Monday, January 4, 2010

Who needs Cable TV anyway?

Ok, Time Warner was going to drop Fox channels last week. This week, Cablevision is threatening to drop HGTV and the Food Network. I have read every last comment on CNN from the readers who posted comments and many of them say “That’s it, I am canceling cable TV”. We all say that. But has anyone ever actually done it? Well I did, and here is how it turned out.

In October 2008, I realized I needed to start cutting back on my monthly expenditures. I started going over every dollar I spent in a normal month. It was the usual costs to live every month. Mortgage, car payment, groceries, cable TV/phone/internet bundle, wait… Cable TV bundle? How much was that costing me? What was I getting? Did I need all this?

It turns out I was paying over $149.00 a month for my existing cable TV, internet and phone line for my home business. Now, I know internet costs about $20.00 a month and a phone line is about $15.00 a month. That leaves $114.00 a month for cable TV. OMG! How is that possible? What do I watch that’s worth $114.00 a month? I was not getting any movie channels for that price. I didn’t get any extra sports channels. I didn’t have HGTVHD like some of my friends had. What was I getting for this price? I called the cable company and the service rep explained it all to me, here is what I was paying for. First, I paid $67.00 for basic Digital Cable. Now, Digital cable is free locally. But maybe the cable company was offering me something digitally that I wouldn’t get locally. I scanned thought the digital channels and looked at what I got. Well, there was ABCHD, CBSHD, FOXHD, CWHD, NBCHD. Ok, well that doesn’t make any sense. With my tier package that I was paying for, I didn’t get HGTVHD. I only got the local channels in Digital/HD. Next, I was paying an extra $10.00 a month to get some extra channels. SOAP network, DIY network and Bravo. Ok, really, I don’t watch Soap Network and DIY is all infomercials after 1am which is when I really can find time to sit down and watch TV. That leaves Bravo. I like Bravo, but so far im paying $77.00 a month just to be able to watch it. Isn’t Kathy Griffin on Hulu anyway?

Next I was paying $10.00 a month for the privilege of hosting a Digital DVR at my home. It’s not really mine to own, just to use. I can record my favorite shows and watch them later on as long as I am paying the monthly fee to access the DVR. I do use that so I think it’s probably worth the extra $10.00 a month. Then there is the $39.00 for internet and the $19.00 for the phone line, the last few dollars is for fees that are added on for FCC, and other regulatory stuff. So, now I have a better picture, no pun intended, minus the internet and phone, im paying $100.00 a month to be able to watch local TV, HGTV, Bravo and for the use of a DVR. That’s over $1200.00 every year. Why did I need cable TV? What would happen if I didn’t have cable TV? As it turned out, we were right in the middle of the Digital TV conversion. You remember, the televisions stations were going to stop broadcasting in analog and if you didn’t have cable TV, satellite TV or digital antennae, you were not going to see anything unless you had a digital ready TV (which I have) or a converter box. I wondered about that. I decided to go online and see what it costs to buy a digital antenna. As luck would have it, there was a video on YouTube by some techie guru that showed him making his own digital antenna out of a long thin piece of wood and 8 wire coat hangers. I thought, this is never going to work. But, I watched the video and he explained it very clearly. It looked simple. I was inspired. I was energized. I thought, this is the end of cable TV holding my digital airwaves hostage every month. So, I set out through the house looking for wood and wire coat hangers.
I followed the video and within an hour, I had my very own digital antenna, Sure it looked like hell, but I wanted to see if I could get digital TV on my digital ready flat screen without the use of my cable box or a converter. I disconnected my cable box, my stereo system and everything to do with technology from the back of my TV. All I had now was the power cord and the new digital antenna plugged into the TV’s digital input connecter. That’s it. I turned on the TV, switch the TV’s input selector to DTV and selected “auto search channels”. Then next thing you know, I have FREE digital television. I got all the local channels. Another great thing about local digital TV is that each channel broadcasts in 1-4 sub channels. For instance, PBS is now channels 8.1 -8.4 instead of just channel 8. You get 4 PBS channels. Each one is showing something different. This happens with many of the other channels also. In total I got 23 channels. They consisted mainly of ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, a few local channels, a few religious channels and a few Spanish channels. I set my TV to block out the ones I didn’t want, and now I have all the free local channels I can handle. Sure, I don’t have HGTV or Bravo, but im also not paying any money for what I do have. I can watch HGTV and Bravo shows on the internet.

Next, I called the cable company and asked them if there was a cheaper internet than $39.99 a month. I was told that I have the best internet package with their “Turbo Boost” option. I laughed because I thought they were joking, but apparently they were serious. My internet is always terrible so I can’t believe I was paying for their best package. The operator explained to me that they offer an entry level internet “a la carte” for $19.99 a month. but its not as fast without the turbo boost. Well I decided it couldn’t get any slower so I switched it to the lower cost internet. Finally, I asked what I was getting for my $19.99 a month for my phone line. This line is connected to a fax machine in my home office so there is no actual phone on it. The service rep told me I was getting, caller id, call waiting and call forwarding for that price. None of which I will ever use on a fax machine. She explained that there is an $11.99 basic phone line available. I told her that ill take it, At that point, I cancelled my cable TV service too.

A few months later, when it all sank in, I was watching my digital TV and thinking, wow this is great, I have free TV. I aint paying a stinking dime for this. The world is awesome. It happened to be a Tuesday night. I wanted to go out with my friends to eat dinner but American Idol was coming on. No problem I ll just record it, right? Wrong! I don’t have a DVR. That’s when it hit me. I can’t record programs. I can’t even get a VCR because they don’t record digital TV. What the heck am I going to do? No DVR? Digital antenna out of coat hangers? I need therapy. But then I remembered something my friend in north Scottsdale told me. He used his TV as a monitor for his computer that he called a Media Server. Apparently, he had this computer hooked to the cable TV line and it recorded shows, showed internet programs on the screen and did all the things a DVR did, plus much more. I wanted to learn more about this. I started looking on the internet at prices for a small computer that had HDMI (digital video and audio) and a TV tuner card so I can connect that computer to the home made digital TV antennae. The new computer would use my digital TV as its monitor. The answer came in the form of an Acer Aspire computer for $350.00 from BJ’s whole club online. The computer was HDMI ready and I purchased a TV tuner card for $48.00 at FRY’s electronics. The computer had Windows Vista Home Premium edition which comes with software called “Windows Media Center’. That software has built in TV tuning with channels, options to record shows, play all your favorite music, create playlistes, hold all you family photos, etc. It’s sort of like your cable TV box that shows you all your channels, your DVR that records your shows, your Itunes on your computer or ipod that plays all your songs and play lists, and your photo album that holds all your photos and can play slideshows during dinner parties. So now, truly, I can watch TV via my digital ready TV, record shows via my new media server computer and my Phone line/internet bill is under $40.00 a month.

So now, here I am, 15 months later. Did I give up anything for all this? Sure, I gave up whatever is on cable TV that I can’t watch on the media server and broadcast on my TV screen. But, I am not sure what that would be since I don’t seem to miss any of it. I did have to put out $400.00 for the new media server computer, but im still ahead $800.00 that I didn’t pay to the cable company last year. As for 2010, My phone/internet is $40.00 a month and I don’t have to put out a dime to watch TV, record TV and listen to my favorite music. My biggest worry now is that it might be time to go and get real digital antenna to replace my home made one. I think my coat hangers are starting to rust.

Here is the link to the Coat Hanger DTV Antenna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQhlmJTMzw

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