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Old 13-Oct-2010, 2:34 PM   #6
elmo
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 232
Red face I'm in!

Thought I'd share my experience. Out in the sticks w/no cable and I wanted to watch bicycle races, so I got Dish for OLN (now Versus). Some years later, Dish gets in a pissing contest with OLN; OLN goes dark. Yeah, they worked it out, but by then I went DirecTV. Scenario repeats itself; I know, shocker. At this point in time, I've just upgraded to HDTV and have an HTPC connected for watching movies. The SD DirecTV receiver isn't getting much love. So, I consider the HD receiver upgrade, for another $10/mth. Then I think again and decide to put MY $60/mth back in MY pocket, and just cancel DirecTV. With what I save in a month, I easily afford a decent Winegard HD7694 antenna which pulls all the major networks and 3 PBS's. My wife looks at me like a kid in a candy store when she finally sees CSI in 1080 resolution. My 4-yr old says "daddy, I have a hypapathiis" - "Dinosaur Train (on PBS) looks real". Yeah - it's real all right! We now have 9 PBS channels (thanks, subs); the sat guys gave us 2 at best. We missed the DVR though. Enter the dual tuner HDHomerun. I scored a factory refurb for a single tuner price - yeah, same amt as another month of sat tv! It's like I'm getting cool stuff for canceling! Now we have HDTV on any PC in the house. Windows Media Center records it perfectly, and it looks awesome compared to overly compressed cable/sat offerings. Missing some channels that aren't offered OTA, we popped for some Netflix to get movies, seasons of TV series past, etc.....and I'm still about $50 better for it all each month, and that's SD price but I get HD. (And yes, we already had broadband - now we just utilize it more) Also, I converted my mom's setup from Dish to an ANT-751 antenna, which is a real nice antenna for such a little guy. In her attic, it gets all the locals, even up to 40 miles away. Plus after about 9 mths of use, the dish savings will have paid for her little HDTV and the antenna.

So yeah, it's obvious we are really enjoying being dishless now! OTA is awesome!

Oh - forgot to mention - the bike races - I can get em on the web via streaming now! I watched the Tour de France this year for free. It probably wasn't as good as the $30 version on Versus streaming, but it was certainly good enough.

Last edited by elmo; 13-Oct-2010 at 2:39 PM. Reason: forgot something
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