I solved this problem by having not watched cable television in like ten years.
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same. something like 17 years here.
Caught some TV a couple months ago at my moms place, and was horrified about the amount of ad breaks and length. I don't know how anyone can tolerate this
Frog in the pot, man. It's crazy what people put up with. Same with rawdogging YouTube
With a DVR you haven't had to watch a commercial on TV/cable in over 20 years. Streaming is bringing unskippable ads and surveillance. The internet is making things worse, not better.
I visit a house where they have the tv on all the time. Commercials and everything. It's harsh.
I jolly roger everything. No commercials.
Ads?
I found a cool way of ad-blocking back when I watched TV. Probably does not work anymore, and relies on Teletext page 888 (closed captions, the number varies by country) not being updated during ads.
- Mute
- Switch to another channel and back to clear Teletext cache
- Turn on fullscreen Teletext, any page (I like the 89x test patterns)
- Type "888" as the page you want to go to
- The TV will now wait for 888 to be broadcast, which only happens after ads and trailers
- The program is now running with captions. Disable Teletext and unmute if you want sound instead.
What British wizardry is this?
https://www.noblecollection.com/Item--i-PRP-HP-8050
Raise it straight up in the air and say "Addi-nau-seum" into the microphone, then quickly point it at the TV.
Sadly I don't think Teletext has been broadcast (in the UK at least) in over a decade
It definitely still works in the Czech Republic and Germany. Our pre-2023 president was an avid user. Public TV stations hand-format their own and syndicated news for 39 columns and pick monthly poetry. Commercial stations just automatically jam syndicated news into the format, sometimes overflowing to another subpage just by 1 word, and host huge amounts of banner and fullscreen ads with meh graphics by Teletext standards, mostly for dodgy phone services like tarot and erotic hotlines. They also host "chat24", probably the worst message board ever: imagine a public IRC room but $0.50 per message (by SMS) including setting your nickname and color.
I stopped watching TV some 15 years ago or smth.
Ain't no ads on Jellyfin.
I stopped watching 'tv' because of ads. No way will I pay for ads or be subjected to them as best I can.
This is the way.
Finding other ways to get your media that doesn't blast you with ads.
Or if it always blasts you with ads, find a way to block them.
Don't let the terrorists win.
I don't watch shit with adds lol. I just recently learned that in the US Netflix, Amazon Prime and the such offer paid subscriptions that still show adds. Like what the actual fuck? Just pirate at that point, the bad sites have an equal share of adds and the good ones have none, it's a much better experience.
Never directly watch any ads. We record everything on HTPC (NextPVR), ads are cut before the recordings get thrown into Jellyfin. Ads in general simply dont happen in our household
OP was asking about Normal people.
Of course non-normals ad block.
But I've seen my parents use their phone and ignore the 60% of ads take that over the screen.
I always mute and go off to do something else (meaning, I'm not watching, either). One of my worst hells was when I had to take care of my MIL for 2 months last year and while she watches YouTube non-stop, she does it with all the ads. I hadn't realized how bad the ads there actually are these days. I almost didn't make it.
i have not owned a television since I was a child and came to develop my quirky ad-reviling character trait
That's one of the reasons I cut the cord.
And unsubscribed from Netflix/Prime when they started asking for more money for ads.
And freak out whenever the weird hacky fix from the depths of Lemmy that kills youtube ads stops working for a day.
Ads are the goddamn worse, Carpenter had them dead to rights in They Live.
I have not put myself in a position to be forced to watch ads in a very long time. Even when I had normal TV service I was recording shows to a computer that would identify the commercials to automatically skip them when I watched a show. But I guess I'm not anywhere near normal in that regard.
My TV lets me pause live TV, so I pause, leave the room for a bit, come back and fast forward through the ads.
DVRs are great. I don't think they're really a thing much anymore, I guess because of the declining popularity of FTA TV. Is this a feature that's built in to your TV or is it a separate DVR? How long have you had it?
Jellyfin has a built in DVR. It works with HD Homerun tuners.
No TV, no ads. Simple.
My spouse and I have not been forced to watch a TV-ad since the late 90S. Since the day we got rid of our TV once and for all, when we realized the were expecting us to pay good money to buy a TV set and then still have to watch their ads, and more and more of them? Not the best deal. So thx, but no. 25 years later, we still have to regret it once ;)
Ads aren't a thing in my life. On the off day I have to visit someone who lives with ads and suffer through one or two I tough it out, or look at my phone, or do something different.
I don't watch live TV. I dont pay for any subscription services except phone service and internet data. I watch YouTube content that has the ads stripped out. I download youtube videos that get often rewatched to hard drive. For movies I buy DVD that can have the drm stripped out.
I play good video games preferably drm free (steam is the one service I can't really give up easy, but it has offline mode and the deck so praise gaben!). I read e-books that are drm free. I have a mp3 player downloaded with all my music drm free.
The better question is, why are you willing to live with ads at all? Assuming you are in control of your living situation and have the power change whats shown on tv or played through speakers.
Why would you tolerate being constantly bombarded with manipulative messaging by companies, political canpaigns, and all the other powerful groups who want to affect he masses for their benefit?
Why is it so hard just say no? To give up the forms of toxic entertainment delivery? Why can't you sacrifice ease and convinence and familiarity to regain some control overhow your attention is spent during free time?
If you like something, buy it and really take the steps to own it physically.
Has anyone watched an NHL game lately. They got annoying moving ads on the boards. Hard to concentrate on the puck with whirling ads in the background. Someone needs to use AI to counter thier AI. It's enough for me to stop watching. And I mute ads of course.
I use a TV and pi connected to my server thus no ads but what gets me is radio ads in cars such as a taxi or in the barbershop, I hate them, they're obnoxious.
And restaurants! That makes me quite angry - if a restaurant forces me to listen to ads while waiting for food, I may not really come next time.
Restaurants playing radio are the worst... Once you're at your table and you realize you will hear ads the whole time it's already too late
Agreed. I'm in the UK and exclusively listen to the BBC radio stations which have no ads. It always annoys me when colleagues have other radio stations on with ads
I made an Arduino IR cloner, took it to the barbershop and when nobody was looking copied the mute button's code so I now have a little device to silence the long Retro Music Television ad breaks I would otherwise have to endure. I don't really go anywhere with TVs otherwise.
How did you do this?
The remote was lying around and I just pointed it at an ATmega on a small breadboard with this code when nobody was looking. I muted the TV briefly to check that it worked, and took the device home to make a transmit-only ATtiny version inside one of those promotional keychains that have a coin cell, button and LED. I didn't bother with writing the program the "right" way (sleep mode and pin change interrupt, which would eliminate button contact problems and allow for more complex behavior like more buttons), the ATmega just plays the sequence on powerup.
The other option is to find the closest possible TV model online (not easy, wall-mounted TVs you can't see from the back barely have any distinguishing features) and check if the listed remote code works. Or use an IR-enabled smartphone, the various apps cover most TV models.
I don't watch cable TV. I get free Disney plus which includes ads. For these I do in fact mute them. I find ads annoying.
I don't watch TV.
record everything. skip the commercials.
the need for having them in an ad supported environment is understood. but it's long since gotten out of hand as to how many there are. 8-10 minutes per hour when i was a kid to 20-22+ per hour now.
I stream everything and pay for ad free services. I hate ads.
Oh yea, I mute that shit before they start.
I don't watch many things that have commercials. Only if I really want to see something and nothing else is more convenient or it's just for background noise while working on a project.
But since so many streaming sites let the ads be super loud compared to the content, yes, I usually mute it a couple of seconds ahead of time to avoid the jump scare.
For the few cases I watch live TV over the antenna, I will either lower the volume or leave it be. Muting to silence is usually too jarring but the same could be said about the ad itself
I avoid ads religiously but when I can't avoid them I mute and look away
My wife normally mutes them, but I generally don't care enough to pick up the remote and push the mute button. I just tune them out and use it as a chance to grab a snack or go to the bathroom, or just check stuff on my phone.
I mute them habitually and very regularly wish muting was kept as a metric so "they" could know just how much I truly loathe them.
No, I never muted them. How else are you supposed to know when the series continues?