I'm 24 and I have never had cable in my life. Frankly, I'm surprised it's not more common. You get a LOT of TV for free. I grew up watching PBS and Simpsons and etc.<p>I remember at superbowl some of my friends were amazed that I was able to watch the football game without cable. I was floored. They didn't even know that channels came in over the air. I showed them the antenna, where it installs in the TV, how cheap they are. I got HD video without having to pay anything.<p>These weren't dumb people either. They worked for tech companies. They legitimately did not know it was an option.<p>A lot of people cut their cables after that party.
I took a look at a relative’s cable bill last year. He lives in a town with three competing cable/ISP services. Here is how the monthly costs broke down:<p><i>Expanded basic service: $60<p>High definition converter box: $10<p>Digital converter rental: $3<p>HBO Cinemax package: $18<p>Premiere Total Pack: $16<p>Showtime/TMC: $5<p>Starz: $5<p>Franchise fee: $7<p>Broadcast TV surcharge: $4<p>Sports programming surcharge: $2<p>Total monthly cost: $130<p>Annual cost: $130 × 12 months = $1,560</i><p>That doesn’t include Internet access, which adds another $60 or $70 per month, plus the land line. So they’re paying close to $250/month. Sadly, that’s typical for a lot of people around here, who often get suckered in by $99 “triple play” deals and don’t read the fine print about extra fees, premium packages, or escalating rates after years 1 and 2.<p>It’s a total racket.<p>One thing to add about TFA: DTV reception even over a good antenna within 10 miles of the broadcast towers can be spotty. We live near Boston, and every time a car drives by our house the image freezes even for the big VHF channels.
With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else. Plus, most of the things that we watch are on-demand anyway - we don't have patience to sit through commercials for 1 hour to watch 20 minutes of a Sci-Fi episode.
This kind of TV is the 'default' here in the UK (Freeview) - we get about 50-60 digital channels and 10 HD channels.<p>I suspect cable TV is actually on the rise here, but can't find stats to back that up.
Two years back I decided to make my own antenna. I had no idea what a folded dipole was, but found a website that instructed me to use a metal clothes hanger cut to the proper length for HD US signals, and a block of wood. I had neither so I taped some leftover enamel wire to a piece of cardboard. I still use this antenna today, and get about 50 channels, living 30 miles away from the nearest broadcast antenna.<p>Point is, these broadcasts are incredibly easy to access, and it doesn't seem like the voodoo designs of $200 dollar antennas are actually needed by most people. It's somewhat surprising TV manufacturers don't simply add simple antennas as an accessory the same way my FM radio tuner came with one.
I just recently installed an antenna in our attic after we
cancelled our cable TV, and I've been very pleased with the
results. Here in the Atlanta area, we're getting almost 60
TV channels, plus about 10 audio-only simulcase of several
local radio stations. There's even a channel that displays
a program guide, like the ones you find on the cable or
satellite services.<p>People's lack of awareness of over-the-air television has
been surprising to me. We had houseguests last week, a
retired couple in their 60's. This is in the age range that
I would expect to be familiar with broadcast TV, having
grown up with it as the predominant, "default" option. And
yet, I was still asked, "so you don't get CNN?"<p>[Edit: text formatting]
You don't even need a TV to take advantage of this if you have a computer.<p>You can buy a tv tuner card that will connect to your laptop and allow you to plug in an antenna to watch TV.<p>Something like this:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1191-WinTV-HVR-955Q-Tuner-Notebook/dp/B001DEYVXO/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1191-WinTV-HVR-955Q-Tuner-No...</a>
Get internet service from cable provider with basic cable plus HBO for less than the advertised price of the internet service alone. Have to call back every year to get the promotional price back, which sucks. But we almost never watch the cable channels. Local channels in HD with a couple low-end antennas in the attic. And tend to watch HBO GO on a Roku, where we also have Netflix, Prime, etc.<p>Doing Sling during football season for ESPN.<p>As others have said, would like to have a better antenna setup with DVR that does not require subscription. Need a community-driven site where people can put in the type of antenna they have and what channels they get for more precise location-specific antenna recommendations.
In 2010 when I lived in the San Francisco I ordered my broadband from Comcast, but I didn't pay for the TV package.<p>I added a splitter to the Comcast coax cable, then plugged one wire into the cable modem and the other into the back of my TV. Network TV channels for no extra cost.
What I'd like is an easy, cheap DVR solution for OTA. Mostly I'd just like to be able to pause and rewind live TV. After cutting the cord, it's like living in the 80s again shouting at family members to be quiet when you need to hear something.
If you're using an OTA antenna to get HDTV, this site can help you point it in the right direction to get the best signal. Just enter your ZIP code.<p><a href="http://www.antennaweb.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.antennaweb.org/</a>
My understanding is that OTA HDTV is actaully uncompressed, which means you get the best HDTV picture quality when receiving over the air.<p>Cable, uVerse, DirecTV etc all compress their HDTV signals resulting in far more artifacts and pixelization. It is far more noticable when you have a 120 inch projector displaying a football game with lots of moving images etc.
My experience was almost exactly that in the OP.<p>I bought my first TV used off craigslist 6 months ago (I'm 30, lived past 12 years w/o a television), mainly intending to use it as a big monitor to watch movies/tv shows from my laptop via HDMI.<p>I started to get into local sports, but wasn't willing to pay for cable. I suffered through a few poor quality (aka "was that a touchdown or interception?") internet streams of the games.<p>Then one day I recalled that had a TV, not just a big monitor. $15 dollars later I had an antennae and was getting the local football games over-the-air in great HD.
OTA TV is $250 per year in the UK, before equipment.<p>If you get satellite / cable you still have to pay.<p>If you watch live on computer, pay up.
One advantage of OTA TV is that it can be a very efficient use of spectrum. It costs the same to broadcast a TV signal to 5 million users as it does to broadcast it to 5 users. This is not the case with video (or radio) transmitted over the internet or via cellular networks, where every additional user consumes additional bandwidth.
I had cable for one year after college (U-Verse had just come to my city and it was actually cheaper to get cable + internet than just internet for the first year), then cancelled. Only reason I have it now is that my roommate is locked into a contract for a few more months (cancellation fee is greater than just playing out the string, and there are some small convenience benefits, particularly for sports). However, we'll be cutting that cord in December for good. I've had a Mohu Leaf, Roku, and a Chromecast for 3 years (OTA, apps, mirroring), and to be honest, the only things missing for me are Pac-12 Network and TNT (which only matters for select NBA games, anyway). Now that SlingTV offers TNT, Pac-12 Network is really the only thing I'm aware of that isn't legally available without cable.
I'm a little confused here as a Canadian, and was wondering if anybody could help me out?<p>When searching for TV antennas on Canada Computers (my go-to electronics store in the GTA) I am met with cheap iCan (Canada Computer in-house brand which is quite good usually) digital antennas which claim they have UHF/VHF reception for about $10.<p>Then there are ATSC antennae which are all more expensive (~$20) and anything I read about ATSC [0] on wikipedia sounds like that's the one I need.<p>So basically my question is will the cheaper antenna work? They have thousands of them in stock across the country so it must do something... I'm planning on picking up one tomorrow to watch the Jays.<p>I would ask them in store but I somehow doubt that their salesmen (who are usually great) will know much about TV antennae.
The tech is great. I bought a "COLOR TV ANTENNA" from Radio Shack, when they were still open a few years back. Amazingly, it came in the same looking box I recall from the late 70's. (upgrading mom 'n pops old antenna as a kid to get UHF channels)<p>Took an hour to get a good orientation. Mostly problem free, and there are some 30 channels here in PDX, maybe 10 of them offer something I might watch.<p>And that's the only real problem area. Commercial AD loads are HIGH. Higher than I remember in the past. Quite frankly brutal, and there are very few things I'll watch, given that high load.<p>Mostly, I use a Chromcast to stream things to the nice smart tv and call it good.
In my experience a lot of people don't realize you can get network TV in HD with an antenna. The cost of cable is just way too high to stomach given other available options, the best option being watching less TV.
My digital TV (MPEG2 DVB-T, I'm in Australia) antenna recently broke and I'm replacing it in the next few weeks.<p>Once it's back up and running I'll be using MumuDVB [1] to stream channels over my network. Even a Raspberry Pi 1 should be able to act as a "receiver" this way.<p>[1]: <a href="http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-tuner-server-with-mumudvb/" rel="nofollow">http://goughlui.com/2013/11/10/project-building-a-dvb-t-tv-t...</a>
Cordcutter here as well. My experience with HD antennae hasn't been great, although it seems to be more due to my basement location than anything else. I still get enough channels to keep it, but they periodically cut in and out, which is a bit annoying.<p>I've spent a good bit of time experimenting with Kodi add-ons and Chromecast-compatible apps. Those have worked pretty well for supplementing my substantial amount of local media.
I have a similar setup. I live in San Jose, and with a digital antenna and an amplifier, I get more than 60 channels, with 20+ in flawless HD. The farthest I think is in Napa. A not insubstantial number of them are in Vietnamese, but still. Sometimes it's nice to just turn on the TV and watch whatever's on in the background instead of having to choose something on Netflix or Hulu.
As much as I like the idea of free broadcast TV and not being dependent on cable/satellite companies ...<p>1) Is over-the-air broadcast TV widely used anywhere? Very few even know about it where I live, but maybe there are places where it's more common.<p>2) Is it essential to any group of people?<p>3) Could we get more beneift from that spectrum by repurposing it for something else?
I didn't have cable tv in college back in 2005. We used rabbit ears. I went without cable tv for 8 or 9 years and subscribed a year or two ago. I look back and I'm glad at the money I saved. I was blown away when HD antenna was introduced. The antenna is really underrated nowadays. I'd love to see it make a comeback.
On a home we purchased, the house antenna that was mounted on the chimney picks up clear HD channels of the local stations that look wonderful.<p>Paying for TV doesn't make sense nowadays. If a home doesn't have an antenna on the roof, I would recommend it as an upgrade for anyone interested in the local channels.
I haven't paid for cable TV in a long time. We've got netflix and amazon prime, and pay the $20/mo for sling during college football season (I would gladly pay less for an NCAA streaming channel..). Everything we watch is covered by those.
Winegard makes nice affordable OTA TV antennas. They are made in America too.<p><a href="http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair" rel="nofollow">http://www.winegard.com/hdtv-outdoor-antennas?q=offair</a>
What blows my mind is how many people I know who watch football on Sunday on broadcast stations in SD because their cable box isn't HD. When I tell them they could get HD with a $20 antennae their minds are blown.
I love the idea of using an antenna. HDTV with 5.1 surround for no cost other than a rooftop or set top antenna? This is the future! (or the past) Only one problem, what if we live in an area where we are blocked from a signal? Could a community pool their money and buy a shared antenna? (as was done in the 1970s - this is how the cable companies go their start) No. We could not. The cable companies (and others) would sue. This is what happened with Aereo. Brilliant business model that made cable companies successful, is sued out of existence. TiVo bought their assets, so perhaps there's still hope. But it's sickening how much power we've given these anti-competitive companies.
Is there a reason the publisher links to a Google search of the Antennas Direct link instead of to the direct site? It was the only link that went to a Google search.
What worries me is how long will it take for lobbyists or the government to mess this great free HD over OTA thing up in the US. Let's hope never.
With the exception of sports and news, linear TV is dead. It doesn't matter if it comes from the cable company or an antenna. Once users get a taste of watching things on their schedule, they don't want to adhere to the broadcaster's schedule.<p>Also, I am going to predict that the advertising model used by current cable and broadcast networks won't ever work with on-demand programming. This is probably why Hulu now offers the ad-free option. Getting rid of advertising will improve the quality of the programming by removing the redundant parts.
The U.S. switch over to digital transmission killed my reception. The analog signal had no problem with the mountain ranges between me and the nearest metropolitan areas, but the digital signal can't make it through. I was using a rabbit ear antennae up until then.<p>I get the NYC stations. It's perhaps a horrible thing to say, but Osama Bin Laden's boys knocked out only one of my channels and only temporarily; the FCC, however, killed them all.
Cable to expensive? It's a 10 dollar addon(digital starter) if you have internet with comcast. It used to be cheaper to have internet and limited basic than just internet alone.
If I can't watch a show or movie on my Apple TV (or other streaming devices), I just don't watch it.<p>Got rid of cable when I moved away for college, not going back anytime soon.
I am always stunned of how USA are both forerunners of new technologies, and very backward as well... for credit cards with chip, digital television, gsm diffusion, etc etc... Also, in most of United States you can not get an european level ADSL.
Lord knows why. It's basically a tool to pick up non-stop advertising. If you're lucky, there's some horrible Big Bang Theory rerun displayed in one quadrant of the video signal, sped up to 210% normal framerate, so they can fit more commercials in. Plex is the new tv antenna.