Cord cutter

Helios_azimuth · 2019-10-18T21:30:09.000Z

Due to frequent power outages and fairly frequent wild fires, we kept the landline and a princess phone that does not require electrical wall outlet. The local telephone office has batteries and a generator, so when everything else goes down we can call neighbors or 911. Also get updates by phone from power company. Not an option out here; it is a necessity. The only time we are cut off is when the telephone poles and cables burn, but that has not happened in a few years.
We do not have any television and do not miss it. Obviously, we have internet and we have good cell coverage. The internet goes down when power is out and sometimes cell does.
We also have radios. It is all part of life in the mountains and I would not give it up to live in a city. Life is good.
And we have flashlights!!!

AguassissiM · 2019-10-18T21:34:56.000Z

We ditched cable and landline over 10 years ago and do not miss any of it. OTA gives me 38 digital chanels
and that is more than enough for us.

Here is another place to find out what is available in your area using an OTA antenna: http://www.tvfool.com/

pennzy · 2019-10-18T21:49:25.000Z

Antennaweb gave me 0 stations. Bummer.

TV fool not much better.

sp5it · 2019-10-18T21:36:40.000Z

We quit watching TV 2 years ago. Feels great.
Mike

Lightbringer · 2019-10-18T23:02:17.000Z

No cable teevee, no landline phone, just cable innernet.

pennzy · 2019-10-19T00:47:05.000Z

Lightbringer:

No cable teevee, no landline phone, just cable innernet.

What about antenna? Growing up in upstate NY, we used to get the broadcast stations off the Empire State building, then the twin towers. Almost 100 miles away by car.

DBSAR · 2019-10-19T00:50:14.000Z

I have not had a land-line in years, and once i sell my house here and move east, i plan to go partially off grid.

Lightbringer · 2019-10-19T02:30:42.000Z

pennzy:

Lightbringer:

No cable teevee, no landline phone, just cable innernet.

What about antenna? Growing up in upstate NY, we used to get the broadcast stations off the Empire State building, then the twin towers. Almost 100 miles away by car.

Yeah, one of those flimsy printed-pattern antennas. Before was a more “solid” black square. They’re pretty much all crap. Flip a coin to see if you get this channel or that. Car passes by or someone walks by, and you lose the signal ’til they’re gone. Lean back, lose the signal, lean forward, lose the signal, stay in the middle, and you can watch. ’Til a car/person passes by, of course.

Better yet is when you jiggle the antenna or just the cable to get better reception for one group of stations, then lose a bunch of those you used to get before.

Gaaah.

Agro · 2019-10-19T10:25:11.000Z

No tv since I moved out of my parents home in 2004. I hardly used it anyway for the previous few years as internet replaced it for me.
Nowadays I’m very diisatisfied with the fashion for video content over the web (as opposed to text and images). Needs sound, can’t be skimmed easily, not searchable….that’s a big downgrade for me.

slmjim · 2019-10-19T15:04:24.000Z

No cable for decades, just OTA.

I live in a fairly urban area, but at the bottom of a localized geographic bowl about a mile in diameter, surrounded 360 deg. by 100 ~ 200 ft. limestone ridges. No line of sight to any horizon. I ended up installing a 30 yr. old deep-fringe ChannelMaster antenna on the roof, on a short mast connected to a vintage NOS Archer (Radio Shack) rotator (Made in USA, if that gives an indication of it's age). I could probably have gotten away with the antenna in the attic, but wading through 18" of loose fiberglass insulation discouraged me from doing so.

The deep-fringe antenna gets me a very good signal, far better than the cheap "digital" indoor antennas. Depending on what direction it's pointed, I can see the more powerful Indy and Cinci stations, but their programming is a dupe of my home stations.

No such thing as a "digital" antenna. RF is RF is RF as far as TV frequencies go. "Digital" is just marketing hype. Frequencies are mostly the same as the old analog broadcasts. Modulation is what's changed.

I've used a ChannelMaster DVR for the last few years for time-shifting. My current one has a 1Gb HDD for storage that's never been more than half full. Two built-in tuners to record two OTA programs concurrently while watching a third on the TV. New ones have larger HDD's.

Landline is VOIP using an Ooma device. $4.95/mo. plus $44.95 for 15 Meg. broadband.

slmjim

California_Prepper · 2019-10-19T15:21:28.000Z

Anyone using YouTube tv? I have a friend who recently subscribed to it and he says he loves it, but his wife says it tends to have trouble loading quite often. They have the top tier of wifi speed. I’ve been seriously thinking about switching to this. I currently have Direct Tv, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Tv.

Scallywag · 2019-10-19T18:13:53.000Z

I’ve never had cable TV or a land-line since moving out. My parents ditched the land-line a few years before I moved out, but they still have cable TV.

Have Netflix and Amazon, Hulu too usually though occasionally we un- and re-subscribe to that (as well as other extras like hbo or showtime for a month at a time). When I moved last month I went from 100mbps for $65 to 200 for $40 with the better local cable company. When the promo rate runs out it will still be cheaper…

nitroz · 2019-11-11T18:16:13.000Z

California_Prepper:

Anyone using YouTube tv? I have a friend who recently subscribed to it and he says he loves it, but his wife says it tends to have trouble loading quite often. They have the top tier of wifi speed. I’ve been seriously thinking about switching to this. I currently have Direct Tv, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Tv.

I have been using YouTubeTV for about 6 months. I like the unlimited 1 year cloud DVR and the channel lineup isn’t to bad.

No issues with loading so far.

Pete7874 · 2019-11-11T19:05:13.000Z

We cut the cord almost a year ago. The OTA antenna gets me 2 of the major local networks. Other than that, we just pay for Netflix subscription and get Amazon Video as part of Prime. But even without these, there’s plenty of free content out there. We don’t spend much time in front of the TV anyway.

G0OSE · 2019-11-11T20:23:10.000Z

Big_Sam:

Our line was ‘fibre enabled’ by BT, but it was slower than normal broadband so ditched it all together and now run a 4G router with external aerial on ‘3’ network with unlimited data. Speed is fine, 30mbs up & down.

No telephone cable to the house, haven’t used a landline phone since 2012!

Hmm something to think about. The UK is light years behind on upgrading it’s network, if you live anywhere half rural you’ve had it.
The massively annoying thing is, during the Olympics BT ran a cable to the outskirts of our town, then took a shortcut over to Portland via the bay!
Portland is super fast, our town is super slow still, about 20mb but the ping/latency is the problem I think, bearing in mind we have 2 kids who want to watch, my wife and me gaming sometimes 20mb doesn’t even come close to being enough.
I can get more, but I have to have the lines combined and pay twice, whilst other people on the same service in cities pay for one line, and still it’s quicker. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair………

klrman · 2019-11-11T19:35:57.000Z

Just Netflix, Amazon and the free TubiTv app for my Samsung TV. Too much entertainment, but I'll take it when Winter comes.

Where I live, those ota digital antennas get no reception.

Melven · 2019-11-11T22:46:22.000Z

I use a cheap roof antenna from Walmart ($30) that is hooked up to a Tablo for DVR and guide info. This works on all TV’s and mobile devices in the house (Amazon Fire sticks and Roku’s). I pull signal from 70 miles away and get great reception. We subscribe to Philo for the cable channels my wife wants to watch, then Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Hulu does not get watched very often, but I got the 99 cent a month deal last Christmas, so we may drop it when the the price goes up. We have fiber internet and pay for 250 megabits up and down, but I have measured 260 megabits. We pay $67/ month for internet.

justanotherguy · 2019-11-12T02:24:33.000Z

Melven:

I use a cheap roof antenna from Walmart ($30) that is hooked up to a Tablo for DVR and guide info. This works on all TV’s and mobile devices in the house (Amazon Fire sticks and Roku’s). I pull signal from 70 miles away and get great reception. We subscribe to Philo for the cable channels my wife wants to watch, then Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Hulu does not get watched very often, but I got the 99 cent a month deal last Christmas, so we may drop it when the the price goes up. We have fiber internet and pay for 250 megabits up and down, but I have measured 260 megabits. We pay $67/ month for internet.

I keep putting this off…

I am getting raped but I am too timid to cut without obsessively researching…
Then again we already get amazon and netflix… Toss in Hulu and philo… then something for nfl nba….
I might make this my mission this week

raccoon · 2023-05-25T01:33:46.091Z

Necrobump!
We recently got 500/500 fiber internet, and we’re thinking about getting YouTube TV and ditching DirecTV if we like YouTube TV.
I know that YouTube TV is fairly expensive, but I like getting all of those TV channels along with the 9 months of online DVR-ing.
We don’t get many OTA channels because we live in a cove and there are hills/mountains around us.

pennzy · 2023-05-25T01:40:23.476Z

Another choice is direct tv stream https://streamtv.directv.com/shop/choice-package