Thanks goes to my new friend and almost neighbor for this one…
We don’t really watch much television (TV) in our house. When we moved to Colorado Springs a few months ago, we signed up for a Comcast bundle: telephone, cable TV, and Internet. We then decided to go with Vonage for telephone service because of their flat rate calling to most of the world, which made the phone line unnecessary. We also decided to dump the cable TV since we don’t watch it much and couldn’t really justify the expense. I might miss CNBC, but I can get a lot of the news from their web site — and if I really want to, I can stream it over the Internet for $10 a month (which I might do at some point in the future).
NOTE: Sorry, this isn’t a Comcast-bashing post. While I wasn’t happy with the quality of their signal and could never get their On Demand feature to work, I was treated extremely well when I had to contact their customer service (they even offer callback if you have to wait more than a couple of minutes — a VERY nice touch). The technicians they sent to our house were always polite and extremely competent. They also told me what equipment I had to turn back in when I dropped everything but Internet (their cable modem and set-top box) and where I had to turn it in (and the wait there was very short). I also appreciate the fact that their technician “agreed” that I understood something about networking when he added the MAC address of the new cable modem I had to buy to their list of authorized equipment (great security, by the way — and yes, they told me that I would have to buy my own cable modem when I asked them to downgrade my service). So no Comcast-bashing here; I’ve had no problems with them and have had good support experiences.
Of course, I mentioned a cable TV alternative, so here’s what I now have instead:
1. I purchased an indoor high definition antenna. I could have purchased an outdoor one and mounted it on the house for more money (about $150), but we live on the north edge of town and could put up the antenna facing south, right beside the television, so I didn’t see any point in doing that. It cost about $60.
2. Since I have older TV sets, I had to purchase a digital to analog converter for about $50.
3. I hooked up the antenna to the converter and the converter to the television, followed the very clear instructions that came with the converter to scan for channels, and instantly got several channels, including the Sunday night football game and our local ABC channel (we like “Extreme Makeover, Home Edition” — it’s a very encouraging show. It’s one of the few we watch).
4. I then turned off the converter (to put it in pass-through mode), then scanned for channels with the television. Much to my surprise, I picked up a few analog channels, including one in Spanish, one broadcasting religious programming, and a garbled but understandable home shopping channel.
5. I already had a PS3, so I signed up for Netflix’s streaming service (via the Internet) and can watch movies via my PS3 and Internet connection. That costs me $9.00 a month.
After the trial period for my Comcast “bundle”, I would have had to pay about $130 a month for all of the services. I now pay $60 for the Internet connection (I kept it because I had not had any problems, plus I wanted a big “pipe” for streaming the Netflix stuff and my Vonage). I do pay about $30 a month for Vonage and $9 a month for Netflix — let’s make it an even $40 for comparison.
All in all, I’m only really saving about $30 a month but I’m quite satisfied with what I have. $100 a month for everything is great (and is about what I was paying in Germany for a slower DSL connection).
You could always skip the Netflix connection and you may not need to be able to call a zillion foreign countries (like we do, since my mother-in-law lives in Poland), so you may be able to save even more money if you try something like this. You will have an initial expense to purchase the antenna (and converter box, if you have an older television set), but that will quickly pay for itself.
One last comment: You may suddenly find yourself with time on your hands should you decide to do this. If this is case, please use the time to invest in yourself, your education, and the people that are important to you.
And if you have any ideas for making this system better, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment!
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