We don't watch much tv around here anymore, and got tired of paying $65 per month for 70 something channels, only to watch less than a half dozen shows on a semi-regular basis. Dropped the cable, installed an outdoor antenna and ported the antenna feed to the one HD set, and four old tv's throughout the place.

Received 34 channels over the air. Once I deleted all the foreign language, shopping, audio, religious, and duplicate feed channels I end up with four or five that I might watch.

My favorites are 'retro tv', 'this', and pbs (cooking shows).

Channel 'This' has old movies, maybe these are old movies that didn't make the cut to be shown on the old movie cable channel, but some of them have been pretty good. One I watched last night was not that great but it had Robert Duval in it and I generally like his stuff. Don't know the name, only got to see the last half of it, but Duval was a landowner back in the slave days, drank too much, fired a lot of rounds at imaginary bad-guys, and seemed to have Alzheimers. Kind of a strange movie.

Retro tv has all kinds of classic stuff like A-team, rockford, kojack, one adam 12, and I'm watching Rifleman right now. What type/caliber of rifle is that which Conner is using? From the opening scene it looks like he may have been the originator of the bump-fire technique. Pretty handy with that rifle he is.

I've been without cable for a week now and while I'm going to miss the five shows I used to watch, I guess it will just have to be A-team and Knightrider for the win.

Anybody else use over the air broadcasts for tv?

You also may like Hulu.com as well as Netflix.com

Unfortunately, we don't have any "over the air" where I am.

__________________
Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

Cable is a rip-off! If you could choose chanels instead of the **** they want you to watch, it would be OK.

I dumped it and watch R-tv too.

The Riflemans 44-40 has a screw in the lever to trip the trigger when closed.

__________________
Best,
Mike

Bat Masterson, Banacek, McCloud, Wagon Train, Laramie, Dragnet, Outer Limits, Sea Hunt, Highway Patrol, Elvira... plenty of good stuff on broadcast TV! There’s golf on right now.

The Mrs and I bought this house in 1993 and we have never paid for TV programming. I installed a good antenna on the roof (one of the only ones in the sub) and we never looked back. 18 years at $50 per month adds up to $10,800 plus interest and counting.

The Rifleman used a Winchester 1892 Trapper Carbine that was modified with a large loop lever and a trigger trip screw. It was probably a .44-40, but it could have been a .38-40. I'm sure he was shooting 5 in 1 blanks in the show.

__________________
"I also cook."

I got DISH and love it for the price. For about $24 a month, you can get more tv than you can watch and it is in high def and digital for better viewing.

Dumped cable last year. My Dumont with rabbit ears gets me all the Texaco Star Theater and Colgate Comedy hour episodes.

__________________
Thirty characters. Exactly...

First time I've seen a Benny Hill show, some good looking gals on that show. They are probably all 105 years old now, eh?

the "best" part of cable and/or dish t.v. are the advertising programs between 2am and 5am, thats part of the $100++ package each month. and then you get a phone call from the cable folks wanting to know if you would like to subscribe to more packages and pay more???????????????????

Keep your eye out for the Ed Sullivan show..I hear 4 young rockers from England are on their way over to change the music scene forever.

__________________
Thirty characters. Exactly...

I canceled my cable when they raised it 20%. It went from 10 bucks a month to 12 bucks a month, outrageous! That was in 1978. Haven't missed it since.

I had the previous owner cancel their cable when I moved in to my present house a few years ago. I don't watch enough to justify the expense. What really chaps me, though, is that, after all the hype about how fantastic the new digital broadcast signal would be, it isn't. About the only thing I watch on any regular basis is college football in the fall, and much of the time when I'm trying to watch a game, the signal breaks up. The area stations are blaming it on the FCC, whom they say cut their power back during the digital changeover. Whatever or whoever is responsible, I'm not too happy when it happens.

Oh well, in the greater scheme of things, I guess it's trivia.

Andy

My TV went on the fritz two years ago this coming April. I kept meaning to replace it but never got around to it. Now I find that I don't miss it and can't see buying another one. Looking back, I can't believe that I spent so many hours in front of that thing.

I stopped paying for TV about eight years ago. Instead I buy movies when I find a good sale (3-for-$20 or on the $5 rack at Target), and spend ten bucks a month for NetFlix.

I hear it's Going to be a "Really Big Show"

__________________
Still Running Against the Wind

It wasn't a Trapper. Full-size 20" SRC. Being 6'5" helps to give you the long arms needed to spin that long a gun.

__________________
I always take precautions

At the urging of its citizens, our small community decided to up for our own local gig, costing a few million - we have fiber optics, providing phone, TV, and internet for about one hundred bucks. The best part is local customer service... can't beat that, and faster than a locomotive!

Pete

__________________
NRA, GOA Lifer

My brother and I own the home we grew up in with our family. When I was 4 or 5, I can remember being outside playing in the yard when some guys in a truck pulled up and started talking to my mom about something. She quickly sent them on their way.

It turns out they were with the only cable company in the area and were offering to run cable to our house for free. Not install it, but run it to the pole so we COULD get it.

Well, if you've read any of my posts talking about my house, you may recall I live rather far back in the woods. Over these past 20ish years the woods have grown in thicker and thicker. Now, we cannot even get cable ran to the house if we wanted it. Oh well.

We have over the air digital. On a good day I get 7 channels.

__________________
- The Federalist #46 -

Hey Ski,Is that the new digital box that you can get from W-mart?
How well does it work when the weather is bad?
I should have got one when the rebate was available.

__________________
Dum vivo cano

Yep. It's one of the ones you can find in most electronic stores (the kind you could have bought with the coupon / rebate program).

If it gets windy I might lose two channels completely. Sometimes I'll get pixels and sound loss in the wind. I get fox pretty strong as well as ABC. CBS comes and goes. I usually get it but haven't had good luck this winter. If you have a good shot at the broadcast towers I'm sure they work pretty well. For me, the broadcasts comes from the South West.. I point the antenna to the North East to get ABC... I get the bounce off of a big hill.

__________________
- The Federalist #46 -

Thanks -Ski,I need it for the man cave and maybe bad weather when the sat. goes out.

BTW,Is -Ski pronounced Dashski?

__________________
Dum vivo cano

Took me a minute. Nope.

__________________
- The Federalist #46 -

Sorry Ski,couldn't resist.I don't have very many hills except ant hills and landfills.

__________________
Dum vivo cano

I just wanna watch MSNBC.

__________________
Sure you did

I would dump cable except for TMC, History Channel and the Military Channel. The kids get a lot of good cartoons. More power to you if you can dump pay TV and the land line. Next will be that interrnet access...

At a TV Anonymous meeting: "I'm BuckeyeChuck, and I like to watch TV."

It is fashionable to say two things:

(1) "I don't eat at McDonald's."
(2) "I don't watch TV."

No, it's not cool to admit to either of these. The truly enlightened don't watch TV and they don't eat Big Macs and the greatest fries ever devised. Your professional colleagues would surely think less of you if they knew that you gazed at a glowing screen and consumed Hot Cakes and Sausage instead of reading Emmanuel Kant and sipping a homemade latte. And your children! Think of the example you would set by watching something so proletarian as television and eating something so base as a double cheeseburger!

So while we all talk about how we really don't like TV and we never eat at McDonald's, we glance at McDonald's latest P&L and realize that a lot of somebody's must be eating there. And then you see the hundreds of channels available on DirecTV and realize that a lot of somebody's must be watching.

So I'll cop to liking both of these. I'll say it outright: I like to eat at McDonald's, and I like to watch television. I'm not cool, and I don't care. We are one of DirecTV's "best customers"! We get the HD package, three movie packages, the full sports packages, and some expanded programming. I've been a long time subscriber to NFL Sunday Ticket Superfan, and until last year I was an annual subscriber to ESPN Game Plan. I love me some football, and DirecTV has more of it than anybody else!

Is this a waste of time? Probably. I don't deny that I might make more money if I studied my craft instead of watching two Mountain West schools play no-defense football, or that I'd be better educated by reading Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek instead of watching Turner Classic Movies.

Is this wasted money? Mmmmmm.... maybe, but watching TV is one of our favorite things. There are far more impactful things in a total financial strategy, like driving inexpensive cars for which you pay cash, living in a home that cost well under one annual income, and never buying things unless you have the cash with which to pay for them.

I don't doubt I would be better off by killing my TV. But somehow, I just can't see my way to doing so. I like to watch television. I can't imagine going back to rabbit ears, so I pay.

TV is like a friend who's always there for you...

__________________
Thirty characters. Exactly...

Never had cable, never will.

Never even upgraded the TV in 2009 so we receive nothing. We only watch DVDs on it.

Loathe anything to do with McDonalds.

My inlaws like to brag on how they, 'just don't watch much tv anymore and it's such a waste of time/money.'

Then I ask them how much time they spend on the internet. Silence...

I've got a package deal, internet, TV, and phone via Cox Cable, for $10 less a month than everything separate. It finally allowed me to ditch the Soviet inspired AT&T.

I don't get any pay movie channels. I mostly watch Turner Classic Movies, House, Fringe, the Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad on Fox, Fox News, the various science channels, and the Wednesday night shooting shows on the Outdoor Channel.

Satellite would be useless to me since internet is more important to me than TV and I'd just have to get internet from the cable company anyway.

If I didn't have cable, I'd never turn the TV on except for DVDs and old tapes. There's literally NOTHING on on broadcast TV that I'd watch besides those Fox shows.

I have had DirecTV since it started. With the recorder we can USUALLY find something to watch if we want to.
Don't believe I will ever be without it.

I have ditched all my paper bills for e mail notification. This morning I received a bill via email for Comcast cable. A $5 increase. No prior notification, just here it is. So I called and had service reduced from "basic plus" to plain old basic. A $20 decrease from the $55 + $7 tax i was paying. Next month I may have it all turned off.

__________________
SOS USA

I have been cable free for the last 3 weeks and find I dont miss it too much, about the only show I ever watched was on ESPN2 at 4am Mountain time in the morning. It is also a radio show so now I just listen to it every morning. I watch some netflix on my Computer and have approximately 200 DVD's I can watch on the TV. Sitting outside in the evening or morning and watching the stars are really more relaxing anyways.

Dan

I've never had cable at home but do have it at the ocean where you don't get reception of any kind.

When nothing is on, and that is most of the time, my wife and I have these things called "Books". We spend our time reading them.

By the way, the cable TV at the ocean sucks too. Nothing worthwhile on it either.

I've never had cable, fact is I didn't get a color TV until 1990. Before moving to the Detroit area I lived in the Mansfield, Ohio area and broadcast reception was iffy enough the best answer was a 12 inch B&W. On the plus side I could get broadcasts from Columbus, Toledo, or Cleveland so I had a good selection of channels to watch, it all depended on how I turned the rabbit ears.

Back when I was in college I didn't have a TV at all. That turned into a good thing at one point. Some idiot got drunk and hooked up all the Coax connections in the cable box for the entire apartment building. When the cable guy saw that the cable company went door to door telling the tennants that they could either pay for cable services or face charges for theft of service. They got to my door an I told them that if they could find a TV in my apartment I'd pay them double, otherwise they could just stuff it where the sun don't shine. That pretty much took the wind out of their sales because a lot in the building also didn't have TV's, we'd just get together and watch the TV in the lobby. Once word spread that the cable company couldn't do squat if you didn't have a TV they got a lot of doors slammed in their faces. Back then money was either spent on books or stereos and records.

Cable used to be important to me. Since I worked almost 60 miles from work and had to commute via crosstown xways that thousands in the area use, it was good to get traffic reports before leaving the house. You can't relate to this unless you live around here. I like the national/worldwide news. If I loose FOX with my downgrade, I cancel altogether. I don't watch any of the garbage.

__________________
SOS USA