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Too cheap for cable?

Count me in - I have a rabbit ear antenna. Funtime
 
We are hooked up, and hooked on cable. But we just got a new RV. It came with a big flat-screen TV. So I cranked up the antenna, turned it on and Voila! big, beautiful, sharp pictures over the air! Heck, the majority of what we watch is PBS and the over the air thing had at least 3 feeds- all different. And we live in a rural area. I may just look into finding a lower cost internet provider and go cable-less.

Tempting.

Jim
 
I was never satisfied with the quality if cable where I lived, so I got DirecTV. They were mandated to add local channels, but they only added the networks and PBS. When everything went digital, our PBS station developed four leads, and NBC ad FOX Local had two (one was local weather 24/7). None of these were available, and neither were other locals such as VegasTV, MYTV and ION.

Eventually we were able to get FIOS via Centrylink. I now get something like 15 or 20 local channels. And the quality is amazing, among other things.

I am sure that isn't what you meant, though. But I don't go to the movies, etc, and I bundle, so it is a good deal for me. Its also about $60. cheaper than what I was paying before.

Besides, I am in the middle of a hill, with nearby mountains, so I'm not sure what I would get, if anything, with rabbit ears (no external antennas allowed).

Fern
 
I was just making the point that these are the best 'rabbit ears' I've ever seen. And I've been through a lot of them. No power connection and it provides the best reception. No turning, no twisting, it just works!

Anyway, we gave up cable over a year ago because it just wasn't worth paying $100 a month for the amount of time that we watched it.

This is a great product and I wanted to share.
 
I am going to investigate this. We have a place in a mobile home park in Florida, and there is no cable offered. We bought an antenna, and use it with our new TV. Some nights, reception is good, but often it stinks! Sometimes we can only get ION, so we're stuck watching reruns. It is very frustrating.

Dori
 
I bought this a month ago

Am amazed at the HD reception we get over the air.

Saving a bundle!

Anita
 
Ace, how far do you live from the transmitters, are they all in the same general direction, and is the terrain flat between you and them?

I have a BIG antenna pointed at San Diego, 60 miles away. I can get half of the channels all of the time, and the other half most of the time, except when it rains or is foggy. The bad thing about digital is that the signal strength is either adequate or it's not ... there are no snowy analog pictures; it's either receivable or not.

This is necessary because we're just barely in the LA market area, so cable and Fios give us LA channels. But DW is a big Chargers fan.
 
we just have basic tv channels (no cable)

success of streaming (i dont do it either, or regular netflix) could eventually lead to cable selling individual channels, instead of packages, which i would definitely consider
 
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I'm noted before on TUG that we get over 100 channels over the air here in LA with just the antenna. We have a Tivo box which they figured out how to get $10/month from us (essentially for the program guide) along with an on-line netflix subscription and we get more TV than we have time to watch.

We got AT&T U-verse simply for internet and left off the TV & phone. The combination works great and is about as cheap as you can get.
 
isisdave said:
Ace, how far do you live from the transmitters, are they all in the same general direction, and is the terrain flat between you and them?

I have a BIG antenna pointed at San Diego, 60 miles away. I can get half of the channels all of the time, and the other half most of the time, except when it rains or is foggy. The bad thing about digital is that the signal strength is either adequate or it's not ... there are no snowy analog pictures; it's either receivable or not.

This is necessary because we're just barely in the LA market area, so cable and Fios give us LA channels. But DW is a big Chargers fan.
Click to expand...

I live in Springfield, MO (30 miles north of Branson). I've heard that the transmitters are located both North and South of my house, which explains why I have to constantly play with the antenna when I change channels. When I did my channel search with the new antenna, I get 12 channels now.

The reason I know this antenna works is that since the HD cutover last year, I couldn't pick up our local Fox channel on our basement TV. I tried 3 different rabbit ears. This new one picked it up with no problem. I've heard that the problem with the Fox channel is that they don't transmit with the same power as they did pre-HD.

If you've experienced the same frustration with TV antennas you may want to give this one a try. It worked nicely for me.
 
I don't watch TV a whole lot, mostly just sports and this year I've been watching the Voice. I also like the Sunday morning news shows.

We have no regrets about ditching cable. We use the Netflix streaming and rent from Redbox. It works for us, and we've saved about $90 a month. I've tried Hulu in the past, but back then they didn't have the movie collection that Netflix streaming had. I also have an Amazon Prime membership, but haven't seen anything on there that I wanted to watch. Netflix and Redbox seems to be our answer.
 
ace2000 said:
I live in Springfield, MO (30 miles north of Branson). I've heard that the transmitters are located both North and South of my house, which explains why I have to constantly play with the antenna when I change channels.
Click to expand...

For some reason, this new antenna requires no adjusting, it just hangs flat behind our TV, and out of view. Plus, no more power cord.
 
uw surfer

Does your tivo box work as a dvr?

It would be nice to have the program guide.

We have the tv with the Mohu antennae hooked to a Roku box. With the Roku, we can access Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

The only thing I miss, just a little bit, is the ability to time shift and skip commercials. i would love to be able to record The Voice and fast forward through the commercials and the sappy stories.

Anita
 
How well any indoor antenna works is based more on your location than the design of the device. Its not until you move up to outdoor that design and installation have a bigger effect on signal strength.

For the person between 2 strong cities that moves the antenna, a trick to avoid that is use 2 antennas with a signal combiner. To boost outdoor antenna signal, make sure the mast is well grounded, I've even added wire mesh ground planes under the antenna. Radio waves bounce off the ground as they propogate, there is just as much signal bouncing up into the antenna array as hitting from above. Sometimes that extra ground bounce boost will put your signal up enough to stop the "searching".
 
akp said:
Does your tivo box work as a dvr?

It would be nice to have the program guide.

We have the tv with the Mohu antennae hooked to a Roku box. With the Roku, we can access Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

The only thing I miss, just a little bit, is the ability to time shift and skip commercials. i would love to be able to record The Voice and fast forward through the commercials and the sappy stories.

Anita
Click to expand...

Tivo is a DVR. Actually, one of the first DVR's. One can buy all types of stand alone Tivo units:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=tivo
 
SmithOp said:
How well any indoor antenna works is based more on your location than the design of the device. Its not until you move up to outdoor that design and installation have a bigger effect on signal strength.

For the person between 2 strong cities that moves the antenna, a trick to avoid that is use 2 antennas with a signal combiner. To boost outdoor antenna signal, make sure the mast is well grounded, I've even added wire mesh ground planes under the antenna. Radio waves bounce off the ground as they propogate, there is just as much signal bouncing up into the antenna array as hitting from above. Sometimes that extra ground bounce boost will put your signal up enough to stop the "searching".
Click to expand...

We live just outside NYC. You would think we got fantastic reception, but we don't. I don't know if we're so close that we're underneath the signals or if there are so many signals they're interfering with each other, but we're not getting great reception except from the Spanish-language stations in Newark, NJ, which come in clear as a bell. Any suggestions?
 
The problem with being close to powerful transmitters with either hills or lots of buildings (or overhead airplanes) is that the signal bounces off all those things, and parts of it arrive microseconds later than the main signal due to the slightly longer path.

The same thing used to happen with analog signals ... you would see it as ghosting, where the image would invert in color, or even (with airplanes) waver back and forth a few times. Unfortunately, with digital, reception is all-or-nothing, and this kind of signal loss can completely knock the reception out while the tuner tries to re-sync to it.

The only approach to this is to try to minimize the extra signals. The straightforward way is with a directional antenna outside ... but repositioning, tinfoil, or magic incantations can work sometimes too.

It may also be that the Fox signal is the victim of another local station that has not gone digital. The smaller, lower-powered stations were not required to do that, and I have one ... only 2500 watts ... but only a quarter mile away. It clobbered the 60-mile-distant San Diego stations by saturating the tuner when I tried a small antenna ... but fortunately it's 90 degrees away from the path to SD, and the big antenna is directional enough to reject it.
 
Try this

wackymother said:
We live just outside NYC. You would think we got fantastic reception, but we don't. I don't know if we're so close that we're underneath the signals or if there are so many signals they're interfering with each other, but we're not getting great reception except from the Spanish-language stations in Newark, NJ, which come in clear as a bell. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Put in your street address to get the best info. It will give you the color code and direction to point the recommended antenna. It will list the stations analog and digital for that location.
http://antennaweb.org/
 
isisdave said:
The problem with being close to powerful transmitters with either hills or lots of buildings (or overhead airplanes) is that the signal bounces off all those things, and parts of it arrive microseconds later than the main signal due to the slightly longer path.

The same thing used to happen with analog signals ... you would see it as ghosting, where the image would invert in color, or even (with airplanes) waver back and forth a few times. Unfortunately, with digital, reception is all-or-nothing, and this kind of signal loss can completely knock the reception out while the tuner tries to re-sync to it.
Click to expand...

Digital is not affected by ghosting, you wont ever see a snowy picture either.
Its all about signal strength and keeping up above 75% to keep from freezing, pixelation and searching - how it affects digital.

Indoor antennas are omnidirectional, if you have structures an outdoor directional will be the best way to address the issue.
 
Hope!!

I surely hope that this thing works at our Ormond by the Sea condo, north of Daytona Beach. If so, I can cut out everything except the internet!!
:)
 
akp said:
Does your tivo box work as a dvr?

It would be nice to have the program guide.

We have the tv with the Mohu antennae hooked to a Roku box. With the Roku, we can access Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

The only thing I miss, just a little bit, is the ability to time shift and skip commercials. i would love to be able to record The Voice and fast forward through the commercials and the sappy stories.

Anita
Click to expand...

Yes Tivo is at DVR, in fact the first wide spread commercial marketers of DVR's. The model we have records HD as well as accessing Netflix, Amazon and Hulu via internet. It's a neat device and we never watch live TV, letting us skip the commercials and reduce the time to watch a show.
 
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