Our new home is equipped with many things: yard, ceiling fans, garage, garage door, etc. But we do not have cable or any sort of dish. Those things are expensive, and we decided to try going without it. (It is rather a lot of money that most people spend on something that they readily admit they waste too much time on.) We can watch some shows online, and we invite ourselves over to friends places for BYU football games. Anyway, we recently went and invested 14 bucks in a set of rabbit ears to see what sort of 'free' tv we might get. Basically we get 1 channel, unless you include the very static-y PBS station (that I think comes from Las Vegas). And what channel do we get? ABC? NBC? CBS? Fox? KBYU? Nay! None of those! We get RTN: the Retro Television Network.
Each Sunday, we get a roughly 20 page magazine of TV listings for the week in the paper. RTN isn't included, but looking up their schedule online, you can see that RTN shows the same exact schedule of shows every day of the week. So if you want to watch Nightrider or Magnum P.I. come on over. I don't get to see the A Team, as it's on when I'm at work. The same schedule day after day (it is different on the weekends) for who knows how long. No plans to change for the holidays, or anything like that. I imagine that right after Thanksgiving dinner we'd be able to get together to watch Dragnet if we wanted. (Unless your family eats Thanksgiving dinner at noon, in which case you might be done in time for Kojak.) Anyway, our TV is awesome.
(We'll be getting a digital converter box soon so we can see if any digital stations make it to our house.)
6 comments:
You got digital rabbit ears, right? I have HD rabbit ears, but I guess rabbit-options are much better in SLC than in SG because I get all 4 broadcast networks (we're marginally counting the CW here), plus a weather channel and about seven PBS channels.
I don't even think about getting cable because I'm a new PBS addict. I have KBYU, KUED, BYU, WORLD, a few UENs, Create . . .
I watch lots of Nova and Rick Steves. LOTS. I could become a Little House on the Prairie addict or some kind of Lawrence Welk freak very easily too, but thank goodness for Playstation and DVDs.
spend $100 and get a good antenna that you can put up outside and then spend another $20 and get an amplifier with an FM trap, then go to Antennaweb and use your compass to pick up the channels (I know you have one).
I know it's expensive start up, but it's a one time cost. After that you should be good to go. Oh and by the way, you can also browse antennaweb here for ideas on what a good antenna would be for you.
P.S. An antenna is an antenna is an antenna. The whole "HD ready" thing is pure marketing sillyness. Any antenna can receive a "digital signal". However, not every TV can. Therefore, make sure that your receiver is digital (meaning the TV has a converter box, or the TV is new and automatically receives digital signals).
The only thing you need to be sure of is that it has both UHF and VHF functionality when you buy it.
I don't know up from down on antennas. I just know I have rabbit ears hooked up to my flat panel HD TV and that earns me funny looks.
No offense meant. Alex and I just got off the dish (yes it's an addiction) and got a digital converter box. I actually applaud you for using an antenna for your HD TV. I've found that it's actually better than any satellite service out there.
In case anyone is wondering, Antennaweb indicates that with a big antenna on the roof all hooked up like Ben suggests, we could expect to get 9 channels. I don't recognize any of the call signs. We probably won't go that route, as we can't expect to get all that much out of it anyway. The digital box will add 2 channels to that list, one of which is the digital signal from the RTN. So, basically, for 10 more bucks I can upgrade from kinda fuzzy Magnum PI to a crisp digital Magnum PI.
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