To follow up, here is the antenna I have on my roof. It receives every digital channel in Kansas City. The six long elements are all VHF, and no longer serve any purpose. The rest of it is a UHF “corner reflector” - the short elements along the main “boom” passively guide the signal to the single short active element at the crux of the two sets of reflectors at a 45 degree angle to the boom.
Here is the antenna I have on the window behind my tv: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IF70TSI/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It’s thin, unobtrusive, took me 2 minutes to set up, and I get probably 20-30 live channels.
I literally have a coat hanger hanging out of my window as an antenna and it works just fine for all the major OTA channels. Not that I watch them that much.
My Mom & I have Acorn and Britbox. You might want one or the other (and we’ll probably cancel Acorn soon, since there’s a lot of overlap). They both include a lot of BBC programming, including stuff that didn’t air in the US. I can’t believe that I didn’t know about Time Team until I saw it on Acorn one day.
You can sign up for them via Amazon.
I can’t live without PBS, TCM, and AMC. I just can’t. Do any of these things provide these?
PBS has their own streaming channel. All you have to do is sign on with your email and you’ll have access to their on-demand content. Also, PBS is often available with an antenna. In addition to the main PBS channel, they probably also broadcast a handful of other PBS channels. I have 4 I can get over the air.
Antenna for PBS and Sling/PS Vue etc for the others. PBS does have an app, but I’m not a fan. I can get two PBS channels with my antenna.
For many series that aren’t immediately put up on a service like Hulu, you can instead buy individual episodes from Amazon or other online streaming video stores. These episodes are typically available the day after broadcast. I’ve done this for several shows on BBC America, AMC, Syfy, etc.: Breaking Bad, The Expanse, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Planet Earth II…
The cost is typically $3/episode, and if you buy a season pass there’s a modest discount (maybe 5-10%). If you’re only interested in a handful of “must-watch” shows each year, it’s much cheaper than cable or a channel-specific streaming service.
While we’re talking about streaming, what’s a good setup for storing movies on a hard drive? They’re all movies I own, but sometimes I’m just too darn lazy to walk over and pick one out and put it in the player. Is it possible to transfer them them to a hard drive and stream them to my TV, or is that too unwieldy? With external drives running about $25/TB it seems like a viable option. I’d need to store both Blu-rays and DVDs.
That’s what I use Plex for. I have ripped hundreds of my DVDs and BluRays to a 4 terabyte hard drive and can access them from my Rokus, my computer and my phone.
I was paying that too. Went into the Comcast office two months ago and told them that I needed to reduce my bill by at least $50 a month because they were just seriously overpriced.
The woman there told me that if I paid money up front for the home security package (which consists of a controller, one camera and 3 window sensors), then dropped the monitoring you have to sign up for - after about 2 months - then I’d be paying $47 less a month.
:smack:
So I give you a bunch of money up front for a useless system (I live in a third floor apartment with one window and one sliding glass door - no one is coming in them - oh, and I already own a webcam), then I’d save $3 a month LESS than I said I needed to drop this by?
FUCK YOU, COMCAST!
Had them cut my cable completely and just kept the internet. The $140 a month I’m NOT spending on them can pay for me to purchase all of the movies and TV shows I regularly watch (with a few exceptions) with lots of money remaining in my pocket.
The only one I was worried about is Doctor Who, and I can get the through my Amazon Prime account.
Look more into your Roku, there are a lot of channels with decent free TV and movies like Crackle and Vudu. Both have ads but that is the cost of free and it’s not like you aren’t paying for ads with satellite/cable.
As others have mentioned, Hulu is worthwhile and if you pay ~$12 a month there are no commercials except on a couple shows (out of hundreds.)
One disadvantage is that the ads on streaming are more annoying. Advertising on streaming isn’t as popular, so services have a smaller pool of commercials to show. That means you may see the same commercial in every break or sometimes even multiple times in the same break. Don’t be surprised if you see something like the same Cheerio’s commercial 6 times in one show.
True that. Someone here recommended Pluto TV, and I do like it and don’t mind the commercials (since it’s free), but seeing the same commercial over and over can get annoying. Not that I want a lot of commercials, but some variety would be better.
I cut the cord a little over a year ago. I use a Tivo Roamio OTA DVR for watching and recording over-the-air broadcast channels. It’s a bit pricey initially (~350) but well worth it and I’m saving that much every couple of months by not paying the ridiculous prices Verizon was charging for cable service and equipment. No Tivo subscription is required for the Roamio OTA. I didn’t always get good reception using one of those flat antennas, so I got one of these attic antennas and it works great: https://www.amazon.com/GE-33692-Attic-Mount-Antenna/dp/B00DNJZ58M/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1515193695&sr=1-3&keywords=attic+antenna
I also use a Roku (two actually) and I have subscriptions to Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, and HBO NOW. Lots of great shows (movies and TV series) to watch on those. I watch The Daily Show on the Comedy Central app on my Roku. The most recent episodes are usually available without needing a cable provider login (unfortunately many of the network tv apps limit your access to their content without a login through a cable provider). Roku also recently started their own ‘Roku Channel’ with a lot of free movies available to stream. The PBS app is also pretty great for watching some of the back-catalog of shows like NOVA, Frontline, Masterpiece Theater, and more.
If you own any blu-rays, check the case to see if they include a code for a digital version of the movie. You can sign up for an account on the appropriate services (Ultraviolet, VUDU, etc.) and then stream the movies any time through the VUDU app on a Roku or other streaming device.
And to take this idea one further - you can connect with your friends on Plex. That would allow me to watch your video collection over the internet. I’ve used that to access my personal collection from a hotel room too.
I already have Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and use my son’s VUDU account. I don’t have a problem with waiting for the latest season of a show to finally make it to one of those services. We do like to watch the local pro basketball team and would miss that. I’m wondering what Comcast would whack me for just landline and internet.
We got rid of the landline as part of the migration to internet TV. Now all we have is Xfinity for the internet, and that is about $100/mo, I think. Cell phones are thru another provider. At the end our landline was only ringing for telemarketers - easy decision.
See if you can isolate the cost for your landline, and think if you can live without it, and consider what other service you can purchase with that cost (e.g. Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.).
There are many VOIP providers you can use that would likely be cheaper–around $10/month or so. One good thing about using an independent VOIP provider is you don’t have to do anything special when you change ISPs. So it may be worthwhile to just use Comcast for internet and get phone from somewhere else.
I’ll have to check it out. We don’t use smart phones, so landline is how people reach us. We do have basic flip phones with AT&T, but don’t generally give out those numbers. I’d swap the landline over to AT&T (who I’m also paying for iPad connection), but want to keep my current number. Now that I think of it, I’m probably over $400/mo for all the damn electronic connections and services. It’s insane.