TV from antenna vs cable company?

[MinnBobber]

HI,
our real enemy is the f'in cable companies.
We recently switched over to Century Link for cable tv, internet, and phones. After a 2 month ordeal of them installing fiber optic cable with a tear in it, and 15 + hours of phone calls later, we get our first bill.

Their promise was a lower bill, at most $99 plus taxes. Now it comes in at $129 plus taxes.
They just wore us out in another 90 minute phone call, like they are trained to do
and ruined a nice buzz too

Thinking of a fancy TV antenna plus only phone and internet service.
How good are current antennas, any particular brand or style or link to buying?

Thanks.

 

[Maitri]

HI,
our real enemy is the f'in cable companies.
We recently switched over to Century Link for cable tv, internet, and phones. After a 2 month ordeal of them installing fiber optic cable with a tear in it, and 15 + hours of phone calls later, we get our first bill.

Their promise was a lower bill, at most $99 plus taxes. Now it comes in at $129 plus taxes.
They just wore us out in another 90 minute phone call, like they are trained to do
and ruined a nice buzz too

Thinking of a fancy TV antenna plus only phone and internet service.
How good are current antennas, any particular brand or style or link to buying?

Thanks.

You may be interested in DirecTv Now.

 

[al bundy]

with rabbit ear antena or a roof mounted one you'll get local ABC CBS PIX
in hd and standard def if in a big city a lot of community channels
Out in the country locals hopefully
Bigger antena more channels
But if your just going to get internet service look into Sling TV has locals cnn tbs tnt food
You could choose channel package and you can at h TV through a Roku or Amazon fire tv or smart tv may have sling tv on already
Sling starts at $20 a month and you can stream to all TV in house

 

[looney2nz]

Predicated on where you are in relation to the broadcast towers for your area, OTA DTV can work really well.

check out antennaweb.org

 

[rabblerouser]

I'll second antennaweb.org

it'll give you some idea at what your odds are of getting anything at all and where particular channels are exactly coming from (can help with aiming antenna)

antennaweb defintely isn't perfect, if I punch in my house it actually says I won't get much of anything. But I actually get what it says you should be getting one street over.

My reception definitely isn't perfect, I have an omnidirectional now that I stumbled into. I'm thinking about switching to a directional, might lose some channels that aren't right next to the main transmitters, but get the main ones better.

 

[crawdad]

Sling starts at $20 a month and you can stream to all TV in house

playstation vue is similar to slingtv (tried sling, went to vue), and allows you to record shows...about 35/mo. then use antenna to get locals...if bundled with netflix/hulu you are still paying less than a cable/sat service...a roku will have apps for all except the antenna.

for me the antenna (only tried indoor w/ amplifier) only gave me 1 hd station (nbc) and nothing else, even if antennaweb.org says you got it you might not...maybe a roof or attic mount would work better.

 

[rabblerouser]

for me the antenna (only tried indoor w/ amplifier) only gave me 1 hd station (nbc) and nothing else, even if antennaweb.org says you got it you might not...maybe a roof or attic mount would work better.

height makes all the difference. I only do good at the peak of my attic.

I may eventually go chimney-mount, but am in attic for now, mainly to keep it out of the weather.

 

[looney2nz]

yeah, if you have access (own the property or have a nice landlord), get that antenna as high as you possibly can (add a taller mast and brace it!)... in fact, one of the sites (could be antennaweb) allows you to change mast elevation and see the differences. I don't recommend attic mounting unless there is no alternative, lots of loss and interference. I am also not a fan of most of the active components, noisy as hell... use the least compensation necessary for the cleanest signal. I have a friend in Napa who's in a kind of a 'bowl' shaped area and he literally needs a 100' mast to be able to see the broadcast signals.

 

[lwien]

If you can get your antenna to pull in the stations that you want to see, the antenna will ALWAYS have a MUCH better HD picture because the picture that it is pulling in doesn't go through the compression that cable/satellite companies must put them through. The difference to me is pretty dramatic, so much so that even though I get my locals through Dish, I'm still going to get their OTA tuner to use with an indoor antenna (I can view the broadcast antennas from my house).

Edit: Fuck, I just did a Sarah Palin.

 

[hinglemccringleberry]

Yeah, screw cable. I run a big metal cage type outdoor antenna to my Samsung HDTV, but the antenna is indoors. I pick up more free channels than I even need. Also have internet and I'm set. The only thing I miss w/ cable is sports but the money saved is well worth it

 

[BD9]

As others have said, your location will be an important factor. Keep in mind that the best time to place an antenna is when trees are leafed out and you have a clear line of sight to transmitters. I have had success with both basement and attic installations though.
If possible the best solution is to mount outside. I bought on of these for my dad and it worked really well just being placed near a window.
Depending what you watch internet could be a great solution. Even in my area local newscasts are broadcast on their websites. The downside with internet is live sports if you like sports.
It's very easy to hook a pc up to your tv. I've done this and use a wireless mouse and keyboard.

I highly recommend that antenna

Good Luck!

 

[Kaptan]

If you have a fast internet connection, do some research and YouTube searches on Matricom G-Box. With the TV addons and Exodus plug-ins configured, you would have access to thousands of movies and TV programming. In addition, the unit is compact and simple to install.

 

[grokit]

If you can get your antenna to pull in the stations that you want to see, the antenna will ALWAYS have a MUCH better HD picture because the picture that it is pulling in doesn't go through the compression that cable/satellite companies must put them through.

You're speaking of 1080p ota hd broadcast, vs. 1080i cable hd broadcast/internet hd stream.

Agreed that interlaced vs. progressive scan can make a huge difference

 

[lwien]

You're speaking of 1080p ota hd broadcast, vs. 1080i cable hd broadcast/internet hd stream.

No I'm not. None of the broadcast stations broadcast in 1080p. It's either 720p or 1080i.

 

[rabblerouser]

No I'm not. None of the broadcast stations broadcast in 1080p. It's either 720p or 1080i.

yeah, i'll back you up on that. pretty sure 1080p is not in the ATSC standard, certainly was not in the original. Too much bandwidth. The compromise was made of 1080i or 720p. And The main difference with cable is so many channels coming down 1 cable. Cable COULD offer greater quality, IF they offered less channels, but they compress to fit more on the cable.

pretty sure the best quality available is some of the 4k streaming services stuff, but i'm still convinced my eyeballs aren't up to snuff.

Oh, and I did spring for a Walmart-special GE Attic mount antenna. Not my roof, but I have access to the attic, so I do what I can. It seems to be doing better, but I may fiddle with aiming it a little more. Right now I get most things seemingly better than before, have given up one PBS station that has some good cooking shows (will look into their availability on PBS website)

 

[grokit]

I didn't realized the standards had changed, evidently to make room for subchannels.

"In the United States, the original ATSC standards for HDTV supported 1080p video, but only at the frame rates of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97 and 30 frames per second (colloquially known as 1080p24, 1080p25 and 1080p30). In July 2008, the ATSC standards were amended to include H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compression and 1080p at 50, 59.94 and 60 frames per second (1080p50 and 1080p60). Such frame rates require H.264/AVC High Profile Level 4.2, while standard HDTV frame rates only require Level 4.0. This update is not expected to result in widespread availability of 1080p60 programming, since most of the existing digital receivers in use would only be able to decode the older, less-efficient MPEG-2 codec, and because there is a limited amount of bandwidth for subchannels."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

 

[His_Highness]

Right now I have Comcast HDTV and Comcast Internet. A couple years ago I got fed up and looked into Dish and/or just dropping the Comcast HDTV. When I did the numbers there was little difference because Comcast would jack up the cost of the internet (I need the Comcast speed) and the Dish price, after the trial period, would have put me right back where I was. This is how they keep me hanging on.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though.......There are a few folks in my home who want channels I can only get 'live' via Comcast but that is quickly coming to an end. If you have internet you can get HBO without a cable company for $15 and Netflix is $9.99 and a Chromecast device is a one-time $30.....If you're close enough to the towers an indoor antenna (you may need one that is amplified) or a outside, roof mounted antenna, (you might need a pre-amp version) works fairly well.

If I were you I'd wait about a month....during that time document what you and yours watch and/or record. When the month is over see what you can live without and see what you can get without your cable service.

Good Luck!

 

[rabblerouser]

I didn't realized the standards had changed, evidently to make room for subchannels.

interesting, I know no one was broadcasting in 1080p to start, at least not around me. And I'm still not sure anyone around me is, now I'm off down a rabbit hole of investigating local tv broadcasts...

 

[lwien]

And The main difference with cable is so many channels coming down 1 cable. Cable COULD offer greater quality, IF they offered less channels, but they compress to fit more on the cable.

And that's why local HD channels from an antenna, to my eyes, is MUCH better than anything cable or satellite can offer. They just have to compress the shit out of the signal in order to offer all the channels that they offer but with your antenna..............no compression.

And to add to that Wiki quote from @grokit:

"All other broadcast television stations do not broadcast at 1080p as ATSC 3.0 is currently in experimentation and in test trials while all major broadcast networks use either 720p60 or 1080i60 encoded with MPEG-2. There is no word when any of the major networks (even though NBC currently has an Affiliate broadcasting at 1080p experimentally) will consider airing at 1080p in the foreseeable future."

But as I said above, 1080i/720p looks so good over an antenna that I doubt if anyone would be able to distinguish between the picture quality of that versus a 1080p broadcast which, over cable or satellite would have to be compressed even more than what the 1080i/720p signals are being compressed now.

Edit: btw, I didn't realize this until Dish sent me, at no charge, one of those flat indoor HD antennas because they were in a dispute and ceased airing one of the locals here. I thought, what the hell, and hooked it up directly to my tv and I was like............ Got me real spoiled in less than a minute.

This is the antenna: https://www.amazon.com/Winegard-Fla...75009095&sr=8-3&keywords=flat+wingard+antenna

 

[rabblerouser]

They just have to compress the shit out of the signal in order to offer all the channels that they offer but with your antenna..............no compression.

I'm pretty sure there is still a little compression with OTA, just way less. that may just be referring to the fact that they at least typically use lossy codecs AFAIK. either way, it is way less compressed. and i think just higher bitrate per channel.

And I think I may have the new antenna dialed in right, am sitting down to some serious tv watching / channel surfing to test it out.

 

[lwien]

Let us know what ya think.

 

[hinglemccringleberry]

No I'm not. None of the broadcast stations broadcast in 1080p. It's either 720p or 1080i.

Right. And if you have a 1080p TV, the 1080i signal is deinterlaced by your TV and outputs a 1080p picture which helps with PQ a bit compared to a 1080i TV showing the same content. It's not a big difference at all, but I can tell

 

[Ricardo]

Why watch live TV when you can pirate/download just about anything you want? TV a la carte

 

[lwien]

Why watch live TV when you can pirate/download just about anything you want? TV a la carte

Cause my internet speeds suck. I max out at 16 and I NEED to watch everything on my large TV in HD. That and I have over 65 high-def movies downloaded on my Hopper that I haven't watched yet.

 

[rabblerouser]

I mainly have it for football.