Cutting the cord from the cable provider has been one of the best tech choices we have made evar. Leaving cable is like getting out of the cafeteria line, and walking into a three story food court. Regaining more of that all important payola is a terrific feeling. If you have been enslaved by your cable tv company, you may enjoy the freedom from cable that we discovered recently in my last blog post.
After you get your HDTV antenna, you can get many channels for free in HiDef. If your TV is digital, then that is all you need. Hopefully you still have the remote which came with your TV, and not the cable one, because you are going to need it. If you can’t find it a universal remote should work.
One of the best sources for cord cutting is your local Radio Shack store. Not only will they know what you are asking about when you want help setting up for free TV, but they may even have the antennas, remotes, and wires that you will need. In total we spent sixty dollars on our antenna. It came with a thirty foot cord attached which was plenty.
We decided to put ours in our attic, mainly because it was winter, and because of the super easy installation. I clamped ours onto an old camera tripod. With the bar the antenna came with, it stands around six feet tall.
Once you have everything you need and it is set up, you will need to know where to point it. Thankfully once again, there’s an App for that. A good place to start is AntennaWeb from there, you can enter your zip code, or even your street address and it will show you what channels are available in your area. Then you will need to point your antenna at them.
While you are on their website, be sure to ignore all the advertising for Hulu. Besides having a very limited number of shows to offer, they are owned by a massive, notorious cable corporation. Right now Netflix is the best choice for entertainment on demand. A combination of Apps and websites that stream programs, to your game console or mobile device will likely more than fill your entertainment needs.
Using an antenna is “line of sight”. That means the signal can be interrupted by tall buildings, and interfered with by large metal objects. You will need to find your own little piece of the sky to point it at. A helpful App which was well worth the minimal price is OTAMap which stands for Over the Air Map. This App will show you where the antennas are, what the station call letters are, and it even gives you the coordinates for the towers.
Coordinates? It’s Geeky yes. But not so complicated that anyone can’t figure it out. For the most part, your digital TV will scan for channels as soon as you switch it off cable, and onto it’s antenna setting. But if you want to explore for more channels, or just see what is out there, it is worth your while to spend the extra time using Apps and websites that are only too happy to provide you with tons of info about free TV.
In fact one of my favorite Apps today is Commander Compass Lite. The lite version is free. Everyone should learn how to use a compass. This one is a former girl scout’s geeky dream. Not only does it make it easy to point your antenna at the tower coordinates for your TV antenna, having it on iPhone or a satellite enabled iPad will mean you will never get lost again. It teaches you navigation in an easy to understand way, as you use it. The App can even show you the terrain with GPS maps.
To find out what’s on, it is as simple as downloading the free TV Guide App. You set it for antenna, and enter your location. Then the programs on your channels are there. You can customize the channel list. It also provides a ‘beep-beep’ reminder for your shows if you like.
There are always trade offs when you make new choices. There are a few things that free TV doesn’t do. There is very little onscreen show information. You may not be able to change the channel with your iPad, unless you can find an App for your brand of TV in the App store. The point is that there are new opportunities out there, and more new cable TV alternatives coming almost every day as approximately three million households annually leave cable behind.
