With no cable will we get ANY tv?

[mamaLori05]

Like others have said, it depends on your area. The cable guy may be telling you the truth. In our first house, we thought we would try and do without cable, but sadly we were not able to get ANY channels. We tried antenna's, but returned them because we still couldn't get any. Ended up getting the basic cable for $13 a month. Time Warner Cable does have a basic basic package that they don't advertise, you have to ask for it. It's probably about 20 channels or so, but works great and it's cheap!

My parents however, live out in the middle of no where, and they get several channels without cable (probably 10 or so). It's just hard to say. The person you talked to may know that the signals aren't strong enough in your area, and they may be just trying to get a sale. You won't know until you try.

 

[Colleen27]

In part it will depend on where you live. We've had either cable or sat for years now, so my experience is pre-digital conversion, but back then in our area you could get the VHF channels (2, 4, 7 - in our area FOX, NBC, ABC) but not the UHF channels with a stationary rooftop antenna. Without a rooftop antenna, you can't get anything at all.

 

[Blue.Fairy2]

My local cable company is not bright enough to figure out how to run cable into my kitchen. I've tried 2 separate times with 2 different installers and it's "no go" (in spite of what the CSR says!!!) Anyhow, I hooded up my small kitchen TV with a converter box and am very pleased.
I get all the local stations including SEVERAL PBS affiliates. I'm in N. Ky and get the Cincinnati, Dayton, Oh PBS stations and the Lexington, Ky KET stations. Each of the PBS affiliates have several stations so all in all I have 22 receivable stations on my converter box TV. Heck, it works for me

Same here, have a small tv on top of the refrigerator and it has a converter box and antenna that came with tv.

I get about 15 channels including the Create channel(which I love).

The amount of channels depends on where you live and you can find out from antenna web from the link posted above.

 

[sk!mom]

I agree that it depends on location. We can get 1 CBS, 1 NBC, and 1 Fox channel and that's it. Occasionally we can pick up an ABC station. We pay for the basic cable package as that wasn't enough for us.

 

[tink576]

Like others have said, it depends on your area. The cable guy may be telling you the truth. In our first house, we thought we would try and do without cable, but sadly we were not able to get ANY channels. We tried antenna's, but returned them because we still couldn't get any. Ended up getting the basic cable for $13 a month. Time Warner Cable does have a basic basic package that they don't advertise, you have to ask for it. It's probably about 20 channels or so, but works great and it's cheap!

I live in a valley in the middle of nowhere, and we can't get ANY channels. I use Time Warners Basic cable and it's $11 a month. I get 17 channels, the basic channels public channels plus TLC, travel, discovery health, ION, C-Span, and some sports channel that my roommate likes. It comes in great, and I get a lot more channels then I expected to get with such a basic package.

 

[samefay]

http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/tvlistings/ZBChooseProvider.do?method=getProviders

Just put your zip in. Then select broadcast antenna. Doesn't ask for much info and gives you a much bigger selection of channels available. We've been using it today to fine tune our line-up.

 

[D&DDisney]

Do you have to get up and adjust the antenna whenever you change channels? We got a converter box and antenna but then returned them to the store because we were annoyed whenever we changed the channel -- we had to get up and physically move the antenna ears around trying to find the signal for the next channel. Don't know if we needed a better antenna or if that's standard.

We live in a rural area and have NEVER had cable. In fact, when we went digital, we ended up getting about 30 more stations than we got before. For anything we can't get on TV we get off the internet.

Get yourself a good antena. The one they sell at Radio Shack looks like a ship from Star Trek (about $35-40). It has a remote so I can "move" the antena from my couch when the station doesn't come in. Place this antena on a high self near the TV to get better reception. The only stations we have a little trouble with are PBS as we were told they are digital but broadcasting on UHF instead of VHF. For those stations I have to physically move the antena some times. However, in the grand scheme of things, if I have to get up off my butt once in a while to save about $50-75 per month for cable, I'll do it.

 

[JCMHutch]

We opted not to go with the whole cable thing. Because of where we are we only get one channel so we opted to get a small package that is $12 a month. We have had this package for 6 years.

Within the last year we have added Netflicks ($9 a month). We watch movies on our computer and have an adapter to watch it on our main tv. We are are very lucky to have a great local library that has a huge selection of DVDs. We also live in a town that boarders a town in a different library network, so we use that one if we can't find something in ours.

All of this equals a huge savings every month compared to the cost of our local cable company's lowest rate.