Confessions of a Cord Cutter, Part II

Someone recently asked for an update on the living-without-cable situation, so I thought I would take a minute to review the technical details of how we picked an antenna, how we decided where to put our antenna, and how we used the house's existing wiring to hook everything up. Be warned, this is a long post!

What type of antenna should I buy?

If you are considering cutting the cord, the first thing you need to know is how close (or far) you are from the broadcast towers, and what type of signal they're putting out, because that will dictate what type of antenna you need. There is a website called TV Fool that allows you to plug in your exact street address, and it will give you a pretty good idea of what type of antenna you'll need.

I'll use my TV Fool report as an example to walk you through what to pay attention to. The first thing to look at is the list of channels:

I get roughly 25 channels that come in easily with an indoor antenna, but I've just snipped this list to make it easier to read. Right away, I can see most of these channels are pulling in from a broadcast tower about 10 miles away. It also tells me which direction the tower is located relative to my house, so if I wanted to aim the antenna, I know to point it in a southwest direction (or 249°, on a compass).

If you scroll down towards the bottom of the TV Fool report, you can also see which channels are broadcast over UHF and VHF (snippet above). This is important, because this will determine whether you need to get an antenna that picks up both of those signals. (Most do, but it's something to pay attention to.)

So, now I have two key pieces of information for buying an antenna: it has to cover more than ten miles, and for me, it has to get both UHF-VHF signals.

Where should I put the antenna?

This really varies depending on where you live. There are plenty of folks who are able to pull in good reception with the antenna hidden behind the TV. A good rule of thumb is that you are going to get the best reception a) outside, and b) high up.

I didn't want mine on our balcony for aesthetic reasons, so we currently have it slapped up inside against a window we don't look out of much (in a walk-in closet).

As a townhouse owner, I should add in that it's illegal for an HOA to prevent you you installing an antenna. The most they can do is ask for reasonable concealment of it, which cannot itself become a burden to installation. If you are unlucky to have a restrictive HOA, you can read more about that FCC regulation here.

How to use pre-existing wiring to connect the antenna to your TV.

If you choose to mount your antenna somewhere other than right behind your TV, the last piece you'll need to think about is how to get the antenna signal from wherever you put it (outside, in the attic, in your closet) and distribute that to however many TVs you have.

If you have a house or apartment that was built fairly recently, you probably have coaxial cable running throughout, which is convenient because that's exactly what you need to transmit the antenna signal. I said earlier that I placed my antenna in a closet window located in the master bedroom, so my goal was to transmit the signal from the master bedroom to our TV in the living room.

My cable splitter happens to be in the garage, right next to the breaker box. Each splitter looks a bit different, but on mine, the input designated as the "source" was located in the middle. I labeled all my cable with some washi tape just so I could tell them apart more easily. In the picture below, the cable with the turquoise tape is the input, and the ones behind it are distributing the signal to different rooms in the house.

Since my antenna was placed inside the house, I needed to change the input signal. So, I unscrewed the original cable that was there, and moved the cable from the master bedroom to the source location. The turquoise cable is sending the antenna signal from the master bedroom to every single room in the house (except the master bedroom). Here's what the splitter looks like now:

Ok, so that's it! If you have questions about the setup, or purchasing an antenna, leave me a comment and I'm happy to help if I can.

Confessions of a Cord Cutter, Part I

I'm breaking this topic up into two posts: finding a DVR, and then how to choose an antenna and hook it up.

We took the plunge and cut the cord with cable several years ago – and by took the plunge, I mean we were cheap ass grad students who couldn't justify the expense of cable. But then we moved into an apartment complex that offered free internet and cable as part of rent, and I could rent a DVR for only $15 a month. When we moved into the new house, we thought we'd see how we could do without cable. Cutting the cable is one thing, but I love the flexibility of being able to record a program and watch it whenever, which meant we needed some kind of DVR.

Before we made the big move, I started looking into "OTA" DVRs. Basically, these are DVRs that capture free, legal, over-the-air unencrypted HD signals like NBC, ABC, FOX, PBS, etc. I pretty quickly narrowed my search down to two possible DVRs: Tablo and the Tivo Roamio. If you're considering cutting the cord and you'd like to check what kind of channels you might get, plug your address in here.

Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all

Cost wasn't the only factor (I'll talk more about that below), but it was certainly a biggie. Tablo doesn't have built-in storage, which means you need an external hard drive, and it doesn't connect directly to your TV, so you need a streaming device. Here's how the numbers broke down for me:

The "lifetime service" refers to the cost of the program guide (the channel listing). If you'd rather not pay the cost up front, both Tablo and Tivo offer cheap monthly rates, but I like the idea of a "one and done" kinda deal.

Tablo

In my view, the good and bad thing about Tablo is that it doesn't connect to your TV. On one hand, the fact that it's not tied to your TV means that you can set it up wherever you get the best TV reception... which may not be a three foot radius from your TV. On the other hand, it means you need to buy another device like a Chromecast or AppleTV to stream stuff from Tablo to your TV. In addition, it doesn't have storage built in, which means you have to buy yet another device to store your TV shows.

One of the other things I wasn't crazy about: there's no remote. The idea is that you access Tablo through a streaming device (like Apple TV or Roku or whatever), so you would just use whatever remote or app goes with the streaming device. This is just personal preference, but I like having a more fully featured remote that has buttons for the channel guide, mute, etc. I should point out you can definitely buy a remote to coordinate with the Tablo (like a Logitech Harmony), but again, it's an additional cost and yet another thing to program.

Tivo Roamio

First of all, I like that everything you need is pretty much right in the box. I hate electronic clutter and cords, so that's a big plus to me over Tablo. It has integrated access to a bunch of streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, so you don't need to switch over to another device for those; another plus. It's got four tuners, which means you can record four programs at once, which is nice if you like a bunch of shows during prime time. I also like that it has a remote. If you have non-techie family members, the remote works pretty much like every cable remote ever, which means it's familiar and easy to use.

One of my favorite features is OnePass. Basically, Tivo finds your favorite show, and searches out episodes on whatever platforms you use: TV, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, whatever. It doesn't matter if they're recorded, have yet to air, pop up on streaming, or are just coming soon to streaming, they all show up in one easy-to-navigate screen.

Oh... and hopefully I won't sit on it.

(Sex and the City fans, I hope you remember the reference! Cordcutters can watch the series for free on Amazon Prime.)

The Verdict

We've been using the Tivo for over a month now, and we LOVE it. I would say the only drawback is there's no easy way to check how much free space is left. My model records about 500 GB. I don't think we're in danger of hitting that limit, but it's hard to say for sure.

I've used DVRs from Comcast and Verizon, and the design and intuitiveness far oustrips either of them by a mile. You have to figure -- they were first to the DVR market, and they know what they're doing.

This isn't a picture from our Tivo (no cable), but it's better than the potato-gram my iPhone took, and it gives you a sense of what the channel guide looks like. It's the exact same on our Roamio, with the nice little channel icons and everything.

If we ever buy more TVs, we can purchase a Mini, which looks about the size of an Apple TV, I guess. You pop it on the additional TV, and the Roamio will beam whatever you want to that TV from your DVR. (It comes with a remote, too, so your guests won't be left out in the cold.) So, I like that it's easy to expand no matter how many TVs you have in your household.

You might also wonder what we've been watching without cable. Well, Making a Murderer, OBVI. We're only up to episode three, so NO SPOILERS, y'all. But seriously... we've been doing just fine; there's a ton of stuff to watch. I won't lie, I do miss all my HGTV shows, but the nice thing is there's a ton of those programs on Hulu, and I can always buy an iTunes season pass for current shows if I really feel the need.

Ok, that's the wrap on the first installment of cord cutting. Stay tuned for how we picked an antenna and hooked it all up.

Guardian Meeting and Selections

This will be a super quick post, since we only added one thing: pre-wiring for a flat screen TV in the living room. Done and dusted: the whole meeting took about ten minutes. Our Guardian rep was very nice; although he laid out different options, he didn't pressure us into adding anything unnecessary, which we really appreciated.

We're a Mac household, and some of the upgrades that Guardian had available were relatively easy to accomplish with what we already have. If you have a $99 AirPort Express, you can send music wirelessly to any speaker in your house, and use your iPhone or iPad as a remote. (An Apple TV will accomplish the same thing.) So, we can have iTunes running on one of our Mac Minis, and then beam it downstairs to play on our groovy soundbar. It's not quite as nice as pre-wired whole house audio, but you can't beat the price tag.