC to regulate it.
HBO launched in 72, in 1980 there was 28 cable exclusive networks vs a multitude of local stations.
Why are you so bent about this?
Because I’m tried of seeing people who were kids or not even born back then pretend that it was better than it truly was. Facts are important and “the point of cable TV was to not have ads” isn’t a fact, it’s a lie that started from people who remember wrong (or only watched the few ads free channels because they were kids and uninterested in local TV or didn’t live it at all) when it’s extremely easy to prove the contrary. Heck, your parents would be the ones who could say considering they were the ones who decided to subscribe, not you.
However, due to many legal, regulatory and technological obstacles, cable television in the United States in its first 24 years was used almost exclusively to relay terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. It also became popular in other areas in which mountainous terrain caused poor reception over the air. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry.[1]
So basically for that first 24 years - around '1948 -'72 it was primarily used to get broadcast television to people in areas with poor reception.
Then came cable companies, producing content… without as many commercials as OTA t.v. I wasn’t born early enough to know the 70’s, but did grow up with antenna television and remember being introduced to cable. First thing I noticed was that there weren’t any ads at all on some channels. When I was a kid the ad free channels on my setup were 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, and some others I’m likely forgetting. I didn’t actually have too many more than that, and a lot of that was filler. The ad free channels were the meat and potatoes of my experience!
So, maybe history doesn’t say it was marketed that way, maybe the cable companies didn’t either, I won’t claim to know, but I will tell you that seeing channels without ads was a pitch on its own back then, you noticed it when you visited others homes and talked about it, others noticed when they visited out home and thought about getting it themselves etc.
Maybe it wasn’t a pitch, and the whole deal, but it was damned sure a selling point.
We got reception just fine, somehow even in my rural area, what we didn’t get was relatively new, commercial free movies, or titties.
I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.
Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.
I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.
The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.
This is my recollection as well; I was a young adult at the time.
Cable was ABSOLUTELY supposed to be ad-free. Ad-free, and local access so that anyone could have their own show. That was the tradeoff to get people away from the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) at the time. There were literally no ads.
But it didn’t last long at all. Local stayed ad-free for much longer; anything national came with ads embedded. Even the very first day of MTV had ads.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place written by people don’t even know what it means to unplug or hang up a phone, or why anyone would even do that, or what green stamps were, or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd, lol.
LillyPip is factually correct. You should be listening to them instead of trying to retcon history for them.
And before anyone screeches at me about what link said what, forget it. I’m not interested in reading text about how the 60s and 70s were supposed to have taken place
Check any sources on cable TV history, it’s all the same. Just because you decide to ignore it doesn’t make it false, it just proves your ignorance.
Here, since you “don’t want to read”, this one has a nice graphic that should make it easy for your brain ☺️
Interesting fact: Did you know that historians study things that happened before they were born and it doesn’t make them wrong and they don’t consider anecdotes to be absolute truth because individual memory isn’t reliable? Crazy right?
No, because the majority of TV channels you got when getting cable weren’t cable exclusive, cable exclusive appeared in 1972 (24 years after the introduction of cable broadcasting) and in 1977 came the first cable exclusive channel with ads.
People saying “not having ads was the point of cable” are wrong since not having ads on all the cable exclusive channels was a thing for 5 years and only happened after cable already had a good fooothold in the market.
You’ve already changed the goal posts. Your initial claim was that most cable networks had ads, and now you’ve walked that entirely back to “well there existed one channel that had ads”
But also the original comment was they were old enough to remember it
I didn’t move the goal post, most of the channels you got access to when subscribing to cable were the same channels you had access to without cable and they had ads, a minority of channels, starting in 72 with HBO, which was the first cable exclusive channel, didn’t have them but in 77 the trend reversed.
That’s 5 years without ads on a minority of channels you could watch and people speak like all cable was ad free and like that was the whole point of it. Well, no, the whole point was to get TV to people who didn’t have good reception and the people here ignore the 24 years of cable TV that came before 1972 and the 46 years since 1977.
in Australia that was the whole selling point of foxtel when it launched. these days it has more ads than free to air TV and still costs like $60 a month for the basic package. most people only use it for sport
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