Cut the Cable

[David LoPan]

Anyone else just cut the cord on the cable or other tv services? I cut my cable bill from almost 200 a month to 76 a month. That includes just basic tv and the fastest internet that have, 50 mbps down and 15 up. Thinking about getting a antenna from the house and drop another 25 of my bill.

[lovbyts]

Yup, I have a thread on it also. I dropped cable internet to Centerylink/DSL. It's plenty fast enough to stream movies. I got a Roku for watching movies. It's really good and no cost, 100s if not 1000+ choices. If you want to go more cheap/free then get xbmc. You can download it free and use on any computer or buy a little black box (Android) for around $100

[Rwy]

I did it. Got the antenna and it was a breeze during football season but I threw in towel and when back. I was torrenting everything but we make too much money to risk our assets for TV shows and movies.

[austinite]

Yep. Internet and rabbit ears is all I need.

[Bert]

I keeps it simple.

[songdog]

I just get basic cable.All those other channels just aint worth the money.I use too have them all then realized we didn't use them.

[David LoPan]

I have been noticing that I am getting to sleep about 2 hours earlier and then I had one been day of sleep. Been feeling much better without that dvr in the bedroom. Cant believe how the TV was messing with my sleep.

[Bigshotvictoria]

I cut the cord about a year ago. I have an old 2006 iMac plugged into my 50inch with a miniDVI-to-HDMI adaptor. I have two, 1terabyte external hard-drives plug in full of TV shows and movies. I use XBMC as my media player, linked with all the good streaming websites as well. I use 2 wireless routers, the second using google public DNS to remove region locked content for American Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Crackle, etc...

The few things I can't watch this way I torrent. If I really like the show/movie, I'll pay for bluray ASAP to support it. I do the same with books, I download .epub via torrent, if I really enjoy it I order it up on Amazon to support the writer. Same goes for music.

[--->>405<<---]

been thinking along these lines myself for awhile.. waiting for my contract with directv to expire.. prob there. just gonna run netflix and internet.

[David LoPan]

Cable company called today and asked if we wanted this great deal, for 1 year but we had to sign up for two years. They must want our money back. They said we were great customers that had not been late in 10 years and didnt want to lose our business. We said no thanks.

[trikydik]

we cut it about 1 year ago.. has its ups and downs....

[Euroholic]

I have no foxtel or internet in my house. Just my iphone.

[Rwy]

I just got the message from Time Warner that my promo period is over and my bill could go to 225 but they are only going to raise it 160 lol

[David LoPan]

I have no foxtel or internet in my house. Just my iphone.

Hard to watch porn on an iphone. LOL

[Bigshotvictoria]

Hard to watch porn on an iphone. LOL

Nah.


Just zoom in on the important bits.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum

[lovbyts]

Hard to watch porn on an iphone. LOL

Its easier than you might think. :-)

[Oliver47]

Actually I am in the same boat as you as far as trying to get rid of cable. As for alternative devices, I am considering Roku and Amazon firestick. They are probably the two best. Having read many resources (one of the most reputable and helpful ones is https://www.firestickhow.com/misfit-...uild-kodi.html ), I come to conclusion that Amazon Firestick is the most suitable for my needs. So keep you posted on how it works for me.

[C27H40O3]

The advantage of firestick is loading the Cinema app to watch current movies.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Beetlegeuse]

I live 30 miles from a mid-sized metropolitan area and I get 54 OTA channels, including all three major broadcast networks and public tv. Probably 1/3rd of that number are either dedicated religious channels or TV marketing.

I ditched the cable when my satellite TV bill topped $200/mo. It started out at $45 and wouldn't stop increasing. I might have had 200 channels but I only ever watched five or six. I found out since then that the whole purpose of "bundling" is to use the profits from the popular channels to subsidize the unpopular ones. And in large part this with why so many weak-ass left-wing political channels stay afloat when there's so little public support for them.

The trick to getting the best possible out of OTA is selecting the antenna best suited to your needs. To start that process you have to assess what those needs are.

For purposes of antenna selection, digital OTA transmits in three bands, Low VHF, High VHF and UHF. Not all antennas are as strong in each band as others are so you need to do research to find out which of those three bands you want your new antenna to support. The trick to this is that since switching to digital, all TV stations have a "broadcast channel" (which is the frequency they transmit on) which isn't necessarily the same as the "virtual channel" (which is the channel you set on your TV dial to watch that station.

tvfool.com has a great tool for helping you determine the specs your new antenna needs. Input your location and it'll give you a list of all the stations there's even a snowflakes chance in hell of you receiving. Part of the data it will give you is both the station's virtual channel and it's broadcast channel. Look for the virtual channel of the stations you wouldn't want to be without and it will tell you what its broadcast channel is. Do this for all of your "wouldn't want to live without" stations and then tally up the bands. The bulk of the broadcast channels (14-83) are UHF (same as in the olden days). 2-6 are Low VHF and 7-13 are High VHF.

Now you know which bands are the most important to you. Next (using the same TV Fools tool) check the distance to those stations. The mfgr's specs on the individual receiver antennas will tell you how far their antenna is 'rated' to. In some cases that distance will vary according to the specific band. What you're most interested in is the one station on your "wouldn't want to be without" list that's furthest from you.

Now you know your band requirements and your distance requirements and all that's left is the compass headings to the broadcast antennas (which also will be noted by TV Fools). If you've got antennas in every direction from you you'll have to make compromises because no receiving antenna is going to pick up from all 360º unless they're very close to you. Off the top of my head, unless they're very close, I'm thinking antennas usually top out at about a 45º span.

Where to get antenna information? The best consolidated source I know of is at Digital Home-dot-Canada. Canadians are more into this because Canada is one big damn place and big cities are few and far between. Not every antenna made is mentioned in the linked thread, and not every antenna mentioned is still available (I couldn't find a source for the one that would have been best suited to my "knowns"), but this is still the best source for this sort of information I'm aware of.

And with those three details you've got the information you need to choose the antenna that's most likely to suit your needs. You might skip the research and guess, or buy the same antenna as your neighbor has, or you old pre-digital antenna might still work. If you live in the middle of a big city, you might be so signal-rich that there's no such thing as a 'bad' antenna. But you'll optimize your chances of buying the antenna that's best suited to your situation if you'll consider those three factors, then choose your antenna based on that information.

I do note that in some cases I had to go to the particular antenna manufacturer's website to find complete specs, but my old pre-digital antenna was YUGE and only got 12 channels. The new antenna is considerably smaller yet still picks up 54 channels.

I also should note there is no such thing as a "digital" antenna. Radio waves are still analog, same as they always were. So don't worry if the antenna you're considering doesn't advertise it's "digital-ready." That's nothing but hype anyway.

[BG]

Good post.

[Obs]

Our contract is up in a few months and we are parting ways.
I only ever watch netflix.

Netflix is on its way out for the same reasons Beetlguese suggested.

Disney is goin to release a similar streaming network for $6 a month in attempt to take them out as well as remove their programmong from netfix.

I read an article in forbes about this.

Funny thing is the forbes article was only written to hurt markets and help disney in their venture.

It will work though.

[ghettoboyd]

im fucked up cus I pay for all of it even Netflix and I don't even watch tv except for sports... oh yea and I love the history channel as well, not sure how much history is being shown there but the programs are at least thought provoking and interesting...I do it for my family who spend 90% of there time on the tube or there phones...