Almost ready to cut the cord

The Daytona 500 sure looks good.

Seems to look even better when it's free don't it?

Rob R. wrote:The Daytona 500 sure looks good.

It should look better than cable/dish, there is less compression used with OTA.

Rob R. wrote:I powered up a Winegard antenna in the living room yesterday and picked up 15 channels. NBC and CBS are the sharpest I have ever seen on our TV. Hopefully next weekend I can get the antenna mounted outside and hooked up to the used TiVo I bought on eBay. The goal is to only pay for high speed Internet...no more cable or DVR fees. Pictures to follow.

Rob R, what all do you have to do with the TiVo to get it to work on your TV? I thought TiVo was a subscription you paid for monthly? I'm now considering what you have for my place down here outside of Philly. Thanks for any help.

You can buy a TiVo with a lifetime subscription to the guide service. It is about $500 if purchased with a new unit...but the nice part is that it is good for the life of the unit, and transferable. I bought a used one with the lifetime service for about $300 total. The seller called TiVo and transferred the service to me, and I created an account online and registered the unit in my name. After it was hooked up I went into the settings and selected "reset to factory settings". That wipes out everything from the prior owner and repeats the guided setup.

So far I am very impressed with the performance.

The guys on the TiVo forums prefer the Series 3 units for use with an antenna...better tuner than the current model I guess. Mine is a Series 3 XL with a larger hard drive.

Good Christ!

I'll keep using my VCR I guess ...

Rob R. wrote:You can buy a TiVo with a lifetime subscription to the guide service. It is about $500 if purchased with a new unit...but the nice part is that it is good for the life of the unit, and transferable. I bought a used one with the lifetime service for about $300 total. The seller called TiVo and transferred the service to me, and I created an account online and registered the unit in my name. After it was hooked up I went into the settings and selected "reset to factory settings". That wipes out everything from the prior owner and repeats the guided setup.

So far I am very impressed with the performance.

The guys on the TiVo forums prefer the Series 3 units for use with an antenna...better tuner than the current model I guess. Mine is a Series 3 XL with a larger hard drive.

Thanks for the info.

Stage 2 is complete. Home phone service has been switched to "Ooma", which is similar to Vonage but only about $3.50 per month. My own cable modem has been installed, so no more rental fees for the modem.

Antenna, Cable, Dish or Internet, every thing depends on your budget and monthly affordability. You can place antenna on maximum height from your home roof to receive more channels. Rental fee for the modem and cable changes depends on service provider.

Another update: The cable company came out to our house on Friday to install a filter on the cable. I guess they don't want you watching what you aren't paying for. Anyway, after they got that done I couldn't help myself...I hooked the cable back up to our TV and did a channel scan on all frequencies. To my surprise it picked up all of our local stations as digital channels. The picture quality isn't as good as my antenna, but it is much better than analog cable. Apparently they are required to pass the local broadcast stations to you even if you don't subscribe to any cable channels? I get a few PBS stations out of VT with the antenna that didn't show up on the cable, but for someone who just wants high speed internet and a few local channels, a channel scan is all it takes. Some friends of mine have the same internet service, and they live in an area that makes it tough to pull in any stations with an antenna...I'm sure they will be thrilled to pick up 4-5 channels with no fuss or extra equipment.