Can anyone tell me anything about getting TV without cable or internet or satellite dish.
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I’m not sure if you want facts about this or experiences from other people, or both. Let’s try IMHO for now.
Moving thread from The Barn House to In My Humble Opinion.
Sure. You just pull in the digital OTA broadcast signals with a regular antenna. It can sometimes be a pain to have to reorient your antenna to pick up stations broadcasting from towers in different directions from your antenna, but once you’re tuned in, the picture is perfect. Better than cable or satellite actually, because less compression is needed for broadcast (with fewer available channels) than with cable or satellite which have far more channels so they need to compress them more which results in a slightly inferior picture.
Obvious downside to OTA broadcast is–less channels to choose from. But at least it’s free!
OTA = Over The Air. You’ll need to get some kind of antenna.
This link takes you to a site where you can punch in your address and it’ll tell you what channels you’ll have available with a certain given type of antenna. But there are antenna options.
Get a spare piece of cable coax, and put a paper clip on the bare wire at one end of it, and plug the other end of it into your TV antenna input. Using your TV remote, press Source, then select TV. (Remember what it was set on before, so you can get back to your cable when finished.) Then press Menu >> TV >> Channel scan. Your set will take a coujple of minutes to locate the channels that you can get.
(This may vary according to TV, but that is the general gist of the proocddure.)
Yes, first check what OTA channels are available in your area - for you to get much value from this effort, you will want at least three or four with “green” strength ratings, meaning they cover your area with a strong signal that 's easy to pick up. (Note that most signal-rating sites assume you have a pretty decent antenna 20-30 feet off the ground, so if you’re not going to put up a mast or don’t have, say, a chimney to hold a shortie mast, you’re not going to get any weaker channels.)
Then look into what level of antenna you need for your situation. The bigger and higher the antenna, the more channels you will pull in and with stronger, more reliable signals. The digital TV age can be frustrating if you remember the old days when you could tune in a watchable if fuzzy image from a weak station; most TVs will drop out and go to black if the signal isn’t strong enough for a good picture. In most cities or dense suburbs, a good set-top, wall-mount or attic antenna will probably serve well. If you’re further out on the fringes, an exterior mast is going to be needed.
I have to say, I find the need to ask this question fascinating, kind of like, “How do I make a call on this rotary-dial phone?” But I guess cable has become so universal that the idea of OTA is now odd and requiring esoteric information…
We’ve been OTA-only at our place for about 8 years now. We’re very lucky that Milwaukee has a lot of channels available, especially from PBS.
I highly recommend this antenna The AmazonBasics 60-mile range model. I installed it in about 15 minutes and since doing so we’ve never had a loss of signal.
I use rabbit ears. The local stations come in quite well. But I don’t have cable.
Seconding rabbit ears. If you live in an area where some stations are blocked by mountains, like I do, many stations will have digital repeaters that retransmit the signal into the “dead” zones. So be sure to see if any of the stations in your area have such translator towers in addition to the main channels.
Due to my neighborhood’s mini-crime wave (now over) I lost my flatscreen TV & cute little netbook. I got a decent laptop to take the place of the netbook. Then called Comcast & dropped cable. I’ve got two little TV’s–plus a Roku (with various subscriptions) & an all-region DVD player (with a bunch of DVD’s). Also a Blu-Ray player I haven’t hooked up. Of course, the laptop also receives video from those subscriptions–& plays DVD’s.
The TV’s come from the Age of Broadcast TV–but I’ve got a digital converter. This antenna pulls in a bunch of channels, quite clearly.
So I’m hardly TV-deprived. But the little screens are less seductive–none of that automatically turning on the TV & ending up watching idiots traipse through cookie-cutter homes in search of Stainless Appliances & Granite Counter tops. So I’ve actually been Getting More Stuff Done. By the time Mad Men & Game of Thrones return this spring, I’ll spring for a new flat screen & call up Comcast…
Definitely get a streaming media player of some kind. I have a Roku and love it. In some ways I like the WDTV better, but I didn’t get one because it can’t get Amazon Video.
Seconding the Roku as long as you have wi-fi. Lots of free stuff and lots of good paid for content for cheap. It’s also very easy to use. That and an HD antenna is really all you need once you get into the mindset of watching what’s available and not what you could be watching on cable.
I put a rather large outdoor digital antenna in the attic and pointed it towards where the majority of the TV channel antennas are located. I live about 15 miles as the crow flies from St. Louis and get about 18 channels. MeTV is one of my favorites.
My daughter, who lives about a mile closer to St. Louis has a tiny indoor digital antenna. Sometimes when a large truck drives by, the signal breaks up some.
I just ordered a Roku and Amazon Prime so I’m looking forward to using that.
The OP asked about what television would be available without internet, so streaming would not be possible. You would be restricted to OTA channels. (Well that and whatever DVDs you rent or buy.)
go to
click on
“check your address for free tv”
enter your postal code or address.
you will see a listing of stations that you would expect to see, the type of antenna needed to get them and the direction the station is (to aim the antenna).
you don’t need digital antennas. the signal are received by any tv antenna.
more stations are now UHF. you may need a good UHF portion of antenna (especially for inside).
very important with any antenna, more with inside antenna, is the direction it is pointed. you want it pointed to the strongest signal. a truck reflects the signal and disturbs the signal at the antenna.
my previous message gives good information to aid with an antenna.
I’d drop cable in a minute, if there was a PBS station here, but there is no signal within 120 miles of me. About the only other thing I watch is sports and there are plenty of streaming sources online for that, I never miss a game. If I were on atight budget, cable would be the fist thing that would go, and I’d never even bother to turn on my TV, for what’s available OTA,
I keep a TV with modern-style rabbit ears near my computer. It gets a lot of great stuff on our local “.2 and .3” channels that cable doesn’t have. A lot of retro TV that appeals to an old fart like me.
Any antenna is better than none, and may well do.
But if not, then the trouble can be that the antenna is meant for UHF not VHF, or VHF not UHF.
VHF can be picked up on rabbit ears, or rabbit ear sized antenna, or a coil which is larger than UHF antenna but not as big as rabbit ears.
UHF requires the shorter elements … eg in some indoor antenna designs, the UHF is reflected by a dish to short elements. With the 5 " wire at the end of coax, it could just stick up in the air and be omnidirectional. But I also found that rabbit ears can pick up UHF , if the space between them is about UHF size…
Another thing is that if the TV or device has separate UHF and VHF inputs, that would have to be stuck to… eg if you have a diplexer for joining two antenna to one wire, it may be designed for joining one VHF antenna and one UHF antenna…