So many streaming choices now and digital Over the Air signals are beyond HD
Nowadays, you can be a fan of someone that’s not an actor or artist. You can be a fan of someone that makes YouTube videos. — Cameron Dallas
Are you ready to wave goodbye to high repeating monthly cable bills? Say YES! Good, there used to be an old rusty antenna living on my garage for years. I first upgraded to a new small digital antenna broadcast grabber, and now have updated to a larger antenna capable of pulling in channels from 125 miles away.
After a long period of growth for cable television providers, the game has changed again. Content is now available on a multitude of platforms online, broadcast TV has updated, improved, and gone digital, creating more channels of higher quality. Products have been invented and evolved that allow us to watch shows via wireless using our internet provider.
How much have you spent on cable?
The answer for me is $15,000, often I dream about what else could have been done with that cash. What if I would have instead placed it into some interest bearing investment vehicle? To top this off, there are more costs chipping away at my retirement nest-egg.
Remember what else we saw popping up all over the place in 1980, that’s right, video rental stores. How much additional cash was spent in there? What about gas coming and going every week picking up then returning plastic boxes? How much time did it take to manage all those goods? Ever have an accident on the way to or from the video store? There is a far better way and it’s been a long time coming.
Television is chewing gum for the eyes. — Frank Lloyd Wright
Back in 1979 I first subscribed to cable, MTV commercials are what I remember most. The logo shaking and squirming while simultaneously changing fills and colors. It was amazing and I wondered how they did it, occasionally I’d find a movie on HBO or Showtime and then have to schedule it like a doctors appointment. All that planning, wasn’t there enough of that in my work life? I thought this was supposed to be entertainment.
Today, I use a variety of methods to capture my media, and I get to watch it on my terms, when I want, where I want, as long as I want, at a fraction of the cost of cable. These include, streaming content devices like Roku, The Internet, Broadcast TV, Netflix, and the Local Library.
Overdrive is now available at many Libraries across the country, it’s an excellent source of digital entertainment content, and It’s free!
A Digital Antenna in my system currently brings 50 clear and color saturated channels into my home. Antennas have a wide range of receiving capabilities, I’m situated 50 miles south of a major metropolitan area, this helped me decide what device to purchase.
That crossover of whether it’s entertainment or news is the biggest crock of b.s. in television today, because it’s all entertainment. — Vince McMahon
A good rule of thumb here is to buy twice as much in capability as distance to furthest Station Transmitter or major town center. If you are right downtown in an apartment, you may not need a lot of distance capability, an indoor antenna will work fine. I’m assuming your TV has a digital tuner, if not, you can get an inexpensive converter.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, additional efficiency can be found by adding a rotor. This device allows you to turn the antenna 360 degrees via remote control to beam in on hard to get channels, fine tuning them. Many antennas manufactured today have one built in.
The most exciting development in broadcast TV was it’s switch a decade ago from an analog signal to digital. Traditional television creators and providers knew competition was fierce for your attention. So they have added additional channels to each frequency.
This differs from traditional television in several key ways, but most exciting, they expanded your choices. Channel 4 for example, ABC, now you have 4.1 and 4.2. The PBS channel has been expanded form one channel to three, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 including the Create Channel. 90% of what I watch on television is PBS via 8 different stations.
My living room has a computer with dual monitors, one for regular software activities, and a larger 42″ monitor for watching video content for entertainment. A DVD player is attached to the monitor also that plays discs, or streams content form the internet. The Television antenna is also attached to this viewing resource yielding millions of choices in programing. All of this is routed thru 5 different monitors.
In addition, also in my living room is a third monitor with integrated DVD player, attached to the digital antenna and a internet streaming wireless device. I’m watching a PBS program on it right now as I work on this article. I can stream content from Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and an ever growing list of channels. The programming includes free and pay services.
This product has side inputs that will receive RCA inputs, HDMI cable, a USB connection, and a spot for an SD Memory Card. As a gamer, I can set up my own video game arcade. As a photographer using sills and video, my living room is nothing less than connection Nirvana.
When TV is not desired, this unit can stream music into the space from Pandora and a rich growing list of stations. There’s something about nice music playing softly in the background, my brain associates that with affluence, it feels like I’m in a upbeat retail space or something, maybe that’s why I do so much online shopping! 🙂
When we started in television, there was that magic box in the corner of the room, and ‘Oh my gosh — look what it’s doing!’ — Betty White
Traditional major networks like ABC has a full compliment of their television shows online at the websites. This is an extremely convenient way to watch only the series that attract you, watch them four and five episodes at a time without having to wait until next weeks installment. I’ve devoured Series designed to take 5 years of weekly watching in a week, it’s a whole new way to approach this choice in media effectively reshaping your experience.
You may want to acquire a universal remote to control all your devices via one controller. Many of your smart phones can also help with with this task, so many possibilities exist.
My system has 5 TV’s collecting the signal from on antenna, a splitter used. Find one via this search box to maximize your system, TV’s can watch different channels at the same time. I even added an HD Homerun transmitter that streams the antenna OTA signal into my wireless modem allow me to watch on my laptops and portable devices.
Your television may have a meter you can check to see on a percentage scale, just how strong your broadcast is. If it is less that 60%, you may have intermittent reception, or dropped signals. You can boost your signal with an amplifier and many new antennas have one built in.
The Roku players work like nothing I have ever seen. Effortlessly they bring programs into my home with stunning reliability and convenience. I have a model Velcro-ed to the back of each TV, no more huge consoles needed to hold cumbersome equipment.
Expand your homes capability to grab content with a stand alone DVD streaming capable device.
My choices were inspired by comments from guests to my home regarding the amazing connectivity here. Home is where the heart is, why not make it a vast library for learning with rich visual and audio enhancements. Time fly’s by, I am never bored, as a matter of fact, sleep becomes something I must discipline myself to do. Not sure what to make of that, but I love it.
Until the next article, and it won’t be long, I hope you found some value in this article, if you did please let us know in a comment.
Cheers, Christopher
© Christopher Boswell 2019. All Rights Reserved.
