It may come as a surprise to some people, but with the proper TV antenna, you can get local channels for free and in HD. It really chaps my hide that TV providers are selling something they’re getting for free. I get that they charge people to send you the local channels since they’re taking the trouble to receive them and send them on. But to charge for HD too when that’s how they receive the signal? How is that even legal? To boot, it turns out the compressed HD you may currently be paying for from your TV provider isn’t even as good as what comes free via the waves!
So if you’re contemplating cutting the cord, the first thing you need to determine is how important flipping through 200 (or whatever) channels are to you. To be sure, going from 200 channels down to about twenty or so is a huge adjustment. If having so few channels (for free!) has you hesitating, read on.
The good news is that there’s this thing called streaming. I had vaguely heard of it before I went on a mission to Cut The Cord, and after all my research I found out there are devices they sell specifically to stream internet content directly to your TV. Why would you want to do this, you ask? Once you buy a streaming device (more on this later), you hook it up to your TV, it taps into your internet (via wireless router or other means), and you can watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, news programs, Youtube, listen to Pandora Radio - as well as radio stations all across the world. Plus, there are thousands of other things that are available on the internet all via your streaming device which allows you to watch it on your TV!
Much of the streaming available is free. There are also loads of pay-as-you-go services (Netflix and HuluPlus are the obvious ones), but did you know you can also pay for MLB, NFL, and all the other sports? This may seem counterproductive, since if you’re reading this far you’re trying to cut your expenses. But stick with me here. Formerly we were paying $89/mo (+ taxes) for TV – a lot of TV that we didn’t even watch and that I even blocked out since my youngish kids didn’t need to be watching MTV, et al. So we were paying for what we weren’t watching too. But I can get local channels (via antenna) and Netflix for $8/mo. And I’m not even talking about all the stuff on the internet that is available for free (past seasons of TV shows, older movies that you always see on channels like TBS for instance.) Maybe you could care less about Netflix but are interested in a season pass to MLB. That’s about $99/year, which is the equivalent of paying for one month of cable TV! More later on streaming devices.
If this is all starting to sound good to you, then let’s get down to it.
You first need to get an antenna on the roof of your house. Unless you live a few miles from the source, an indoor antenna is not likely going to do the job. My family lives about 40 miles from the source, so we definitely needed to go the roof antenna route. To find out what you need to do for your particular residence, you can check out Antenna Web. Plug in your zip and address and it will give you an idea of what kind of antenna you need to receive each station in your area. After further research, we decided on getting a more traditional looking antenna:
(And as I type this, it’s of course cheaper than what we paid for it. Blast you Amazon.)
If you’re one of those lucky people who can get away with an indoor antenna, you can skip this list of what you’ll need. If you’re like most other people living in the ‘burbs, you’ll need to know what other things you’ll need to buy besides the roof antenna. I’ve got you covered.
- RG6 Coaxial Cable (to go from the antenna into the house to your TV. It’s sold in all different lengths.) I have a friend whose husband used the cable left behind by the pay TV provider. Not sure how the reception is for them, but for the RG6, you should receive a good picture for your HD TV. Note the cable we got has the connectors on the end.
- Antenna Tripod. A decent one was surprisingly difficult to find.
- Three Tar (or Pitch) Pads. These go under each leg of the tripod, and I believe are to prevent leaking into your attic once you bolt the tripod down to the roof. You need these. Tar pads were near impossible to find. I only found a couple places on-line that offered them, and no local places carried them.
- A 1.25” diameter/3-5’ metal pole to stick the antenna on, which sits inside the tripod. This pole can be purchased for about $8-10 at a home improvement store.
Preparations to cut the pole down to size.
Close up of antenna mounted to pole
- Hardware for mounting the tripod and antenna. My husband and I were really shocked to find that the antenna does not come with what you’ll need to mount on your roof. Seems like a logical thing for the manufacturer to include in the box, but apparently not. If you’re looking for a business opportunity, there it is: Package into one neat bundle all the things a person needs to mount a TV antenna on their roof, including those hard-to-find tar pads, and you’ll fill a void for sure. You’ll need bolts for the tripod (which came with the tar pads I ordered), as well as.....
- An 8-9' (feet!) copper grounding pole and copper grounding wire. Go to Home Depot or similar to find the bolts, pole, wire, and clamps.
Copper Grounding Wire
Copper Grounding Pole
How far should you pound that 8-9' pole into the ground, you ask?
About this far.....maybe 3" or so out of the ground.
- If you’re planning on running the signal you receive to more than one TV in your house you’ll need a splitter. Depending on how many TVs you intend to send the signal to determines what kind of splitter you get. This is the one we got since we’ve got two TVs:
- If you’re planning on splitting to many TVs or you're just not picking up many stations, consider getting an antenna amplifier, as the more you split the signal, the weaker it becomes. As it turned out, our outdoor antenna provided us with CBS, NBC, ABC, WGN, FOX, UPN, several Spanish stations, and 3-4 stations of what I can only classify as oldies – reruns from the 1960’s – 1980’s mostly. We didn’t get any PBS stations, and when the weather was rainy, some of the stations cut in and out. So we opted to try an amplifer. This made a HUGE difference in our reception. Not only do we now get PBS, we get four different channels of PBS. We have multiple channels of most major networks, plus we got a couple channels that we didn’t even know about (ION and QUBO). I highly recommend an amplifier if your antenna isn’t quite doing the job: This is the one we got
Here's a close-up of our antenna with the amplifier on it:
Now you should be set to install the antenna on your roof ! It should look something like this when you're done. ;-)
Now on to the streaming devices. The best known ones out there are the Roku (several models to choose from), Boxee Box, Apple TV, Western Digital, many Blu-Ray players, Xbox 360, Wii or PS3 (or you can go old school and use your computer). If you’re only looking to add on something like Netflix to your local channels and you happen to own one of the last listed devices above, you don’t have to buy anything - just use what you have to stream Netflix right through one of those devices. If, however, you desire more, then there are the other options. I don’t have experience with all of them, so I recommend you do a little research on each of them via YouTube, Google, Amazon (particularly the reviews), etc. to determine which device will best meet your needs. We personally settled on the Roku 2 XS, which runs about $90. We felt it was easiest to use, offered us the options we were looking for, and was affordable. I'm really short-changing streaming devices here, but the scope of my blog post is more about "cutting the cord" and less about streaming. There are tons of YouTubes on each of the devices I mentioned, plus loads of articles comparing each one. I recommend you check them out before making your decision.
A quick note about the Roku 2XS – very easy to set up. You will need an HDMI cable, which doesn’t come with it, but we happened to have one leftover from when we hooked up the U-Verse box to the TV, so thankfully we didn’t need to go buy one (they’re not cheap, but oh so necessary if you have an HD TV. The picture quality without one is astonishingly sub-par.) One thing you may not know about unless you do tons of reading and researching is that once you create your online account with Roku, you can enter lots of “private channels” that aren’t necessarily offered at the Channel Store (this is a “channel” itself, which allows you to see what’s available and then load it onto your Roku so when you turn it on, you can scroll through all your internet channels. Most of them are free.) You can google “Roku Private Channels” or you can check this out as well. Not all codes work, but most seem to be up-to-date.
So you may be wondering at this point how much it costs to Cut The Cord. There is an initial investment, no doubt about it. For the outdoor antenna set-up, it ran us about $175 (including the amplifier, antenna, cables, tripod, pole, hardware, tar pads, etc.) and my husband did the work himself (we also got the copper grounding pole for free, which saved us a chunk of change.) This is the equivalent of about 2 mos of pay TV (AT&T U-verse 200). The Roku, which is not necessary to Cut-The-Cord, was an additional $90 (month three of pay TV). So overall, we spent the equivalent of about three months of pay TV to get set up for the antenna and internet streaming. After the three months passes (April, May, and June), our TV will officially be “free.”
And in case you’re worried that antenna reception is poor quality, I give you this unaltered image I took of our TV receiving an HD antenna signal BEFORE we put the amplifier on the antenna. And while you're at it, check out a typical weekly forecast for spring in the Chicago-land area:
