Anyone have only broadcast TV - no cable? (Phoenix, Tucson: movies, living)

[cjs123]

Originally Posted by Zippyman

You don't need much of antenna to get a lot of channels - I picked one up for under $10 on Amazon for our kitchen tv, and we get like ~50 channels in north phoenix (101 & cave creek area).

August DTA400 Digital TV Antenna - Portable Indoor/Outdoor Aerial for USB TV Tuner / Digital Television / DAB Radio - With Adhesive Mount:Amazon:Electronics

It's a cheesy peel-n-stick antenna, but it pulled so many stations, we bought a couple more & they work great

Interesting! I'll keep that one in mind too. There are so many out there, it's nice to hear of some very reasonably-priced ones that work just fine.

[esiebert7625]

If you buy anything A/V related it should be from Monoprice, way cheaper than anyone, very good quality stuff and fast/cheap shipping. I buy all my cables, tv mounts and any type of accessory there for a fraction of a cost that you can get from the big box stores such as Best Buy. They have a few good HD antennas there for $20 and under.

Search result for Antenna - Monoprice.com

My brother-in-law gave up cable for over the air TV but he constantly has to find creative ways on the internet to find stuff that that you can't get there. I'm a big TV guy and couldn't ever do without cable, right now he's hating not being able to watch Sons of Anarchy while I can, I had to burn him a DVD so he could watch it.

[thinkalot]

Originally Posted by esiebert7625

If you buy anything A/V related it should be from Monoprice, way cheaper than anyone, very good quality stuff and fast/cheap shipping. I buy all my cables, tv mounts and any type of accessory there for a fraction of a cost that you can get from the big box stores such as Best Buy. They have a few good HD antennas there for $20 and under.

Search result for Antenna - Monoprice.com

My brother-in-law gave up cable for over the air TV but he constantly has to find creative ways on the internet to find stuff that that you can't get there. I'm a big TV guy and couldn't ever do without cable, right now he's hating not being able to watch Sons of Anarchy while I can, I had to burn him a DVD so he could watch it.

I wait until the dvd, get them from the library, and then binge watch the whole season in a couple days.

[esiebert7625]

Originally Posted by thinkalot

I wait until the dvd, get them from the library, and then binge watch the whole season in a couple days.

DVD's can take a long time thoughto get releasef, sometimes a year or more. Thats OK if you don't mind waiting that long. I had to use other means to burn one for them way sooner ;-)

The other issue with over the air TV is not easily being able to record it. I watch nothing live and record everything to watch later.

[elcajones]

Originally Posted by Xica_da_Silva

I got rid of cable about 2 years ago- just got the bunny-ears and the reception is great here in central Phoenix...very happy with it. Having said that, I'm not a big tv watcher. I am however a huge fan of the Cardinals in particular, but most of their games are shown locally, either on Fox, or channel 3. For example, even though Monday Night Football is on ESPN, I was able to watch the Cardinals game last night on channel 3. No regrets so far.

Heck I watched it on channel 3 had with cox. My poor Chargers..ick. But no one in my fantasy league will talk smack about my picking up Carson Palmer again.. Got me 20 points.

On a less bright note, when cox accidentally disconnected me, I tried to pick up the local broadcast on my tv, a 65in 2013 model Sharp led smart tv, and got nothing here off Dobson and Southern.

[esiebert7625]

Originally Posted by elcajones

Heck I watched it on channel 3 had with cox. My poor Chargers..ick. But no one in my fantasy league will talk smack about my picking up Carson Palmer again.. Got me 20 points.

On a less bright note, when cox accidentally disconnected me, I tried to pick up the local broadcast on my tv, a 65in 2013 model Sharp led smart tv, and got nothing here off Dobson and Southern.

You will pickup exactly zero HD channels with over the air broadcast TV without an HD antenna. TV's today have no antennas built in. Your TV must also have an ATSC tuner which most TVs today have.

[stevek64]

A cheap antenna might work well for OTA....it might not. Before you get too excited getting away with a < $20 antenna or a stick on the wall "Leaf" type deal, I'd check this site:

AntennaWeb - Home

Plug in your address and see what potentially you should be able to pick up and what antenna you need.

From my experience...an Antennas Direct CR2 propped on a small dish antenna on the side of our house in Surprise worked perfect and I got a bunch of channels. Fast forward to Goodyear/Estrella Mountain Ranch. That antenna and a few other types failed miserably. Picked up zero channels. Nothing. Big mountain in our way on a direct path to South Mountain where most of the xmitters are. I played around a bit more and I found an area on our roof that should work great but been lazy in doing anything about it for we aren't big tv people. Netflix is most of our viewing. And OTA is more than enough to supplement.

But I think as some people shared, it depends how much tv you watch, what shows, what sports, etc. if OTA will be good enough for you. I can tell you after having all flavors of cable and satellite tv, I think OTA tv picture quality looks light years ahead of all the other options I've experienced. You're getting an uncompressed signal(well, sorta but that's another story as all video is compressed with some codec), but you're not compromised by bandwidth issues that other providers are faced with shoving 100's/1000's of channels down a pipe. And you can't beat the price of OTA. And the bigger tv you have, the bigger the distortions/compression artifacts will stick out like a soar thumb. We have an 80" LED LCD tv and watching cable or satellite on it I think would be painful compared to what I'm used of with OTA and blu ray. And Netflix looks great also, especially with a 1080P download. I've heard good things about FIOS TV but have never experienced the service.

As for OTA channels you can pick up, here's a site:

TitanTV

Go to the "Channel Lineup" drop down menu, select "create a new channel lineup", and "Broadcast", and enter you zip code and it should give you a good idea what you can potentially pickup OTA.

[wit-nit]

Originally Posted by esiebert7625

You will pickup exactly zero HD channels with over the air broadcast TV without an HD antenna. TV's today have no antennas built in. Your TV must also have an ATSC tuner which most TVs today have.

Not so true. There is no such thing as a HD antenna especially rabbit ears and rooftops. They are all made of the same aluminum materials from years ago and pickup analog or digital signals. I still have a 30 year old antenna on the roof that works just fine with todays signals.
I have 7 TV's with over the air antenna's and I get all stations that broadcast in HD. My surround sound system has fantastic sound and reception. Over the air broadcasts are clearer and sharper than cable which loses 15-20% of transmission quality.

[esiebert7625]

Originally Posted by wit-nit

Not so true. There is no such thing as a HD antenna especially rabbit ears and rooftops. They are all made of the same aluminum materials from years ago and pickup analog or digital signals. I still have a 30 year old antenna on the roof that works just fine with todays signals.
I have 7 TV's with over the air antenna's and I get all stations that broadcast in HD. My surround sound system has fantastic sound and reception. Over the air broadcasts are clearer and sharper than cable which loses 15-20% of transmission quality.

Didn't know any antenna would work for HD but you still need an antenna regardless, TV's don't have built-in antennas. You can't expect to pickup a single over the air channel unless you have an antenna.

[stevek64]

Originally Posted by wit-nit

Not so true. There is no such thing as a HD antenna especially rabbit ears and rooftops. They are all made of the same aluminum materials from years ago and pickup analog or digital signals. I still have a 30 year old antenna on the roof that works just fine with todays signals.
I have 7 TV's with over the air antenna's and I get all stations that broadcast in HD. My surround sound system has fantastic sound and reception. Over the air broadcasts are clearer and sharper than cable which loses 15-20% of transmission quality.

HD TV signals can xmit on VHF and UHF. And in the Phoenix metro, we have some stations that broadcast on VHF, and UHF. If your in a fringe area like we are, it will make a difference between getting a signal or not getting a signal if you buy an antenna made for only UHF let's say. The antenna I used in Surprise didn't have VHF capability but we received such a strong signal, the UHF antenna picked up VHF just fine. In Goodyear, I need to get an antenna that could pick up both vhf and uhf and it made all the difference in the world.

Sounds like you're either in a real strong signal area or have an antenna that picks up both bands. Many antennas sold these days don't pick up both bands/one has to read the fine print.