Price: $22.09
Days to pay for itself (compared to cost of cable): 4.5
It's funny how you you forget that there's free television floating in the air all around you. We're lucky enough to have one of the few functioning outdoor antennas jutting majestically from the side of our apartment - We've had the second TV hooked up to that for years. Once we cut the cable I bought a cheap digital antenna for the main TV. It took no time to hook up, and after a 5 minute auto-program we had 55 free channels. Some of them are even in English (It must be impossible to sell cable to the Spanish speaking populous of Chicago, hence my new axiom: He's so good, he could sell cable subscriptions to Mexicans). Anyway, after some acclamation to not being able to pause, rewind, or skip through the commercials and having to move the antenna around occasionally when a signal drops, it isn't all that bad. Plus, it's kinda cool to rediscover ephemera you never thought you'd ever need again, such as TV listings.
With our current set-up, I'll get all of the Bears games and most Cubs/Blackhawks games. I'm gonna miss NFL Red Zone, but I can't justify paying $1800 annually for 16 afternoons of football coverage. We get 7 PBS stations, which is pretty sweet, and I discovered that they telecast the Roe & Roper show everyday on NBC 5.2 - SCORE! All in all, I'm not noticing too much of a difference. It seems that PBS always has something on worth watching, and there are several news programs scattered throughout the day (this morning I had my coffee to Al-Jazeera English, which probably landed me on a watch-list somewhere). I'm good-to-go with my cheap-ass antenna, just don't bother me between 8PM and 9PM (CST) on Fridays - I'm watching Fringe, motherfuckers.
4 comments:
Now I'm watching Korean Pop videos with Spanish subtitles. This so rules!
Next, hook up a computer to the television and check out XBMC. It's f'n sweet.
Way ahead of you. We have a X-Box 360 with XBMC (and a hard-line connection) on the second TV, and a PS3 on the main TV. I'm looking into hooking up a media-center PC onto the main TV sometime in the next couple of months, which was the plan from the get-go. Will blog about everything.
I'm very curious to hear The Girl's side of this experience.
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