Yee-haw - we are free of cable...

We had Windstream here on Friday to have internet and a *gasp* landline phone installed. Today I drove down to Time Warners place, stood in line behind about 20 people canceling cable (many took Black Friday specials from DirecTV and Dish), and then cancelled our cable completely. Just like that, we saved over $60/month off our cable bill (which was a "promotion" rate.)

What will we miss? I will miss ESPN, although Windstream gives me ESPN3 access. Anna and Maddie will miss the Disney channel. Heather will miss HGTV. We all will miss the DVR. I will miss the speed of Time Warner's internet connection. Windstream, while faster than the AT&T DSL I had one year ago, is still significantly slower than Time Warner (see image below).


What I won't miss? Shelling out an extra $60/mo for the above services. We won't miss the abysmal customer service. I won't miss the crappy VoIP service Time Warner provided. I won't miss the worse excuse for HD I have ever seen. I won't miss having to call every year or 6 months to get a promotion rate because their normal rates are so high.

Windstream commits to not change their prices by saying if they start offering higher bandwidth, you can choose to pay more ot get it. But it won't keep increasing on you. There is no promotion rate I have to fight for yearly. Amazing!

The kids are taking it well. In the last couple of days they were choosing to watch TV on the antenna rather than the recordings off the DVR. They have been excited to watch PBS Kids and Tri-state Christian Television's Family channel.

Still have not yet signed up for Netflix or Hulu Plus..that is still to come.

What channels do we get?

The common question I get is what channels do you get. My TV says it found 49 channels but only is showing 24. Here is the list of channels, each of which comes through great. Two of these don't come from the south side of my house, where my omnidirectional antenna is installed. Those are ION (47.1) and TCT (30.1). PBS (WUNC) mostly comes from the west rather than east and comes in fine.

4.1 PBS WUNC
4.2 WUNC Kids
4.3 WUNC EX
5.1 CBS WRAL
5.2 THIS?
11.1 ABC WTVD
11.2 ?
11.3 ?
17.1 NBC WNCN
17.2 ?
17.3 ?
22.1 CW WLFL
22.2 Country music
28.1 WRDC my ROC
28.2 The Cool TV
30.1 Tri-state Christian Television
30.2 different Tri-state Christian Television
30.3 Tri-state Christian Television Family
30.4 Spanish Tri-state Christian Television
47.1 WRPX ION
47.2 ION Kids
47.3 ION Life
50.1 Fox WRAZ
50.2 Me TV

Channels I am not getting which TV Fool says I may are:
24.1 W24CP
40.1 Univision
44.1 WZGS
64.1 W64CN
68.1 W68BK

Another interesting nuance is when I go to a channel like 25.1 which is another PBS (WUNK-TV), my TV takes me to 4.1 (WUNC-TV). So I don't know if that counts that as I am getting 25.1. If so, this would account for the channels it says I am getting but I am not actually getting.

Antenna based TV is great!

Happy Thanksgiving y'all. As we prepare to cut cable...I installed a Terk FDTVO in the attic this Thanksgiving break. As I said last time, first I did an address check at TV Fool. It gave me an in depth listing of all the TV Channels available from my house through a small antenna, an attic mounted antenna, and a roof mounted antenna. The graph for my house looks like this:


Based on this, I needed to aim the antenna south, either slightly southeast or slightly southwest. I bought the Terk FDTVO because its multi-directional and pointing in one direction, we can get both the channels in the southeast and southwest directions. So, finding the southern most corner of the house, the Terk FDTVO took about 15-20 minutes to install. From the Terk there is a 10 ft coax cable line, then it plugs into the amplifier provided with the Terk, then it runs from the 3rd floor to the crawlspace and back up to the first floor to my cable splitters. I found the 3 cable lines we used in the house and attached those lines into the splitter with the antenna as the input.

(My phone shown for size perspective)

After turning my TV to over the air rather than cable, My TV found 49 local channels. The Terk worked great. I turned on the LSU v Arkansas game and it looked great.


That is a HD picture with quality better than Time Warner Cable for sure.

Preparing to cut the cable...

I am preparing to cut the cable in our house. Here is my plan.

Step 1: Run a coax cable line and power outlet in the attic on the southeast corner of my house. I used TV Fool to determine the right place in my house to run this line for an in attic antenna.

COMPLETE

Step 2: Install an in attic amplified antenna to pick up local HD stations. I am currently looking at the Terk FDTVO Antenna.

Step 3: Purchase and install two Roku boxes. Right now I am aiming for the Roku 2

Step 4: Switch from Internet, Phone, and TV from my cable provider to Internet and Phone from Windstream.

Step 5: Sign up for Hulu Plus and Netflix.

So, step 2 is next. Total, this takes our bill from $126 (discounted rate) to around $90 per month standard rate with an initial cost around $250 for step 1-5. I'll try to keep tabs on this project out here on my blog.