hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0313.txt

Episode: 313
Title: HPR0313: Recesion Era Media
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0313/hpr0313.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 16:04:09

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Thank you.
Hello, my name is Lost in Bronx.
The subject of this episode is Recession era multimedia, specifically how to save money
on your daily media intake, and let's face it, there is a recession on.
Times are tough and will only be getting tougher before they get any easier.
Some people are cutting back on perceived luxuries, either as a precautionary measure or
out of necessity.
For instance, my wife's job is at the point of falling down.
So this got me to thinking, we need to save money.
Now though it doesn't have to be, media can be very expensive, especially television.
So I will be focusing mostly on that.
You might be in a position where you either want or need to disconnect something, some
service or other, because money has gotten tight.
You could do that dramatically and enjoy the silence, nothing wrong with silence, or
you can simply turn to a wide range of free or inexpensive alternatives.
I'll be talking about some really obvious things, none of which should be new to you, but
maybe you've never really thought about them in terms of actually saving you money.
Okay, say you do have to ditch the cable TV.
That doesn't mean you have to lose TV itself.
They still do broadcast through the airwaves.
There are fewer towers around these days to be sure, but that's not a showstopper.
Time was, within living memory, when that was the only way to get television programming
into your house.
The key, of course, is having a good antenna.
When I was a kid, we had one of those giant rigs on the roof with an electric motor on
it to turn the thing around to get better reception for different channels.
The controller for that was a box with a dial that sat on the TV.
You turned the dial, I guess it was supposed to emulate the compass points, and it made
a loud and weird chunking sound, you know, whenever it was turning the antenna around.
Anyway, you don't need to do anything that complex or involved or expensive anymore.
If you live right next to a broadcast tower, you know, close enough that brain tumors
in leukemia are the scurred to the neighborhood, you can get by with one of those little rabbit
ear antennas.
But even then, those things suck.
You can do better for cheap.
In the USA, broadcasts will be going all digital, as opposed to analog very soon.
In fact, it might have already happened by the time you hear this.
Going digital is okay.
There aren't really that many analog only TVs kicking around anymore, and there are those
converter box thingies available in case you have one of those old TVs.
It's no big deal.
It's also nice is that high-definition TV is being broadcast over the airwaves, free
of charge by several of the major networks.
In the United States anyway, all you need is a quality antenna to bring your HD capable
TV into full swing.
So, you don't have a decent antenna, or maybe you do, or maybe you think you do, but if
you bought it somewhere, you probably don't, no matter what you paid for it.
If you want a quality antenna, you'll want to make it yourself.
For about 20 bucks in materials, you can be pulling in HD signals left and right.
There was a really cool thread over on the Linux Outlaws forum, started up by a guy called
John Culp, covering his construction of just such an antenna in some detail.
It was the first I'd really heard about someone actually doing this, and it seems pretty
simple, even to someone like me, who may easily be described as the anti-bavila.
I'm all thumbs.
Some people got mad skills.
I just get mad.
And so, I think I could do it.
I'll put a couple links in the show notes about this.
Food for thought anyway, for the down on your luck, do it yourself or...
Ah, but you say you just got your Myth TV up and running, and you'll be damned if you'll
give up your cable subscription now.
If you can say that without fooling yourself, then this episode is not aimed at you.
Things aren't that bad yet.
I hope they never get that bad for you.
And if they are, if this is something you have to think about right now, keep in mind
that a Myth Box can sync up with a number of online services and products.
And I'll get to some of them in a bit.
Myth TV can still come in mighty handy, cable or satellite subscription, notwithstanding.
Without question, the internet is your best friend here.
Disconnect your TV, cancel your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, quit the local video
club before even considering disconnecting your net access.
You can get all those things to one degree or another off the internet for no additional
charge.
Now broadband is best of course, but even dial-up beats most traditional sources of news,
edification, and entertainment that have a dollar cost to you attached to them.
If you can get some for free, that's even better of course than worth holding on to.
A decent portable media player or PMP as I'll refer to it, if you have one, adds even
more to this sort of flexibility.
You can take your podcasts, because I assume you'll listen to more than just this one.
Your music, e-books, videos, all of it, you can take it all in your pocket.
Get an RSS feed going of the latest headlines and stories of interest, dump them into a
file format the player can display and sync it every morning.
Now that beats a dead tree newspaper or magazine on every front and it costs you nothing beyond
your internet access fee.
If you have a PMP that's running rockbox, you have access to a rich multimedia experience
and it's free as in speech.
And what's better for the purposes of this episode free is in beer.
Lots of multimedia are available, especially for broadband users on the internet.
Now not all of it and really not the best it is free as in speech.
But these are hard times and we're not all Richard Stolman.
For instance some of us use deodorant, don't get me wrong, software freedom is vital.
But we are talking about finances and economics here.
We're not in a depression maybe, but we can take a page from the books of people who were.
You look into the history of any time period when people were living in deprivation and invariably
you'll find that they had to tighten their belts, work hard when they could, and most
of all bend a little.
Sure you can get by with less, you can get by with only food, clothing and shelter, turn
off the TV, the internet, the lights and you can still survive.
That's good to know in case things get really bad.
But we're not talking about survival here, we're not talking about putting food on
the table.
We're talking about getting through tough times, we're still remembering that we live
in the friggin 21st century.
I categorically reject any suggestion that quote tightening our belts on quote requires
that we turn back the clock in any way, shape or form.
When a sizable portion of the sum total knowledge of humankind is available at our fingertips
and that includes some of your favorite TV shows, how can anyone find it dispensable?
Now you've got to do what you've got to do.
If it is a choice between missing the mortgage payments or dumping the internet, well then
the choice is clear.
But if things aren't that bleak yet, then dump the cable bill, dump the book club, even
dump your cell phone before dumping your home internet access.
Okay.
So you have your connection.
You say you want all your latest shows?
Hmm, well that's just too bad.
There is a recession on it.
You can't have them all for free unless you use Bitcoin, of course.
Now the laws of the United States and other countries frown on that.
People who do that sort of thing are pirates and anarchists and hackers.
They support terrorism and encourage child molestation and they might even be commies.
So with all that in mind, I encourage you to do as you will and to do it with finesse.
Another source of fairly fresh television content online are services like OpenHolu.com
or an aggregator service like Tiyadi.com and the various networksites like ABC, NBC,
CBS, sci-fi channel, cartoon network, food network, etc.
They almost all have some sort of day old bread available for free viewing.
A lot of it you may be haven't seen.
A lot of it maybe isn't worth seeing, but that's just like real TV isn't it?
Hey, don't knock it.
You're poor, remember?
Now that's all out of the USA, of course.
Other countries have broadcasters that offer similar services.
Better ones, in fact, like those selfish bastards at the BBC who won't share with the rest of the world.
Anyway, to hell with TV networks.
Who hasn't spent a night or 10 surfing on YouTube?
A waste of time, mostly, without question.
But how much time have you wasted in front of the idiot box watching utterly forgettable,
commercial tripe that you paid to see that is money and time you will never, ever get back?
If you're going to stare at a screen all night and watch a whole lot of nothing, don't pay for it
or at least don't pay for that only.
Now that being said, there is a surprising amount of good stuff on YouTube as well.
I'm a Mythbusters fan, but like I said, I don't have cable or satellite.
The other night, I think I spent three or four hours watching Mythbusters segments on YouTube.
My son likes his shows, cartoons like Peep in the Big Wide World, and Word Girl, and Code the Oco.
Those are all on different channels on regular TV.
For him, on YouTube, they're all on the same channel.
Same interface, same search function to find them all, and no commercials either.
Oh, he still likes regular TV.
When we go to the local coffee shop and he gets his hot chocolate or hot vanilla, well,
they have a TV there for anyone to use, and he's all over that.
He'll watch cartoons all day.
He'll watch anything.
And that's what frightens me.
That's why I even prefer internet-based multimedia.
We pick and choose only the best content to watch.
That is to say, the best as we define it, what we like.
Try doing that on cable TV.
Try doing it on your favorite channels, even.
How many commercial breaks do you sit through?
How much filler?
How many more so-called reality shows and talent shows can you really enjoy?
How much more mixed martial art fighting can they cram onto every conceivable channel?
If your money's getting tight, don't buy any more of that garbage.
Cut the cord, take down the dish, look for your favorite stuff online.
Bookmark what you find and go back often.
Chances are our other fans are adding content all the time.
But why stop with YouTube?
If we're saying a Riva Dirtchy baby to television, look for web-only shows like GeminiDivision.com
with Rosario Dawson, drawn by Pain.com, which I highly recommend, by the way.
Star Trek Phase 2, Star Trek of Gods and Men, the list is endless.
I also recommend sites like Adam Films or UndergroundFilm.org and certainly The Internet Archive.
I mean, it's a pain in the ass to navigate, but Archive.org has classic films, new stuff,
old stuff, blogs, vlogs, cartoons, a sizable number of feature-length motion pictures and
foreign languages, daily news, books, all-time radio shows, music, you name it.
And all of this stuff, all these sites are free to you, gratis, they represent many
nights of entertainment.
Okay, if you have enough money for basic cable, but you have to drop your premium channels,
all of this still applies.
Here at my house, we don't have cable in the area, so that's out.
And satellite is just too damn expensive for what they're offering.
So in addition to wireless internet via Verizon Wireless, which I do not recommend, by the
way, but that's a rant for another time, in addition to that, we maintain a Netflix account.
Three movies at a time, one for the misses, one for the boy, and one for myself.
And while I'd never recommend doing anything illegal, it is interesting to note that handbreak
among others is a cross-platform application that, in theory, can rip movies for viewing
at a later time during a period of the media doldrums.
That might seem morally questionable to some, not unlike perhaps, offering a very wide
range of streaming movies for your customers at no additional charge, but making them only
a viewable with the Microsoft Silverlight application.
We're all Linux in my house, so Netflix's thoughtfulness in this regard has been greatly
appreciated.
I should be more pissed about that, but Verizon Wireless's 5GB cap per month makes it academic.
That's right, 5GB, go ahead and laugh, I'd like to myself.
Actually, that brings up a point I want to make.
My connection is crappy.
It's expensive.
It's barely above dial-up speeds most days.
It's highly unreliable, going offline nearly every day at some point or other, and sometimes
staying off for hours.
And there's that obscene monthly bandwidth cap.
And yet, despite that, we enjoy what I consider to be a reasonably good multimedia experience
in our home on a very hard and fast budget.
Is the internet a rich substitute all in its own for a family that enjoys its premium
cable or satellite channels?
Almost certainly not.
But when the wolves are at the door and you're sweating your house, rent, or car payments,
I am telling you it can be an adequate substitute.
You and yours can get by and not feel like you're in the dark ages.
Will it kill you not to know what happens on a survivor or a big brother this season?
Do you really have any doubt that Jack Bauer is going to save the world in the end?
Well, bet not.
In a Ford Netflix or Blockbuster, fair enough.
Check out your local library.
I know.
I know you hear that one a lot, but it's true.
Most libraries these days have a collection of DVDs for grown-ups and kids available, sometimes
a surprising amount of them, even in small branches.
There's music there, an internet access, so you can download a movie or two to a USB
stick without adding anything to your home bandwidth cap.
Most libraries participate in an interlibrary loan service, allowing you to get materials from
far-flung libraries sent to your local one, and everything is indexed.
You look up what you want, find out where it is, and ask them to get it for you.
You make a list, a long one, every time you intend to go.
You can walk out of every visit to your library with an armload of materials, and if you're
significant other and kids, if you have any, also have library cards, they can do the same.
Okay, here's another one, friends and relatives.
Barrow their DVDs, or even VCR tapes for the kids, and let them borrow yours, get a regular
exchange going.
But I advise you to back up your discs, just in case you don't get them back again.
Don't overlook the bargain bins it stores either.
This is an especially good source of stuff for the kids.
You know, crap TV shows from the 80s, that sort of thing.
It'll be stuff they haven't seen anyway.
Something beats a bowl of popcorn, and the whole family gathered in front of the tube,
making fun of the A-Team, or David Hasselhoff, or something.
The clothes, the hair, the acting, it can be a fun night, I'm telling you.
And what's more, a really cheap one.
But what about music, you ask?
What about magnitudes, and gemendo, I say?
There's free stuff there, and other stuff that's inexpensive, and it's all stuff you haven't
heard yet.
I could talk about how you shouldn't be buying from the big labels anymore, and you should
be supporting the artist directly and all that, but you've heard all that before, and
besides, we're all about the Benjamin's right now.
My money is tight, and I'll bet yours is two.
If I can get good music for free, or cheap, it sounds much sweeter to me than anything
I've bought in a store.
And those two sites are just the surface.
There's Facebook, and Myspace, and all sorts of social sites that hold wonderful artists
you have never heard before.
They hold lots of drag too, and you'll have to wait through it, but at least you'll
not have paid for it.
Okay, books.
Never, and I mean never pay full price for a book.
First off, e-books for free download off the internet, beat anything else out there.
But inexpensive downloads that are worth it exist too.
If you like science fiction or fantasy, vain books should be your very first stop.
They offer e-books of their top authors in a wide range of formats, many for free, and
downloads of other books for cheap.
If you can put a few books on your phone or on a PMP or something, you'll never be without
something to read.
Now, kids' books are harder to find in electronic form, and hard to read on electronic devices
when you do find them.
That's likely to change, but for now, you'll need to look elsewhere for picture books and
stories for young readers.
Thrift stores.
Bargain outlets online.
I can recommend strandbooks.com and powels.com and EdwardRHamilton.com, all of which ship worldwide.
I bought from EdwardRHamilton for years, and the prices really are incredible.
I'm not sure how powels does things exactly, but I actually worked for the strand for many
years in the kids department.
Everything there is discounted, even the brand new stuff, even best sellers, save up, have
everyone pick out a bunch of favorites, and have it all shipped in one go to save money.
Finally, where is the modern family without gaming?
Don't spend any more money on gaming than you truly feel you need to.
Dumped world of warcraft.
Those bastards don't support Linux anyway, so who needs them?
Dump any online gaming service or site that wants to charge you money.
Of course, it is fun, but it's simply not worth it when bill collectors are bugging
you on the phone over your credit card balance.
Dumped, I know gaming guy myself, but I do know that there are massive multiplayer RPGs
out there that are free and that do work with Linux.
Better yet, remember all the nights you used to play D&D back in the old days?
Well dust off your rulebooks and put a game together for your family.
Yeah, that's right, play a role playing game with your family.
Get your kids used to rolling polyhedron dice.
Let them off text messaging their friends, texting the money paid anyway, and get them
talking to you and to each other.
That can't be a bad thing.
And tons of people are playing real role playing games online these days.
Check out the TangledWeb.net and 4uglymonsters.com.
Those are community sites and nice jipping off points for anyone looking to get back into
so-called pen and paper RPGs.
Check out computer based tools that help enhance the game like OpenRPG or RPTools.
Dan Washcoe did a review of RPTools in a recent logger podcast and I'll have links in
the show notes to all of these.
Look into free and open source software tools for role playing games.
They're free of charge and they work and they're cool.
That's all I have for now, but if you have any ideas about this topic, feel free to write
me.
I'm lost in Bronx at gmail.com, that's L-O-S-T-N-B-R-O-N-X at gmail.
If I can put together some good ideas, I will do a part two to this episode and I'll
credit anyone who gave me the tips.
In the meantime, be well and keep your wallet closed.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio, HPR is sponsored by tarot.net, so head
on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-C for all of us in here.