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Old 06-14-2018, 02:33 PM   #61
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Cable Cutting means you delete legacy TV, and keep your internet service, or find it elsewhere.

As previously mentioned, we kept the most limited cable TV tier, so we can watch local sports. So it is not necessarily an all or none decision.
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Old 06-14-2018, 02:48 PM   #62
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I don't worry to much about future costs of TV/Cable/Internet entertainment. If it gets to costly, I won't watch it. Most of it has little if any appeal to me. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of TV shows I would miss if they disappeared.
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Need better antenna for my Tivo
Old 06-14-2018, 10:58 PM   #63
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Need better antenna for my Tivo

So my Tivo doesn't get CBS, even though the tv that it's hooked up to got CBS just fine. The Tivo support people tell me the Tivo needs a stronger signal, so I need to get a new antenna...any suggestions?

Will the antenna recommended by a site I found on another thread (which of course I cannot now find) work for my Tivo? Price is right on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/NoCable-30-De...B4C9SG3Y9WT5QK
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Old 06-14-2018, 11:06 PM   #64
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I don't worry to much about future costs of TV/Cable/Internet entertainment. If it gets to costly, I won't watch it. Most of it has little if any appeal to me. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of TV shows I would miss if they disappeared.
I hardly watch TV any more. BUT - - I need and very much want internet connectivity.

Recently our internet was not working for 2-3 days, for some reason. Frank was just fine, but I was not!!! I guess I don't literally *need* the internet, but I was so unhappy and miserable without it.

In my case, if the internet gets too costly I will just Blow That Dough on it. We really don't have any high speed internet available that is competitive with Cox Cable.
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Old 06-15-2018, 06:58 AM   #65
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So my Tivo doesn't get CBS, even though the tv that it's hooked up to got CBS just fine. The Tivo support people tell me the Tivo needs a stronger signal, so I need to get a new antenna...any suggestions?

Will the antenna recommended by a site I found on another thread (which of course I cannot now find) work for my Tivo? Price is right on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/NoCable-30-De...B4C9SG3Y9WT5QK
The antenna you link to looks similar to the one we have. Ours works pretty well with our TiVo Bolt. Mounting it as high up as you can makes a difference in signal reception. We have ours mounted in our upstairs bedroom up high on the wall, but location and orientation will always be location specific.

What kind of antenna do you use now?
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Old 06-15-2018, 07:11 AM   #66
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So my Tivo doesn't get CBS, even though the tv that it's hooked up to got CBS just fine. The Tivo support people tell me the Tivo needs a stronger signal, so I need to get a new antenna...any suggestions?

Will the antenna recommended by a site I found on another thread (which of course I cannot now find) work for my Tivo? Price is right on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/NoCable-30-De...B4C9SG3Y9WT5QK
Back when we had an antenna we had a booster.... amplified the signal that we did receive.... might that work?
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Old 06-15-2018, 07:34 AM   #67
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So my Tivo doesn't get CBS, even though the tv that it's hooked up to got CBS just fine. The Tivo support people tell me the Tivo needs a stronger signal, so I need to get a new antenna...any suggestions?

Will the antenna recommended by a site I found on another thread (which of course I cannot now find) work for my Tivo? Price is right on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/NoCable-30-De...B4C9SG3Y9WT5QK
How far are you from the transmitters? (check tvfool.com or antennaweb.com)

In my case, two are ~15 miles away, but the rest ~40 miles away.

For the living room Tivo, I have a large (8-bay) un-amplified UHF antenna in the attic, and still get drop-outs depending on the weather.

For the basement Tivo, I've ordered an amplified outdoor antenna to test:

https://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=144180

& if it works it will be professionally installed on top of my chimney, since I'm not getting up on a ladder over 30 feet in the air!.
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Old 06-15-2018, 08:49 AM   #68
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In my case, if the internet gets too costly I will just Blow That Dough on it. We really don't have any high speed internet available that is competitive with Cox Cable.
Many of us are in the same boat - only one real choice for an internet provider.

I am one of the 'lucky' ones in that I have a choice of two providers - FIOS and the cable company. Not that it helps much. Prices are the same, both require one to be a new customer to get a deal, and service if one needs a tech out to the house, requires a wait of a about a week. Not so good.

Meaningful competition needs at least three players in the market. Look at what T-Mobile did to the cell phone market over that last 5 years! No more contracts, no more fake phone prices, a return to unlimited data (albeit with high speed caps), and lower cost fixed price monthly deals like their 55+ plan.
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Old 06-15-2018, 10:50 AM   #69
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Meaningful competition needs at least three players in the market.
"Effective competition" is not dependent on the manner by which a product or service is delivered, just like it does not dependent on the relative prices or quality of different suppliers. There is no legal relevance to "the market for service I personally consider suitable". This was underscored by the lack of effective challenge to the FCC effective competition order which made clear that the market commodity is subscription television service, explicitly including satellite services even though a certain percentage of consumers within the market had no access to such services, much less the inherently lower quality during storms and such. Projecting that into internet service, DSL and dial up both qualify as competitors to broadband. There are more than three dial up ISPs so even without DSL there is effective competition for internet access.

Try challenging that in court if you wish. No one has bothered to do so in the past, and with the reversal in direction of the FCC regarding net neutrality there is even less than zero chance of prevailing with such a claim now.
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Old 06-15-2018, 01:33 PM   #70
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How far are you from the transmitters? (check tvfool.com or antennaweb.com)

12-14 miles away per antennaweb - I am in Houston city limits.

Booster - this was the first thing I tried, but it doesn't make my signal strong enough unfortunately. May try it on the tv that's not attached to the TiVo to see if it will allow us to get ABC in the den.

Current antenna is pretty old - from when we had the changeover in 2009 or so. Brand is GE, a small table top model. (Am looking for indoor antenna - 1st floor - do not want to put in attic or on roof - too dang hot.)
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Old 06-15-2018, 01:49 PM   #71
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Booster - this was the first thing I tried, but it doesn't make my signal strong enough unfortunately. May try it on the tv that's not attached to the TiVo to see if it will allow us to get ABC in the den.
There may be some circumstances where a amplified antenna might help, but they have never help when I've tried them. YMMV
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Current antenna is pretty old - from when we had the changeover in 2009 or so. Brand is GE, a small table top model. (Am looking for indoor antenna - 1st floor - do not want to put in attic or on roof - too dang hot.)
I'd certainly try the "flat" antenna like you linked to - they are an improvement over many of the older antennas. If it's not a problem, place it up as high on the wall as you can. This made a noticeable difference for us.
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Old 06-15-2018, 02:31 PM   #72
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I'd certainly try the "flat" antenna like you linked to - they are an improvement over many of the older antennas. If it's not a problem, place it up as high on the wall as you can.
Regarding the flat antennas: do you just attach them to a wall and then plug them into a TV or is there more to it than that? And, does each TV need its own antenna?
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Old 06-15-2018, 02:34 PM   #73
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Regarding the flat antennas: do you just attach them to a wall and then plug them into a TV or is there more to it than that? And, does each TV need its own antenna?
Yes, and yes.
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Old 06-15-2018, 03:12 PM   #74
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Regarding the flat antennas: do you just attach them to a wall and then plug them into a TV or is there more to it than that? And, does each TV need its own antenna?
I literally pin the flat antenna to the wall. And it's connect to the TiVo using a thin coax cable.

You can have a separate antenna for each TV or one antenna connected to something like a TiVo Bolt and then share that around the house using something like a TiVo mini over your home network. We do the one antenna thing since the other TV is lower in the house and get's crummy reception.
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Old 06-16-2018, 03:49 PM   #75
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"Effective competition" is not dependent on the manner by which a product or service is delivered, just like it does not dependent on the relative prices or quality of different suppliers. There is no legal relevance to "the market for service I personally consider suitable". This was underscored by the lack of effective challenge to the FCC effective competition order which made clear that the market commodity is subscription television service, explicitly including satellite services even though a certain percentage of consumers within the market had no access to such services, much less the inherently lower quality during storms and such. Projecting that into internet service, DSL and dial up both qualify as competitors to broadband. There are more than three dial up ISPs so even without DSL there is effective competition for internet access.

Try challenging that in court if you wish. No one has bothered to do so in the past, and with the reversal in direction of the FCC regarding net neutrality there is even less than zero chance of prevailing with such a claim now.
A few responses to your rather wordy post. And I'm not even sure why I'm bothering...

- Comparing dial up ISP to broadband as competition might fit a legal definition (and I'm not conceding it does)- but would not satisfy most internet customers looking for broadband. Dial up is no longer adequate for most users. With dial up you can't stream video or game. You definitely can't have more than one user in a household checking email at the same time. It is not reasonable to say that if your choices are between a broadband carrier and a dial up or two provider that the dial up provides meaningful competition. That's like comparing a tesla to a bicycle.

- No one (except you) was talking about legal definitions of competition. They were talking about whether there was more than one broadband internet provider.
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Old 06-16-2018, 06:04 PM   #76
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A few responses to your rather wordy post.
Please don't undersell yourself and the rest of us by dumbing things down just so that they fit in the small minds of those who hate detail and nuance. It serves no constructive purpose. Doing so just turns truth into error.

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Comparing dial up ISP to broadband as competition might fit a legal definition ...
Full stop. That's where the legitimate information in your post ended. When someone questions whether there is enough competition, that is always a legal question. There is no relevance to the question without it being a legal matter.

All that is left after you remove the legal question is whether things are the way we would want them. Inexpensive or free, high quality, unlimited, etc. A consumers' dream. But just a dream.
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Old 06-16-2018, 06:35 PM   #77
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What's a dream is having two companies in the area one lives, and that's if you're lucky, both of them offering similar pricing and packages and thinking it's competition. There is no competition. Just greedy companies out to squeeze every dime they can from a consumer that has no real choices.



If there were real competition, we would see the prices come down. But that's not what this thread is supposed to be about, but the same poster has to drag us down into disagreements every time.
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Old 06-16-2018, 06:41 PM   #78
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Just greedy companies out to squeeze every dime they can from a consumer that has no real choices.
And this kind of comment is why my contributions are necessary.
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Old 06-16-2018, 07:01 PM   #79
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And this kind of comment is why my contributions are necessary.
And comments like this, plus another couple of thousand in the same spirit, are why I am thankful this board software has an "Add to Ignore List" option.
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Old 06-16-2018, 07:37 PM   #80
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And comments like this, plus another couple of thousand in the same spirit, are why I am thankful this board software has an "Add to Ignore List" option.
Amen. I have yet to use it as I'd like to be open-minded but it is nice to know it is there.
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