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Video Rebel, Part 3: Kill your cable, get HD for free over the air
How could I possibly abandon cable TV? Outside of satellite, isn’t that the only way to get clean HDTV signals into the home? Light bulb over the head! Why not get out an old antenna and see if our HD- and antenna-friendly TiVo Series 3 can receive any of those digital television (DTV) channels in the airwaves? The TiVo is equipped with two DTV tuners in addition to its two CableCARD tuners, so might as well put them to good use. (If you’re not a TiVo user, any modern TV can receive DTV signals.)
I’ll show you what happened in my grand experiment to abandon cable TV. Would receiving TV broadcasts the old-fashioned way work out? Could I save $45 per month and get better-quality TV reception at the same time? Hit the Continue jump to see how this picture looks.
First, determine if you’re a candidate for off-air viewing. Think of the TV channels you actually watch. After taking a look at what we video rebels actually watch around here, I realized I don’t watch many cable TV stations, especially ratings-starved propaganda channels such as Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, those dumb home shopping channels, or the constant drone of MTV or VH1.
Next, I rummaged around and found this Philips PHDTV1 antenna pictured at right, a $22 jewel that isn’t amplified but acts like it is (if you don’t like this one, almost any antenna, even rabbit ears, will do). To my delight, eight digital broadcast channels came in so perfectly clear, at first I thought I was dreaming (if you want to see how good your reception will be, AntennaWeb can give you a good idea). I could immediately see the astonishing difference between what the networks were sending out free to everyone via our publicly owned airwaves, compared with the mess Time Warner was spewing forth through those money-sucking coaxial pipes. Off-air signals gave me crystal-clear HDTV reception with no more blocky compression artifacts, dropped frames or glitches.
Better picture, free reception, less compression? Bye bye, Time Warner Cable. Bolstered by the confidence that I could still find lots of the cable shows we do watch available for download online for free, I decided to take the plunge. Plenty of original cable shows are available online anyway, something I found out last week as I browsed the Net looking for free HD.
But as plentiful as online video gets, my experience has convinced me there will always be a place for off-air broadcasting. For big events like the Super Bowl, it's much more practical to send out the show across the airwaves to everyone simultaneously rather than offer individual streams. Yes, there’s still a future for broadcast, if you can receive it.
We’re not done with our quest for life without cable or spinning removable discs, either. Stay tuned for the next Video Rebel episode, where we cobble together a home theater PC to bring the Internet into our home theater.
Video Rebel, Part 1: Cable TV, you’re fired! Netflix, you too
Video Rebel, Part 2: Free HD download guide
Video Rebel, Part 3: Kill your cable, get HD for free over the air
Video Rebel, Part 4: How to turn an old PC into a home theater monster
Video Rebel, Part 5: Download mania! Netflix, Apple TV, Xbox, Amazon Unbox and Vudu compared
Video Rebel, Part 6: BitTorrent and the dark side of downloading
By Weebork at 11:53 PM ON 05/13/08
Thanks to the "Stimulus Package" my wife and I went out and bought a nice Panasonic plasma tv. We're both still in school so we don't have cable/sat. Anyway, we hooked up one of these digital antennae and it works nice, for the most part.
We're probably about 10 miles from the broadcasting ant.(L.A.), and based on one of the little functions in our tv, the signal strengths are ~75% on average. However, if either myself or my wife get a call on our cellphones, or sometimes if we sit in a certain spot in the room, the digital signal gets interrupted to the point where all sorts of funky colored boxes randomly appear on the screen. Needless to say, most of the time this happens, the tv has to pause to reset the picture back to normal before resuming. Of course, this always seems to happen during important portions of the shows we watch.
Still, it's "free" but I almost prefer hulu.com for watching tv shows. I like their 15-30 second commercial break (even though it is almost always the same commercial) vs 3-4 minutes over the airwaves. I still think there is some room to go for digital broadcasts, but so far, they've done a wonderful job!
How well is it going for you guys?
By Thomas Roy Garner at 7:08 AM ON 05/14/08
How will this be affected when the US goes Digital in 2009? Will one have to go out and purchase one of the new antennas?
By nicholasjh at 11:37 AM ON 05/14/08
We have it and love it. Everything in the article is true, now compression, and we don't even have an HD tv, but the picture still looks similar or better than HD on cable due to the lack of artifact. The only problem is like weebork said above, the signal can go out, but I believe this will be solved when it goes total digital, as the power of the digital antennas at the broadcasting station are about 10% of the power of the analog antenna's at the broadcasting stations, once they switch to pure digital they'll use those big antenna's for digital and there will be no problem whatsoever.
By SAM at 7:13 PM ON 05/14/08
If you really want to go cheap, build your own antenna. It's incredibly easy.
By antennaguy at 12:53 PM ON 05/16/08
“Kill Your Cable” Excellent idea.
While cable and satellite program providers will continue to serve the great majority of homes as the primary signal source, missing HD local reception, compression issues, higher costs, billing add-ons, service outages, contact difficulties, in-home service waits and no shows have left many of these subscribers looking to OTA antennas as a good alternatives.
Up-Graded Digital Off-Air Antennas Needed
Most TV consumers think of antennas as low-tech devices, but there is more behind some of the newer antenna designs than just bent metal and plastic. Many of the TV antenna designs on the market today such as the Yagi and rabbit ears have technology roots going back 30 to 50 years or more.
The switch to digital broadcasts however is bringing consumers back to Off-Air reception and the increasing sales are providing the motivation and investments necessary to develop new models and new technology. The fact that most designs on the market now were developed prior to the advent of much of the computer technology, software and algorithms in common use today has left open numerous avenues to improve upon tried and true designs and develop new ones. Additionally, recent regulations and standards are opening new doors for antenna engineers to develop smaller antennas with improved performance and aesthetics.
The correct antenna, installed and aimed properly will receive desired local stations, including multi-cast programming adding several additional local off-air programs and several in HD almost completely uncompressed, not available from cable or satellite. As an added benefit, an OTA antenna provides reception for second sets in homes not wired for whole-house signal distribution.
Weebork: You didn’t say so, but you must have an indoor antenna. Your problem with interference is caused by Multi-path (bounced signals reaching your antenna out of phase). Digital signals even bounce of the walls and ceiling in your viewing room. The solution is to find the best location in the room and aiming direction for your antenna by testing different locations and directions. Or better still, buy a better indoor antenna.
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antennaguy:
“Kill Your Cable” Excellent idea. While cable and satellite program providers will continue to serve the great maj...More »