<p>We just got word that our satellite bill is rising again. I am thinking I should just be one of those people that switches providers every 2 years to save some money but my H is not on board. He hates to keep switching, the hassles, etc.</p>
<p>Right now we have Dish TV and probably one of the lowest packages. We have the monthly streaming Netflix, which we use for watching mostly favorite TV shows and some movies.</p>
<p>Is it possible to cancel satellite/cable and get our favorite channels through another means? I figure you can probably watch many of these on our computer, but who wants to have a family sit around the computer to enjoy shows? (we have done that a few times, and the experience is less than enjoyable.)</p>
<p>So, has anyone gotten rid of their satellite or cable and survived? Other than just not watching anything, is there a way to make do? We really don’t watch that much TV, we estimated that we have about 20-30 channels that we actually watch out of a package of 110 channels.</p>
<p>If there has already been a thread here about this topic, please direct me. I’m looking forward to the input!</p>
<p>There are various devices to get television shows over the internet for output on your television. These work to varying degrees of success. Apple TV is an example.</p>
<p>The main problem is that there are many different interests involved in television and they all want to be in control of the content and where you can watch it and that has resulted in an uneven experience for consumers.</p>
<p>When we were house siting for my oldest- youngest got Netflix set up so we could control it on the TV with her phone. it was pretty cool- have to have her do that at home too!</p>
<p>Take a look at what is available in your area with over-the-air broadcast. Where we live, we can pick up about 12 main channels, most of which have multiple sub-channels. If you have a newer TV that has the digital converter built into it, all you need is a set of “bunny ears”. If your TV is older, you will also need a converter box. There are more sophisticated TV antennas (antennae??) on the market as well. Pop by Radio Shack and ask the folks there for recommendations.</p>
<p>I don’t like the digital transmission as well as the old analog transmission because if reception is shaky, the image and sound don’t come through at all, whereas with analog the image would just be “snowy”. I do like the fiddling with the antenna to improve reception because it means that you have to commit to watching something to make that hassle worth while. Lots less TV viewing since we’ve moved because no one is really ready to walk the antenna around the living room just to pick up Channel X.</p>
<p>Happykid has figured out how to get what she wants to see with her computer.</p>
<p>Our antenna is in the attic - if you really want a station, you have to walk up three flights of stairs to change it, walk back down, check it out, walk back up, etc. Or you can find someone to help you and yell back and forth.</p>
<p>LOL BCEagle91! I just occurred to me that if I were willing to drag the TV and antenna upstairs to the office, we might have a better line-of-sight to the transmission towers because the best reception so far has been through the back door. Not happening though as this would mean that Happydad would then want to drag the computer down to the living room and we would re-enter that “just-moved-in-and-don’t-know-where-to-put-things” chaos.</p>
<p>Our home was wired for cable when we bought it so I just bought an antenna and hooked up an amplifier to it and connected the output to a cable outlet and it provides signals all over the house including the basement where the television is. When we got cable internet, we just disconnected the cable from the entry point to the rest of the house.</p>
<p>That might be a workable approach for you too if your house is wired for cable.</p>
<p>Like BCE, we got rid of the cable and use netflix and over-the-air broadcasting. We use an indoor anttena for o-t-a reception, we can get about 43 channels, however, from time to time, you have to move the anttena around to get reception of certain channels.
I think an outdoor antenna with a motor that can change directions will do better, but we are too cheap/lazy to install one.</p>
<p>Instead of running back and forth to outside antenna, use you cell phones. Send your wife outside to turn antenna while you talk to her on phone for tweaking from couch!</p>
<p>We have walkie-talkies which we could use for short-range stuff if we needed to. The TV only gets used one or two hours per week now so it’s not a big deal. The walkie-talkies haven’t been used in many years.</p>
<p>We do not have cable. We’re still using a rabbit ear antenna that is hooked up to our digital converter. We get around ten stations - some of which we never saw with the analog signals. When its windy, the picture is very pixelated. We get some really bizarre stations now.</p>
<p>I live in the middle of nowhere and I can get network stations with an antenna not in the attic (rabbit ears though don’t work) and I stream netflix and hulu plus. I rarely want to watch something I can’t get this way.</p>
<p>I used to use OTA for tennis matches at the majors but there are a huge number of tournament videos posted to YouTube these days and there are free streaming options for the major tournaments though they may not be in english. I think that one can cobble together enough for most major categories of video entertainment without cable these days. It’s not necessarily free though.</p>
<p>At home we use OTA and also Roku with Netflix suscription for $8/mo–tried HulaPlus but didn’t need/want. There are over 500 channels available for Roku–most are free!</p>
<p>We have three old analog TV. Currently, they are on the standard cable.
We have TW service of 10 Mbps internet and the cable TV. The total cost is about $95/month.<br>
We can’t afford this expense anymore. But we do like to watch some TV shows on cable.
We must have the high speed internet
The contract ends this month.
Our TV are not capable of getting the new off air digital channels.
Really don’t have a budget to get new digital TV sets.</p>
<p>The only option seems to be - buying three converter boxs and hook up them to the old TV. </p>
<p>What other options/alternatives do you have for us. </p>
<p>We never watched much TV and never got on the cable/sattelite TV bandwagon. We have rabbit ears and a converter box, we hook up our computer to the TV and watch the stations we can get very occasionally. We watch some shows on Hulu or Amazon streaming. We used to get some TV shows via Netflix on DVDs, we recently switched to Netflix streaming at the request of our son - a reasonable request since we hadn’t watched the disks the last set of discs for months.</p>
<p>Could someone recommend a good, inexpensive antenna for a 2008 Samsung TV (doesn’t require a converter box)? I’ve had one for a while, but it’s been falling apart and is currently only getting two channels.</p>