Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Talk To Me About Getting Rid of Satellite/Cable TV
Not dead. Yet.
...and it will be in HD? That means I have four separate towers to deal with, yes? I did see an antenna or two that have the motor built in. I'm worried we're fast approaching the point where the trouble I'd go to will outweigh the money savings, though. We had to build a tower for our radio internet antenna, I'm guessing whatever digital antenna I'd get would need to go on top of that to get clear of the treeline, too.
...and it will be in HD?
That means I have four separate towers to deal with, yes? I did see an antenna or two that have the motor built in. I'm worried we're fast approaching the point where the trouble I'd go to will outweigh the money savings, though. We had to build a tower for our radio internet antenna, I'm guessing whatever digital antenna I'd get would need to go on top of that to get clear of the treeline, too.
Yes, you'll get HD as long as your tv is HD. It seems to me that one (or all) of those towers should give you all the networks, but I'm kind of just guessing using common sense. So then you are just using the other antennas for additional channels...which aren't great anyway.
What a pain to have to move your antenna every time you want to change to a different channel! That would discourage me too if that is truly the case. Look carefully at what each tower offers and see if you could just settle with one tower. Now that I think about it, some of the antennas might have a small range of degrees so if they are close together maybe you could pick up channels from more than one.
My setup is going directly through a mountain, so if you get a strong enough antenna and amplifier, you can probably just ignore those trees, but if you already have the tower, why not use it?
How can we know our limits if we don't test them?
Proboscis Colossus
How would I look at what each tower offers?
Only thing that concerns me about that tower is a lack of expertise and safety equipment. It's a fairly tall, thin affair, and at the very top, the radio internet antenna is mounted, so I guess I'd have to stick the digital TV antenna on the side somewhere up there, pointing roughly SSW. Not sure what the hardware requirements would be for that, and I'm not sure I want to try to figure it out while clinging to the side of the tower - which I'm not absolutely certain it's strong enough to handle, anyway.
"God guides us on our journey, but careful with those feet." - David Lee Roth, of all people
run, rest & read
As far as sports, you can definitely get anything online. I'm a huge EPL fan living in Taiwan. Whatever isn't on the cable sports channel I can always watch online. PM me for a few sites, as I don't want to clog up the forums with the spam that inevitably follows me posting this type of site here.
That said, you'll have to deal with occasional freeze frames. The audio also isn't always on track. This also depends on how many people are streaming what you want to watch. If it's college basketball, hopefully your wife's a fan of a major team. Otherwise, it might not be put up there for you to watch. Best of luck.
I guess I don't know. I thought the antennaweb site was more comprehensive. This has another map: http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/ But I get lots of more channels than are listed on that map for my area too. There's even another site called www.tvfool.com, but it's not responding at the moment.
Like I mentioned before, it's a project to get it properly set up. You need to do your research. These forums are a good resource: http://www.highdefforum.com/local-hdtv-info-reception-9/ Start up a thread there and you will get all of your answers from the experts.
One last thing. Looking at this youtube video, I think I used tvfool.com when I set my system up instead of antennaweb.org It's down right now, but give it a try later on. It seems to give much more complete info.
Resident Sk8r boi
Solidsignal(dot)com will recommend a antenna based on the information you enter for location, indoor or outdoor antenna, etc. we cut the cable months ago and use an antenna for locals and Netflix/Hulu plus for all the rest. Replaced a 65 buck a month tab with a 14 dollar one (plus amazon prime, which we'd have either way for as much amazon shopping as we do).
Oh, the over the air hd picture is actually better than the satellite/cable image as it is uncompressed. Sports on my OTA feed look better than they ever did on satellite.