My parents recently retired and moved closer to my siblings and I and they had some of our old stuff. There were some VHS tapes I had recorded of the sci fi channel back in the day and I got a tv/vcr combo at a thrift store to relive when the channel was great.
I do wonder what happened to the channel? Is it just another case of marketing to people who don’t like your product like video games and comic books? It seemed to be a great place for nerds at one point. I even liked their take on wizard of oz and Alice in wonderland, but this was when a twist on a classic could be interesting.
I used to read their website but the last straws for me was a review of fantasy novels where the author started talking about Tolkien, GRRM, and Robert Jordan only to dismiss their work due to them being white males and she went on to hype some current year fantasy written by the usual “the patriarchy is everywhere” type feminists. Then they did a review of Brightburn that talked about white supremacy and I was done.
But my original question... what happened to the channel?
They hired some people that didn't know how to spell (SyFy) and it was all downhill from there.
I didn't really watch Sci-Fi growing up so I can't speak to specifics, but I can speculate as the other channels have had the same thing happen. WTF is TLC anymore? The Last Channel I'd ever want to watch I guess. Even the Food channel is nothing but a bunch of damn cake contests.
I ditched my cable channels about two years ago. There was no ROI on them. I never watched them. I get more value out of recording old sitcoms for free off the local subchannels. I always liked those old shows anyway, even as a kid. They are a hell of a lot more funny.
I thought they changed it because the new channel was all reality TV shows. It no longer contained "science" nor "fiction", and therefore would be false advertising.
I think the SyFy rebrand included some “not just sci-fi” BS too iirc
My parents had cable, but I never did. Do you have an over the air antenna? I bought one and pretty much never used it nor the TV, but it was useful to occasionally de-stress last year (mainly as background noise or some sporting events) when my bedroom-come-office became an enemy.
You can get an adequate one for as little as $25 if you're in an urban area, and not that much for an extended range in suburban places. It's an OK otherwise free fallback if you ever, rarely, have the itch to put on TV.
Yeah, I've had the antenna for about 6 years or so now. I also bought an HDHomerun that it's connected to, that lets me use streaming boxes, or my computer, etc. to watch. All in all, I think I spent about $100 for the whole setup and it's free to use ever since. The HDHomerun was sort of key in that it let me use the Plex DVR to record off of it. I've got entire series on my NAS of old shows I like. I don't think I've got anything newer than 2000. Network TV was going downhill bad by then. All in all, for TV it's the best $100 I ever spent. The tech is super slow to change, so it's not at all unreasonable to get 15-20 years out of that $100.