Are you watching free OTA digital TV

[RE2Boys]

It's interesting that several posters have related the "re-discovery" by many folks of OTA transmission. I have run into people that only grew up with cable TV and were unaware of any alternatives. Somewhat understandable as I have lived in small towns in PA where only one or two stations could be picked up by an indoor antenna but for me it was a treat as I was 28 when I bought my first TV, went for 10 years without television once I graduated HS and moved away.

To this day, I'm not much of a TV watcher, primarily either PBS and the local news. Started streaming soon after Netflix started offering it and about 80+% of the households TV watching is streaming.

 

[ziggy29]

TVFool is a pretty impressive analysis. It says I should be able to get at least 10 channels with a set top antenna. I'm thinking the antenna I bought and returned may have been OK but I just did something wrong. I know I had input set right. Oh well.

If some of them were VHF (actual RF frequencies under 14 - not simply channel numbers), it's likely set top rabbit ears would fall short. My experience with TVFool has been that when it says a station is in the green or sometimes yellow bands, AND it is UHF, I can get it with an indoor antenna. I had no luck getting VHF at all, no matter how much I tried to adjust the rabbit ears according to the guides I've seen.

 

[Chuckanut]

I have an antenna hooked up to a Tivo OTA recorder. IMHO, the Tivo unit makes OTA television about as good as it can get.

It has several great features like being able to put a live show on hold for up to 1/2 hour while one takes a break to get a beer or answer a phone call. It also has a rapid play function that zips through a show 30% faster than normal with no chipmunk voices. And did I mention the commercial skip feature for most of the network prime-time shows? Very nice.

I have setup the Tivo to automatically record the shows I am most interested in which it does with great reliability. And the Tivo will do Netflix and Amazon with out needing another device. (I have not tried other services on it.)

Combine OTA, Tivo, and Netflix and one has a plenty to watch.

 

[LauAnn]

I use a Mohu Leaf indoor antenna to pick up 5 local channels; and subscribe to Netflix via a Roku box. Rabbit ears didn't do a good job picking up the OTA signals. I also continue to receive the local channels with my internet connection through Time Warner, but they don't come in HD as do the OTA digital.

 

[Rustic23]

I would, but even with a good antenna it is not available.

 

[ERD50]

It's interesting that several posters have related the "re-discovery" by many folks of OTA transmission. I have run into people that only grew up with cable TV and were unaware of any alternatives. ...

And something they may not be aware of, and might be surprised at - the 'free' OTA provides a higher quality signal than cable! The cable providers do a lot of compression to get those 500 channels with nothing on.

With OTA, each station has enough bandwidth for for a very high quality 1080i signal.

-ERD50

 

[Sunset]

I have an antenna hooked up to a Tivo OTA recorder. IMHO, the Tivo unit makes OTA television about as good as it can get. .......Combine OTA, Tivo, and Netflix and one has a plenty to watch.

Do you have to pay a subscription to use the Tivo OTA recorder ?

 

[Dawg52]

I survived just fine for a couple of years with OTA channels and Netflix. But missed the Golf Channel and other sports channels. I'm now paying $35/mo for Playstation Vue and get all the sports channels I want. Actually 70+ channels. Half of them I will never watch, but it's worth $35 to get the ones I like. Still much cheaper than cable.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

It looks like we are finally going to go the way of "cutting the cord" since I am sick and tired of battling the folks at AT&T. I could go on a long diatribe about the wrangling I have had to do with them over the last couple of years, but you have heard the story many times over. The only hangup that we have had is that some shows my DW "must see" are on Bravo, and it's difficult to find the most recent shows on any streaming provider...without cable, you have to pay for them. But, doing the math, even if we had to pay for the few shows "outright" that we can't get on Amazon or Hulu (or OTA) we still will be coming out ahead by a SIGNIFICANT amount. It's downright pitiful how expensive TV has gotten.

The DVR is FULL of stuff, so my intention is to go with the minimum package to keep the DVR so we can get all that watched...then cut the cord and I CAN'T WAIT!

Edit: Wow...it looks like with just a set top antenna, we can get a messload of channels! It is NOT 1978 anymore!

 

[CountryBoy]

Do you have to pay a subscription to use the Tivo OTA recorder ?

Unless you pay several hundred for a 'Lifetime' tivo with no fees, it's $14.99 a month. But I've read on the Tivo forum that after a couple years, if you call them & ask for a better deal, they'll often drop it to 12.00 a month.

It's worth the cost though--you get an online guide with shows a couple weeks in advance, it comes with Plex, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube installed. Also has Pandora, iheart radio, etc. A nice set-up

 

[Fishingmn]

We cut the cord a little over a year ago.

Just a pair of powered rabbit ears that cost $15 and we are 27 miles from the towers with great reception.

The rest of our setup is a Tablo DVR and 3 Roku boxes.

In addition to the local channels we subscribe to Sling TV (wife needs HGTV and I like getting ESPN and CNN) and Netflix so our monthly bill is about $100 less at $30/mo.

 

[jjquantz]

We do OTA, Netflix, Amazon Prime and MLBTV. The OTA is mostly for DW's football addiction and MLB is so that she can follow the Cubs. I will watch parts of the major golf tournaments OTA, but the commercials come so often that I can't sit through the entire broadcasts (Masters, excepted). There is so little programming that I am interested in that I just don't see investing in any additional technologies/equipment. If you exclude DW's sports, we average less than an hour/week of "TV" watching, although we do stream the occasional movie (1-2/month).

 

[REWahoo]

We tried the OTA plus streaming route a couple of years ago but it didn't work for us. The OTA was great but our sad, slow, unreliable internet service made our Roku useless.

 

[easysurfer]

I survived just fine for a couple of years with OTA channels and Netflix. But missed the Golf Channel and other sports channels. I'm now paying $35/mo for Playstation Vue and get all the sports channels I want. Actually 70+ channels. Half of them I will never watch, but it's worth $35 to get the ones I like. Still much cheaper than cable.

If you have the will power to not add on stuff, then OTA if you have good reception is the way to go to save. Otherwise, before long, add a bit here, a bit there before long, the price ends up the same or more if you didn't cut the cord.

For me, my set up is OTA for regular TV, Amazon Prime for streaming (but I view this as included as I get Prime for the package delivery and usually on rent movies that I get free credits for). OTA still gives me the home team NFL games. The exception for me is baseball, but I don't mind listening to most of the games on the radio with OTA games broadcasted about once every 5 games.

Now, if the Cubbies make the playoffs, that's my exception as then that is Sling TV time .

 

[W2R]

We tried the OTA plus streaming route a couple of years ago but it didn't work for us. The OTA was great but our sad, slow, unreliable internet service made our Roku useless.

I am probably a little weird about this (OK, I *KNOW* I am a little weird about this). But anyway, to me, there is something infinitely more satisfying about going strictly OTA instead of OTA with streaming. It is an amazing feeling to know that I am not paying one red cent for television and getting everything I watch for FREE. And also, I am not dependent on any company's crummy service.

But then, like I said, I'm weird about this. I didn't even have a TV at all for many years.

 

[Fermion]

W2R, you don't even have Amazon Prime?

I might not use it much now, but when in S&B we used the heck out of the free shipping aspect and the streaming was just bonus (I did like Bosch and Man in the high Castle though).

 

[6miths]

I wanted to make the transition and purchased a good outdoor antenna but was pretty fringe on reception from major US affiliates in Buffalo due to the topography. So am stuck with cable. I took the antenna to my mom's place 10 miles away and she has great reception of all the stations from Buffalo and Toronto so it worked out well for her!

 

[W2R]

I am probably a little weird about this (OK, I *KNOW* I am a little weird about this). But anyway, to me, there is something infinitely more satisfying about going strictly OTA instead of OTA with streaming. It is an amazing feeling to know that I am not paying one red cent for television and getting everything I watch for FREE. And also, I am not dependent on any company's crummy service.

But then, like I said, I'm weird about this. I didn't even have a TV at all for many years.

W2R, you don't even have Amazon Prime? I might not use it much now, but when in S&B we used the heck out of the free shipping aspect and the streaming was just bonus (I did like Bosch and Man in the high Castle though).

I have it for the shipping, but I haven't really watched any shows on it. In fact, Amazon sent me an inquiry about that (apparently thinking that I didn't know about the shows! ) I just haven't seen anything available on it that I want to watch.

I also have F's Netflix on my TV, but don't watch shows on that either mostly because I haven't seen anything on it that appeals to me. I know, I should explore it more but I haven't.

On OTA television, I get a few channels like AntennaTV and MeTV that provide me with old shows like All in The Family, Star Trek, and similar shows from the 50's and 60's. I enjoy these shows a lot more than modern shows with all their high tension music and impossibly complicated plots. And it's all FREE!

 

[John Galt III]

I have cable TV at $99 per month on one tv, and free OTA on 2 other TV's. I choose not to hook up the OTA tv's to cable, for some reason. Good to have a separation. The OTA stations are good for local news, financial advice shows, Dr. Who, some British soap operas, like Eastenders, and lots of Retro serials. They even had Then Came Bronson at one time. OMG is that ever retro. Absolutely zero sports unless it's on the local news. Another good thing about OTA, besides being free, is that there seems to be fewer and less annoying commercials than on cable!

 

[MoneyCat]

For years, I had only internet and no TV service at all. Then I decided to put up a rooftop antenna so I could watch live sports (Free Mets games on weekends!) We live about 25 miles from New York City, so (with multiplexing) we get about 60 channels for free over-the-air. Yeah, some of them are in Spanish instead of English, but I discovered that the Spanish channels carry a lot of sports that are typically only available on cable in English and I get them for free instead. Also, UniMas has a contract with Major League Soccer for exclusive Friday night games and they had so many English-speaking viewers watching that they added English commentary via SAP.

I use a Channel Master DVR+ to record my non-live events and skip the commercials. The DVR+ cost $299 and there are no subscription fees, so it is significantly cheaper than TiVo. It provides a two-week program guide for no extra charge. You can record two shows at once while watching a third show that was recorded. The only downside is that you need to provide your own hard drive to save your recordings, but hard drives are really inexpensive right now. I bought one at Target.


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[easysurfer]

W2R, you don't even have Amazon Prime?

I might not use it much now, but when in S&B we used the heck out of the free shipping aspect and the streaming was just bonus (I did like Bosch and Man in the high Castle though).

I'm a long time Prime member but didn't start watching any streamed videos/movies until years later. The kicker for me was when I bought their Fire TV on one of their black Friday sales. Watching a movie felt like watching enjoyably on the sofa instead of over the computer. I do need to use a HDMI switch to switch between TV/DVR and my Fire TV device.

W2R - I think one of the first things I watched was several episodes of the original Star Trek (I can pick any episode I want at my time) .

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I am probably a little weird about this (OK, I *KNOW* I am a little weird about this). But anyway, to me, there is something infinitely more satisfying about going strictly OTA instead of OTA with streaming. It is an amazing feeling to know that I am not paying one red cent for television and getting everything I watch for FREE. And also, I am not dependent on any company's crummy service.

But then, like I said, I'm weird about this. I didn't even have a TV at all for many years.

Truth be told, if it wasn't for my DW, I would be perfectly happy with OTA or maybe no TV at all. There just isn't much on TV that interests me and I have found it to be a huge time waster...couple that with the amount of time I am on the internet and well...it's a sad statement.

Not too long ago, the DW went to see a friend out of state for a few days. When she came home, she was surprised that the last channel watched was Bravo. She asked if I had been watching it while she was gone but I had to disappoint her in telling her that it was from the last time SHE watched it. None of the TVs in the house had been on while she was gone!

I know there are entertaining shows (The Americans or Silicon Valley) that I do enjoy...they are just WAY down on the priority list for "things to do."

 

[W2R]

W2R - I think one of the first things I watched was several episodes of the original Star Trek (I can pick any episode I want at my time) .

Yeah, but I can watch the original Star Trek for FREEE via OTA. I don't care what episode, I'm not that picky. I love the experience of discovering that it is on, when it is on - - wouldn't rob myself of that joy, either. I dunno; like I said, I'm weird.

 

[MoneyCat]

Yeah, but I can watch the original Star Trek for FREEE via OTA. I don't care what episode, I'm not that picky. I love the experience of discovering that it is on, when it is on - - wouldn't rob myself of that joy, either. I dunno; like I said, I'm weird.

They show Star Trek late at night on Decades (which is a multiplex digital channel of CBS). Just save it on your subscription-free DVR and voila! Free Star Trek.


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[W2R]

Truth be told, if it wasn't for my DW, I would be perfectly happy with OTA or maybe no TV at all. There just isn't much on TV that interests me and I have found it to be a huge time waster

Believe me, I know what you mean!

When I moved to an apartment without DSL internet back in 2000, I had to switch to cable internet. The cable company told me it would be $10/month for internet, or $11/month for internet + basic cable TV. I didn't have a TV but bought a small outdated one on sale and gave it a shot. I figured it was worth trying for $1/month.