Cutting the Cord Questions

[KCmike]

So I think I finally am ready to cut our cable tv bill. We have been thinking about this for awhile and I know quite a few people have already done this. My biggest worry is missing ESPN Monday night football games and my Royals baseball games on Fox Midwest sports channel. Anyway my family is a party of five and my youngest two just got their first smartphones so now our bill is pretty high and I'm trying to offset it by cutting cable.

Is there one digital antenna that someone recommends over another? Are there any great bang for you buck ones out there? Each kid has a tv in their room so the intial cost of getting the antennas might be tricky.

When you first ditched your cable did you try the antenna thing first to see what channels you received and the clarity of it all?

Any other helpful advice out there?

 

[Mfisc]

when I moved in October I was without cable for a week.. I went to walmart and picked up 2 of the OTA antenna's.. one was like $15 and the second was $20-$25 I think... some of them tells you on the box how far away of a broadcast it will pick up.... I did a 25 mile and a 40 mile I think...

The cheaper one did ok got most of the local channels but the 40 mile one that was amplified worked great perfect picture and got all the local channels plus so much more junk

was surprised how well it worked for that price point.

not sure if that helps at all

 

[gofordrew]

Can't speak too much on the antenna, but my in laws bought a really nice one and was able to split it to the rooms. Also, you will not get ESPN or any of the Fox sports channels with an antenna, these require a cable subscription. However you could buy mlb.tv and watch any game on devices such as laptops, tablets, playstation/xbox and some blu ray players. I think its about $100ish for the whole season and you get every game.

 

[AquaDame]

I would do what the poster above recommended and stream the games you want online through a service. The only thing we care about is my University football games and we typically can find a free stream online but have to deal with some lag, finding a decent quality and a bunch of popups/risk of viruses. I also did this to watch the Macy's Day Parade. I'm cheap though so we do it gladly...!

 

[kymom99]

Can't speak too much on the antenna, but my in laws bought a really nice one and was able to split it to the rooms. Also, you will not get ESPN or any of the Fox sports channels with an antenna, these require a cable subscription. However you could buy mlb.tv and watch any game on devices such as laptops, tablets, playstation/xbox and some blu ray players. I think its about $100ish for the whole season and you get every game.

mlb.tv blacks out local games

 

[tvguy]

Sports are tough because there are so many blackouts and restrictions on games being shown anywhere but the networks that are airing them.

Not too many legal ways around that.

 

[EpiStitch]

I actually did the no cable thing for a couple years because I wanted to save money and I figured I still had Netflix, but I sucked it up and went back to cable 2 months ago.

I hate paying for it, but it's so much nicer to be able to watch my sporting events at their regularly scheduled time without worrying about the repercussions of streaming online. The thing that really made me go back though was when I tried to watch a football game through online streaming and it was so bad that this critical game was unwatchable.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

 

[jnamadison]

We've been doing it for about 18 months now. We have one antenna that I just wired into the already existing coaxial cable run throughout the house. Gets the local channels pretty well.

We also have Rokus on each of our TVs for watching streaming video. We watch ESPN on the WatchESPN app. You do need a valid account with an active ESPN subscription (usually a family member who still has cable). For local sport's you can try mlb.tv or your local broadcast channels but you may run into problems with blackouts.

As I'm also a little more tech savy, we use a combination of Sickbeard and Plex on a home PC to acquire our favorite broadcast shows and stream them to any TV via the Roku much like a regular DVR. This is not for the novice, but is an option for those willing.

 

[hsmamato2]

I am curious about plex..... to OP we have one big (maybe 75.00?) antenna in our attic, attached to our LR tv... I got a small,flat $10 ant. for a bedroom tv, plus a roku on each set, but we mainly watch just the one tv anyway, the kids prefer computer watching- buy one at walmart and try it out, to see what channels you will get,easy enough to unplug your cable to test...

 

[Miffy]

We were thinking of cutting the cable--keeping the Internet connection but ditching the phone and TV. The savings would've been significant, around $65/month. I'd already researched the phone service we'd get--Ooma--and factored that into the total savings (Ooma's like $10/month, iirc).

Before doing anything, we got an antenna from RadioShack and tried it out. Boy, were we shocked. The picture quality was so far below what we're used to looking at on cable, our experiment ended right there. Fortunately, RadioShack took back the antenna (which we'd used for about 10 minutes).

I think a lot depends on where you are and also what you watch. We're in NYC and the OTA reception here is not good--to say the least--especially in an apartment building where you can't put your antenna outside. Also, I realized how much we use the DVR--something you won't have with OTA TV unless you buy a TiVO and pay for their services, thereby eating into your savings.

You should also talk with your cable company about how much the other service(s) you use are costing you. Even though, for example, they're itemized by service on our bill, without having their so-called triple play package, each service by itself costs much more than the itemized amount and we absolutely have to have the high-speed Internet connection.

Don't know what cell phone plan you've got (I saw this was one reason you're thinking of cutting the cable), but we have PureTalk, which runs off the AT&T network and is quite a good deal--better than anything else we looked into.

Another option for you would be to cut your cable TV service down to the minimum--just the very very basic cable TV. That way you'd still get all the OTA channels without having to get an antenna. Just something to check into.

And, btw, a PP is correct: you cannot get your local sports teams through services like mlb.com. They're blacked out. Ridiculous, really.

ETA: The other thing we realized during our cut-the-cable analysis was that 99% of the TV we watch is on a cable channel, which pretty much ended the discussion.

 

[xlxo]

Some thoughts when I cut the cord for 5 years...

• This is a great link to assess what stations would be available to your area...
  http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29
• Antennas work best when placed in a window that faces the local broadcast towers.
• Amplified antennas work better than passive ones.
• Over the Air antennas are incredibly small, some of the narrow ones can be hard to see when placed in an apartment window
• some say your can fold a paper clip and use that as an antenna.
• Consider a PVR to make watching content more convenient
  http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HW-150PVR-HomeWorx-Converter-Recording/dp/B00I2ZBD1U
• You can also get a tuner for your computer.
  http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hauppauge-wintv-for-laptop-and-notebooks/9234205.p
• This is my window antenna...
  http://www.amazon.com/Terk-FDTV2A-Omni-Directional-Amplified-Antenna-Black/dp/B001VYQG16/ref=sr_1_3

I reconnected the cord this year...

• got myself an HD TV
• most of my TV's was not located to a convenient window
• cable provider offered wireless boxes so I could watch content in any room without needing to cable
• I wanted movie channels, I wanted 3D
• I wanted international channels that were not available over the air.
• cable provider provided a massive PVR that could record multiple channels
• cable provider provided 5.1 audio, Roku was limited to stereo.
• cable provider meant I would not hit my internet usage cap