Anyone miss paid TV?

I'm fortunate to live near a major city (Los Angeles) and pickup a lot TV over the air. The only stations I miss are the sports channels like ESPN, SPEED and FSN. Although I do get nice surprises like the SEC Game of the Week on Saturday mornings and the LFL on Friday nights.

Otherwise I get along well with whats available but I have to tolerate the periodic signal drops while watching TV, being in a deep fringe area.

Dishnetwork, DTV, Cable, and U-Verse are all available to me, but Dish at $58/mo including HD, seems to be the best deal going for what I like. I can afford the $98/mo Everything package with HD, but that's a lot of TV.

Is paid TV worth $60 to $100 per month?


Thanks,

John

You have to weigh the economic feasibilty of the total number of hours spent watching cable available only channels, and their importance, against that $60 - $100/mth. Does that roof mounted (or indoor) metallic monstrosity give you access to all the major OTA channels?

Nope. I can now watch college football on the internet with ESPN 360. I miss NHL Hockey and the Tennis that can be found on a couple of CATV channels but aside from that who needs it?

I will say two things and then I will not bother you - if you wish.

The first is - with a second option, I can watch Monday Night Football, Ice Road Trucker, Ax Men, and what ever good programs are on The History Channel and The Discovery Channel. Let's not forget American Chopper and Holmes on Homes.

Other then that, those crappy satellites could fall out of the sky and I would not care!

Second is - if you asked us to look at your situation by giving us a street address of your location, I am sure that we can find you a suitable antenna and pre amplifier that would get rid of your drop out situation. That is if you are willing to spend some time and money to make your set up better.

My OTA set up is on 10 hours a day. I might turn the Dish on once a night for a hour or two, after the 11 pm news is over and David Letterman did his top 10 list. Other then that, and to watch R5Sons, the dish is almost never on.

Is paid TV worth $60 to $100 per month?



That is for you to determine. I got rid of my Direct TV and don't miss it one bit. I got pretty sick of turning on the weather channel and hearing "sunny and 60 degrees F outside" while I looked out the window and watched the snow pile up, or saw my thermometer reading 25 below 0. We couldn't get local TV channels with Direct TV. Also did not get any HD TV. That's extra, I guess. Lots of redundant sports channels that I normally wouldn't pay ten cents for.

I moved to this rural area of New York in 1979. I was able to get one channel, full of snow, with a huge Wade VIP-307 and a 30 dB amp. I then built my own 14 foot octagon satellite dish out of 2"X6" wood and chicken wire and got over 50 channels from half a dozen satellites with negative and positive LNA polarity - none were scrambled at the time. Even with those 50 channels, I liked the one snowy local over-the-air channel better - for the most part.

Then my satellite TV became mostly scrambled. I finally acquiesced and got Primestar single-satellite system when it came to town. That later became Direct TV. Did it mostly for my kids, who are all grown and gone now (except for one new one).

We kept the Direct TV just for the one kid's channel (Noggin) and the lack of over-the-air here. After this June, and some work, we now get over a dozen main channels over-the-air. Got rid of Direct TV, and I'm very glad to see it gone. Now, I wish I could find a way to get rid of my Internet dish.

Only thing I miss and cannot get is Fox News and O'Rielly.

I miss paying DirecTV $110 every month.:yippee:

I get 12 stations with 22 channels.

ABC NBC CBS FOX MyNet CW PBS/WORLD/CREATE THIS
plus 2 weather channels.

My wife misses Lifetime and Ovation.

My wife and I gave up Dish Network 6 months ago. We could no longer justify spending almost $100 per month on programming that we watched less than 10 hours per month. Now that basketball season has started, I do miss being able to watch Cavaliers games. I'd stopped watching the Indians games because they were horrible this year. We now rent videos from Family Video, many of which are 2 for $1.00 or 2 for $2.00. We also borrow shows and movies from the local public library for free.

We purchased a Dish Network DTVPal DVR for OTA reception and for recording programs. Its on screen interface and remote control are almost identical to the ViP622 DVR that Dish Network provided for satellite and OTA reception. I'll just have to be content with the Cavs games that are televised OTA. We're fortunate that we can receive stations from the Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Youngstown and Wheeling/Steubenville markets 24/7.

I do not have any problem admitting that I miss certain aspects of pay TV. Certainly the history and discovery channels, cspan, and even espn on occasions.

But I dumped Dish when they kept raising prices. Add in the facts I they gave me no control over my programming choices while loading me up with crap I absolutely did not want, made it easy for me to issue an ultimatum to Dish, either straighten out your act or I will drop you.

Dish didn't believe I could live without them, and yo all those years later, Dish has not seen a dime out of me. And even if Dish teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, they can proudly State they refuse to change

And no I did not switch to the equally hopeless Direct TV either.

We as a family dont miss the satellite bill/dish at all. We live in a small town in southeast Kansas and pickup stations from the Joplin,Mo. area. We have been dish free since April 19th of this year. We did receive a call this week from dish but I politley declined to hear any of there offers. I did purchase a Tivo in August and dont regret that one bit as that may have saved my butt. My wife and I have purchased Mad Men through the Tivo at $2.99 an episode this fall and I will without a doubt miss Kansas basketball games that will be on ESPN but I have a neighbor who is a big fan and he has no problem with me coming over to watch a game in his garage. Today two guys at work and myself had a conversation about my setup. They couldnt beleive I could live without cable or satellite. I told them how much we are going to save in a years time, over 1,000 dollars. I think I made my point.

I dont miss the monthly bills from Direct Tv or Dish Network either, I have saved enough money by canceling them to buy all my own OTA antenna and related equipment.. with money to spare :yippee:

Tho I miss Survivor Man, Man vs Wild and Underwater Detectives etc....but O well..

I can get local news and weather plus national/world news, thats all I need anyway.

Mike

not a all dropped dish and direct over 4 years ago when they over charged me and could not explain the bill. in the seventy's we needed cable, because ota tv was crap. but hd is great and we all have learned that we can live without pay tv. hd ota was made for over the air and not pay tv. also it's clearer than pay tv free and the future of tv. it will get better when all bug are worked out. we as consumer control the market not pay tv if we don't pay everything get better for us some people are still confused because pay tv told them as long as you have us you don't have to worry. some think buying the converter box is a new pay service. we all were on the fast track understood we did not need to pay for whats' free. if you noticed pay tv has been bying up all the sport to keep people paying and the folks that think they must have it will pay. they don't realize that if they stop paying they might be surprised what they might get ota. if it's my team ethier the local sport bar or the internet will get me there. i will never pay again for tv. when we go to the store and shop the companies pay the tv stations for commercial time the same as ota commercials. pay tv want you to pay them also which they get paid twice for the same programming featured on most ota channel for free. in return they use your money to buy up sports programming to keep you hanging on. mlb baseball and the nfl playoffs was always free ota but tbs tnt and nfl network broadcast games including the playoffs you will not get unless you have pay tv. if you continue to pay there will not be any pro sport on free tv, unless a ota sport net start. if pro sports do move it will be with out me. i then hope the ufl and aba2000 play on free tv i will watch because basketball is basketball and football is football it's all entertainment. high school would be good.

unfortunately I can't miss paid tv untill my wife is willing to let me turn that hunk o junk off. OTA here is moderately difficult, but unlike most areas 50' tower makes way more than then usual difference....here you go from single edge diffraction to los by going from your normal 20' to 30' pole to a tower.....well I got the tower and all my ota problems went away, I'm at 60 miles out and don't even run a pre-amp anymore....I also get some stations on the vhf band from around 100 mile range out, but they aren't as dependable as the los stations....all in all I get over 25 channels here...used to get more, but lightening got my rotor so I'm at a fixed point till I can get that replaced. Some day I intend to get a pre-amp that won't over load with WHDF...when they went to full power my pre-amp went into overload and made two other stations disappear that without a pre-amp come in at 100% signal all the time.

.....My wife and I have purchased Mad Men through the Tivo at $2.99 an episode.....
That would be the only way I would subscribe to a pay service. If they would provide a daily menu, that I could choose individual program(s), at a nominal fee per each, to be streamed to a recording device, to be viewed in real time or at a later date.

It's been 11 years since we had to have cable for reception issues, so I would have to say, "Nope... not at all." There's always Netflix for the stuff you just have to have now. If you're willing to wait, many of the good/great cable-only series eventually end up on late-night OTA, anyway, and can be recorded to DVD. In recent years, local stations hereabouts have run every episode of "Dead Like Me," the first five seasons of "The Shield," and large numbers of episodes from "Sex and the City" and "South Park." The language is heavily edited and certain scenes/shots are cropped, of course, but most episodes aren't stepped on so badly that the plots get hopelessly mangled.