How to Watch TV Without Cable

youbet said:
If you live in an urban area. For rural folks, it'll take a substantial, elevated outdoor antenna. Or, if you're really out in the woods someplace, you'll get no OTA TV at all.
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That's me... we grew up on OTA television but there are some high hills between me and the transmitters 30 miles away that block the signal and preclude OTA... so we're stuck with satellite if we want to get our local channels.
 
John Galt III said:
+1. The horrible and relentless commercials are what is making me want to dump cable. Paying for TV shows is one thing, but paying for commercials is just too much to bear. You know when you're channel surfing to find something without a commercial, and you've gone through 5 channels, and each one has a commercial blaring, it's just over.
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Easy solution... get a DVR.. record the shows you like and scroll through those darn commercials. Best $10/month that I spend is for the DVR... occasionally I miss the first episodes of a new show and have to watch the early episodes with On Demand which forces me to watch the commercials and it drives me bat crazy.
 
easysurfer said:
Did try various antennas (home built and various purchased ones) til I got one that I get all the major free local stations coming in clearly without having to readjust the antenna.
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What antenna did you end up with. I've only tried the indoor non-powered ones and they've only been fair in terms of finding all the local channels. I'm thinking about putting one up in the attic.
 
Jerry1 said:
What antenna did you end up with. I've only tried the indoor non-powered ones and they've only been fair in terms of finding all the local channels. I'm thinking about putting one up in the attic.
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I ended up getting an indoor/outdoor, non-powered antenna called the "HD Frequency Cable Cutter Indoor/Outdoor HD Digital TV Antenna". Just looking right now on Amazon, it's sold for about $25 less than when I bought, but the product has been discontinued by the manufacturer.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E9G98R2

I have the antenna indoor, mounted on a pole, facing a window.
 
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We cut the cable over two years ago, but we haven't replaced it with broadcast TV. We used to get some OK over the air signals, but as more houses were built around us, signal strength went to hell, and we didn't get around to installing an antenna in the attic.

We've been very happy with internet streaming only. There is plenty of content. If I really want to watch some prime time broadcast programming there is always HULU. But we ditched that a long time ago too.

IMO the biggest benefit of streaming is being able to watch what I want when I want (i.e. on demand).

Also, now everything we watch is commercial free.
 
I'm ready too. Just waiting for my two year contract with Directv to expire in May. The landline went last year and I didn't miss it for one second. I watch so little TV these days, and the election bruhaha was so miserable that I don't even watch the news anymore. Can't wait to have the extra $52.00 in my checking account every month!
 
Marita40 said:
I'm ready too. Just waiting for my two year contract with Directv to expire in May. The landline went last year and I didn't miss it for one second. I watch so little TV these days, and the election bruhaha was so miserable that I don't even watch the news anymore. Can't wait to have the extra $52.00 in my checking account every month!
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I wish they had a television news channel that excluded politics. After the last year, enough was enough.

At least on some of our local radio channels, we can still get swap shop at noon. And they give the high school girls' basketball scores from the night before.
 
We have never used a cable/satellite service. With OTA, Amazon Prime, and the many free Roku sites, we have more TV available than we know what to do with. (In fact, we have over 15TB of programming recorded that we'll never in a million years be able to watch.) SageTV is our primary device for watching programs and the sole source of recording (well, in addition to stuff recorded/played on a local computer).


Therefore, SageTV is how we get most of the TV viewing from our computer (HTPC) to the TV. We, also, have a Roku Ultra that comes in second. And for locally produced recordings (including recorded YouTube stuff -- https://www.ytddownloader.com/) I have found PlexTV to be superior to watch video from computer to TV -- https://www.plex.tv/.


Our TV is (of course) a "smart" TV (and, I believe, PLEX is also available there) but since it is connected to an AVR, we never use that programming.
 
No cable for about 10 years. Used Redbox for movies for awhile. Then got a Netflix subscription back when they mailed out the DVD's to you. Also borrow about a dozen DVD's from the library.

Our area experiences partial losses of OTA TV when the wind is too strong. We just put in a movie, or watch the TV show on the internet the next day. I also live stream a TV news channel not available over the air.

Very little discomfort to save $1,000 a year or so.

BTW, gave up support of local NBA franchise when they moved to cable TV only coverage. Now they wonder why their fan base is shrinking....thank goodness the local NFL games are still free!
 
dasranger said:
We spend less than $135/month for cable/phone/internet. I'd get rid of the phone and the cable but my DW won't part with them. We also have a DVR. I haven't seen a commercial in 7 years.
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Yeah, I ought to get with the program and rent a dvr, but I can't get myself to pay any more per month. Seems like protection money.
 
OTA tv is only a worthwhile option IF you live in a big city with lots of stations and a clear line of sight to the stations. There are exceptions, but mostly this holds true.
 
UnrealizedPotential said:
OTA tv is only a worthwhile option IF you live in a big city with lots of stations and a clear line of sight to the stations. There are exceptions, but mostly this holds true.
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Some people have access to 40+ channels. Only 11 here but all the major networks so I'm fortunate. I'm living in a city with a population of around 40k.
 
Dawg52 said:
Some people have access to 40+ channels. Only 11 here but all the major networks so I'm fortunate. I'm living in a city with a population of around 40k.
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I happen to be very lucky. I live 150 miles from the Salt Lake City stations. But there are translator stations throughout the state. Without those translator stations , most of the state of Utah would be out of luck.
 
RunningBum said:
Almost always to my Smart TV. That TV just went out last week. I'm replacing it this week, so I'll see if the TV interface was just slow. Maybe a FireStick or Roku would be faster.
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Turns out my 5-6 yr old Panasonic TV was the problem. My new LG smart TV is doing great any time of day. My research showed that LG's WebOS 3.0 gets good reviews. I also decided to get the cheapest Roku for another TV, and that works well too. It's still probably not going to get me to cut the cord yet though.
 
I must live in a oligopoly zone for cable companies. I literally live less than 10 miles from every station in town, and I pick up only two stations from a digital antenna. However, the $8.65 a month and $12-$13 a month I pay for Netflix and Hulu (w/o commercials) is way better than I could ever get from the cable company. Which, incidentally, those cables stations play a ton of commercials and I can't stand watching commercials.
 
I stopped cable a week or so ago. I bought a $19.00 indoor antenna from Target; plugged it in, and found I had about 43 channels. I'm in urban St. Paul within 10 miles of stations and the reception is crystal clear. I just wished I had stopped cable a long time ago!!
 
I had a door to door rep come by trying to sell me cable, told her I get 23 channels HD for free.
She asked how ?
I said see the antenna on top of my roof, that's how.
She said she had thought they were no use anymore..... ha ha ha
 
I bought an OTA antenna at Costco and tried it out. Some channels came in fine, but some of them were very pixelated and unreliable. Overall I didn't feel it offered us enough variety to cut the cable out. If we got a few more channels, and the signal was more stable, I would have been fine with it.

If OTA antennas work well, I would recommend the Tivo OTA DVR for $369.00:

https://www.amazon.com/TiVo-Roamio-...v&ie=UTF8&qid=1486346675&sr=1-1&keywords=Tivo

There are no fees beyond the initial purchase and it's much easier to manage tv shows then trying to remember all of the channels the antenna picks up. And you can pre-record shows and skip all of the commercials.

I do remember the picture quality being quite good for the channels that had a strong signal.
 
Besides the OTA channels, we have Netflix, and occasionally I'll rent from Redbox a new movie when they send me a coupon so it costs $0.25 -> $0.75 for blue ray.

It's the bother of having to return the movie and the lack of appealing movies that deters me from renting more from Redbox.

We basically have too much to watch (we have 70 movies/shows/series pre-selected on netflix.).
 
Dawg52 said:
Some people have access to 40+ channels. Only 11 here but all the major networks so I'm fortunate. I'm living in a city with a population of around 40k.
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But aren't most of the 40+ stations just repeats of the major networks (e.g., access to each of the the 4 network channels in the 4 nearby cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, and Greenville if you have a good antenna) that have the same programs? I looked up the OTA channels for my area and it is networks, PBS, and CW (geared to the 18-34 year old crowd). Except for PBS, I don't watch those channels regardless of the picture quality because I don't care for their shows. OTA was what we watched before cable - it seems like going back in time with less options. But I do have this large antenna on my roof that came with the house, circa 1965.
 
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I remember when cable TV first came out. They advertised a clear picture for all the OTA programming, plus cable-only channels with no commercials, all for $10 a month.

Things sure have changed since then!
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Yes. And Netflix will do the same once they get pretty saturated. But for now...
 
All this is way too complicated. Seems like some company could figure out how to make TV watching simple, fun, and cheap again for Joe Average and let him pick the shows he wants to see. But no......... have to pay for a DVR, have to record in advance, hope you have OTA stations close by, worry about your current good deal getting more expensive. Jeez. Maybe this is what Alvin Toffler called 'overchoice'.
 
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