A slow start.......

I officially made the decision that we would be ditching cable in favor of a combination of OTA (over the air) television and internet streaming, about 3 months ago, so why so long to get started?

Well, I had a little convincing and number crunching to do. The numbers were easy, we currently pay $137.38 / month for basic cable with HD and internet. Dropping the TV and keeping the internet would bring our monthly cost down to $46.95, a savings of $1,085.16 / year, not a small number! That's not the whole story, however, because making the switch costs a bit of money up front, unless you already have an outdoor antenna. So after countless hours of research, I found the equipment that I needed. (I highly recommend: http://www.dennysantennaservice.com/ for those thinking of making the switch)

- RCA ANT751 Outdoor Antenna: $44.00 at amazon.com, great little antenna, performs like a larger antenna with a much smaller footprint, only 36" X 36"
- Winegard AP-8700 Preamplifier:  $36.11 at amazon.com, I highly recommend this gem, before I hooked this up I got 3 channels, after hooking it up, I am getting 56 channels!
- Grounding Block: $1.99 at Menards
- Grounding Rod: $5.99 at Mendards
- 10 Gauge Copper Wire: $17.00 at Menards
- Lag bolts
- Roofing tar

That's it!  For about $120.00, I was ready to rock.  Luckily, I already had plenty of coax cable and the tools needed for making cables but this could add a bit more to the cost if you need to purchase them, and should be considered. Overall installation of the antenna and running new cables to all of the TVs (a ridiculous 4 - in a house with 2 people!) took about 4 hours, and some quality time in my crawlspace.

Now for the moment of truth.  I powered on a TV and did a search for channels, and was exceptionally pleased to see that we were receiving over 50 digital channels! I flipped on channel 2 and was pleasantly surprised to see the best HD picture I have ever seen. WOW! This picture was amazing I couldn't believe it was coming from an antenna, great stuff!

Next came the convincing, I had to convince my wife, Erin, that we would not miss cable that much. This took some work but when it came right down to it, most of the TV we watch comes from free channels. The few shows that we will not be able to get over the air can mostly be supplemented with online streaming, using our RoKu device.  For myself, I will miss being able to flip on Food Network and leaving it on as I work around the house on a Saturday, but I have plenty of music that can serve the same purpose, and Food Network has a great online library of videos, not to mention PBS has a few great cooking shows. Erin's achilles heel will be random movies from networks like TNT, AMC, and the like, but Netflix streaming shall fill this void and as a bonus, has no commercials.  Additionally, because I was already a Netflix subscriber before the switch, there was no added cost.

This journal will document the first year of our journey, along with tips, tricks, and new tech toys to help ease the transition and maybe even a few book suggestions along the way.  (I am anticipating having a little more time to read... woohoo!) Well that's where we are at as of now so stay tuned and I will detail how it is going and the different ways we will supplement our original cable experience, and see if we can make it a full year. We will be cutting the cable before long: Day 1 starts tomorrow ...