Cutting the Cord from Cable company

[fly boy]

Negative ghost rider. It is pulling in the free over the air broadcasts. Just like your TV tuner would if it was hooked to an antenna instead of cable. You only get the OTA broadcast signals. Major networks plus a zillion spanish channels. If you are looking for cable networks, this isn't for you.

I will be keeping my basic cable plan - so 60+ cable channels. Just trying to get rid of the $25 a month DVR.

[Mazin]

Haven't had cable or network tv in over 4 years, couldn't be happier.

[fly boy]

Haven't had cable or network tv in over 4 years, couldn't be happier.

I'm perfectly fine with Interwebz and youtube videos..... however the wife - not so much

[roberth]

Haven't had cable or network tv in over 4 years, couldn't be happier.

I don't miss it either, if I want to see movies I sign up for Netflix and cancel when I've seen what I want to see.

[Jer]

No. You program it to record a specific show at a specific time on a specific channel. It has a program guide. If you channel surf while it's recording, it doesn't record the surfing. If you are watching a show and decide you want to record it, you can tell it to record on the spot. It will only record that show.

It has 2 internal tuners. So you can watch one show/channel surf and record another or record 2 shows at the same time. You can't record 2 shows and watch a 3rd at the same time.

In theory this is how it works. What he meant was you can record two shows and watch a 3rd recorded show at the same time. You can't record two shows and watch a 3rd live because you are limited to only two tuners. Something else to keep in mind is that various shows/channels/broadcasters have different times and delays and such. If you have only two tuners and watch shows that are on at the same time or several spaced around each other you will be cutting off the beginning or ends of shows or not recording shows entirely. Two tuners seems like a lot but in this day it really isn't.

To give you an idea, my wife and I (no kids) watch a medium amount of TV shows and I STILL have 6 tuners. Now, if I could pick a perfect amount of tuners it wouldn't be six as that's overkill for our needs but the tuner we use has 3 tuners which I've found just isn't enough on week nights. So we had to buy two tuners and use two cable cards. No problem. Our setup is insanely good and the monthly cost isn't a lot and we only pay for programming so it's whatever you want to pay for channel package-wise. We don't pay a monthly lease on equipment and this is where they get you. We had three dual-tuner HD DVRs and our monthly fee for those was somewhere around $60 for the tuners alone. Using Windows Media Center on a centralized PC and those six tuners on our network I can serve up any live channel, any DVR'd TV show, any movie or video file to ANY of our viewing locations from the same interface using an Xbox 360 and Harmony Universal remotes. We have people house sit regularly and the interface is simple and intuitive and even a novice can sit down, pick up a remote and be watching live TV or a movie withing seconds w/o any complicated instruction required. I've got several terabytes of storage on that primary PC and it allows for almost limitless DVRing and and endless supply of HD movies. I even use newsgroups to automatically fetch, rename and organize most of my TV shows for me so I don't even have to mess with DVRing uncompressed and inefficient file types or editing and converting because it's all done for me. Every night after we go to bed my PC downloads all of the past day's TV programs that were uploaded by 3rd parties and when I want to watch TV the next day the newest show is already in the file renamed and ready to be watched. Not all the TV shows are uploaded but most all of the popular ones are and this includes shows on Premium channels & Netflix like Game of Thrones & House of Cards. We don't watch commercials and don't pay a monthly service to Hulu or Netflix like some others have mentioned and our setup has been flawless in years of operation.

Now, what we're doing isn't 100% approved (read: legal) so I can't get into details of it here and I don't have the time to answer dozens of PMs on the topic because it's not for the faint of heart when it comes to technology. There's a LOT to setup and know and all the info is out there if you research programs like SickBeard & SABnzbd. Figure out how to make those programs run on a networked PC with WMC (read: Windows 7 is easiest for this as you pay for WMC on Win8), buy some Xbox 360's cheap for front end devices (called Extenders in the WMC environment) and put them on the network and the media world is your oyster.

All that being said, before all this technology was available we had TV antennas on our HDTVs. In fact, I helped a local group to get politicians to allow the new digital towers on Lookout Mountain despite local's belly aching so that the entire front range could have free OTA HD programming. It was a bitter battle but it was SO rewarding to put a $20 antenna on your TV and get 100% HD programming for free if your HDTV had a tuner built in. A lot has changed since then and I've moved past that but I do recall getting ALL of our broadcast channel shows & all of our football games in full HD so I know it's still an option for the frugal. Also, you don't need an antenna anywhere near $50-$100 to get them either. Hell, I built an antenna out of metal coat hangers and a 1x4 I had laying around and a few washers & bolts I picked up at Ace Hardware. I think if you had none of the materials on-hand you could build the same thing for $5-$10 or so and your picture will look the same as those $100 fancy HD antennas stores push. Don't fall for marketing hype. It's all about reception and if I can get Lookout mountain up against the foothills from over 50 miles away as the crow flies I'm sure most of you who are closer will do even better to get reception.

Now go out and teach yourself to fish my son! lol

[Jer]

I will be keeping my basic cable plan - so 60+ cable channels. Just trying to get rid of the $25 a month DVR.

Look at what I'm doing then if you want to keep your same programming and ditch the equipment fee. You'll have MANY more features and you'll love having ALL of your DVR'd programs accessible from ANY viewing location and the ability to manage recordings from any viewing location too. I (barely) remember trying to record shows in various locations and trying to guess where we'd want to watch certain shows and then having to choose where we hang out based on what shows we wanted to watch. lol What a PITA!

If you have a PC with Windows 7 & Windows Media Center you're half way there. Buy a HD Homerun Prime 3-tuner HD tuner and put it on the same network. Now, if you have an Xbox 360 you're also ahead of the game. If not you can get one well under $100 on Craigslist these days. Most people will have part of that equation already and if you need to buy some of the other equipment you can find really good deals. We paid off our equipment investment in like 6most but I already had the PC and four Xbox 360's but needed two tuners. If you have $25 per month it may take a year or so depending on what you have to buy and setup is a bit cumbersome (paring your tuner card w/Comcrap can be a nightmare) but once you get it up and running you'll wonder how you ever lived like that in the past. You'll start buying more 360's too when you realize how easy/inexpensive it is to do so and you don't have any monthly fees to do so. The tuner card is free and will feel all three tuners in your tuner & if you need two (like we did) it's like $1.50 per month. Most cable outlets are supposed to give you an equipment credit of like $7-$12 per month in addition to this since you are using your own equipment but this is asking for something most employees are completely unsure of. One my system was setup and working smoothly it wasn't even worth risking undoing this to potentially get around ten bucks a month back. YMMV

[buffalobo]

You guys sure seem to spend a lot of money just to watch TV.

[Jer]

You guys sure seem to spend a lot of money just to watch TV.

Seems that way but no. I spend like $30 a month above what we'd pay for internet service and I promise you nobody has as much for that money as we get. If you read some of my posts it will make more sense. If $30 seems like a lot of money then you're in the wrong forum.

[00tec]

Seems that way but no. I spend like $30 a month above what we'd pay for internet service and I promise you nobody has as much for that money as we get. If you read some of my posts it will make more sense. If $30 seems like a lot of money then you're in the wrong forum.

My internet (50mbps) and cable (with all premium chans and some international) is $26.xx



Of course, I work for "the man".... :runs away:

[buffalobo]

Seems that way but no. I spend like $30 a month above what we'd pay for internet service and I promise you nobody has as much for that money as we get. If you read some of my posts it will make more sense. If $30 seems like a lot of money then you're in the wrong forum.

Exact response I expected. Thank you and apologies for baiting you.