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Seriously considering dropping TV cable and buying a roof antenna.

J. Roger

J. Roger

Hundreds of channels with nothing on, I've become a zapping zombie.

A buddy's got a tiny flat-screen at his shop and gets super-crisp 1080 reception with a dinky-looking table-top antenna.

After checking out what channels I could receive on tvfool.com, I'm strongly considering getting a rooftop antenna and pulling the plug on cable.

Anyone else done this or thinking of doing so?






FYI...tvfool.com will give you the channels you can receive from your address (or just your zip-code) based on the type of antenna (table, attic, or roof) and antenna height.
 
redrako

redrako

We ditched cable about two years ago and have been very pleased with a high-speed internet connection, a Roku box for streaming Netflix, You Tube (not available post Google purchase) and a $25 Radio Shack TV antenna.

Our TV is 720 resolution and we receive all of the Boston channels, major and minor perfectly. Despite the fact that our living room is on the opposite side of the house, we get excellent reception. (We are about 8-10 miles from the TV transmitter towers with some pretty significant hills between us and the transmitters). I think that type of antenna required for watching broadcast TV has much to do with how much distance is between you and the transmitter.

Another good resource is Antenna.org.

A nice bonus of cutting the cable is that your television watching becomes much more deliberate, so there's a lot less sitting aimlessly relaxing in front of the TV watching something that you loathe just to watch something.
 
Hunter

Hunter

I have a few friends that did it and are happier for it. Because I live in a basement suite I haven't made the switch but I watch most of my shows from netflix or dvds and the occational episode from the broadcasters website.
 
Liberty_2112

Liberty_2112

My wife and I cut our cable a few weeks ago. We kept only the high speed internet. Monthly bill dropped from $225 to $39.99. We use Apple TV to stream Netflix and Hulu. We are very, very happy with our decision. Basically, the decision has equalled less TV watching, more reading, more family board games at the kitchen table, etc. Overall a great decision.
 
SiBurning

SiBurning

I got an antennae and tried it out. In NYC, I can pull in 79 channels. 33 are in Spanish, 27 in Mandarin, and only 11 in English.
 
OldSaw

OldSaw

The wife's investment
Did it and don't regret it. Netflix on Apple TV works pretty good for about $8 a month.
 
Lather

Lather

I have an antenna for 16 years now. We first got it when we were broke and couldn't afford cable and never removed the antenna from the attic.

Then when OTA HD signals, and when we got an HDTV, I hooked it up and was amazed. The picture is absolutely clear and way better than my digital cable.

If you can get NBC in Canada, then you are getting all the stations available. When the weather is poor, the signal glitches.
 
Black Adder

Black Adder

I did just that, and have never regretted making the decision. Paying for TV is nonsense. All you really need is your local channels, and there are a growing number of nostalgic channels (ME TV, Antenna TV) that run shows from the past, and the old shows are light years ahead of anything you'll see in this day and age of reality TV.

Here's a good place to start:

TV Antenna Source Indoor/Outdoor TV Antennas - digital/HDTV

What I like about this site is that he explains things clearly, and without the nonsense. Indoor antennas are really hit or miss; I have a rooftop one that I bought from the link I've provided and it gives me a strong signal. There's a lot of good information here and it helps when you decide to set up your system. I did it all by myself and probably the biggest problem I had was to not fall off the roof. Your house will look "retro" because there are very few houses nowadays that have an antenna, but that's okay.

Don
 
seattleshaver

seattleshaver

I did that about 3 years ago. I haven't missed it at all. I have a set top antenna, I do live in the city, and I get many channels. Now that broadcast band is digital each channel has two separate channels so you get much more than before.

Sometimes during bad weather I don't get everything but I rarely even use the TV these days. I can get almost everything I got on cable on various free online sites and can watch them whenever I want.

It's like giving up your land line phone...very easy to do.
 
imfallen_angel

imfallen_angel

Did it also, about 2-3 years ago...

Started building my home system (aka a computer and lots of hard drives, ripped my DVD collection and then started getting new stuff from online).

I'm not a believer in streaming and prefer having a local copy, as many things get re-watched on a regular basis, plus the whole transferring to my portable devices.

Computer (with HDMI to the TV) using Media Center with the Media Browser extension is unbeatable.... the only cave-at are MKV that are hit and miss thanks to the 1000s of codec variants. I just reconvert to avi.

The last month with the cable/satelite was a question of one kid that was watching one show a few times....

Never looked back and boy, do I get lots of mail asking to rejoin since then.

I do have an antenna, but need to get a better one (inside the house, the reception is terrible)... and that would be mostly for in case I need local news if the internet would go down and some sort of situation would warrant it.
 
seattleshaver

seattleshaver

There are several things that I've learned in the last few years. Everything is available free online, cutting your own hair is easy and saves a lot of time and money and there are much better and cheaper alternatives to having a home phone (land line). I've even found ways to cut my cell phone bill substantially. Times they are a changin' :)
 
P

pdillon

Sports are the main reason to pay for cable IMHO. HBO is excellent too. OTA antennas get amazing quality of reception. You can also do excellent things with Roku, appleTV, or home media PCs (the latter being reserved for the more technically inclined).
 
seattleshaver

seattleshaver

There are several things that I've learned in the last few years. Everything is available free online, cutting your own hair is easy and saves a lot of time and money and there are much better and cheaper alternatives to having a home phone (land line). I've even found ways to cut my cell phone bill substantially. There are cost savings and lifestyle improvements with saving as well (as we all know). Times they are a changin' :)
 
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