A cable modem isn’t even a possibility for me. At some point I will shift to satellite because the DSL price keeps climbing via odd taxes and services fees that no one seems to be able to explain. It’s coming up with the $400 initial installation that I haven’t budgeted for that has prevented it from happening. I have to build a base for the satellite that will withstand a hurricane, so it’s a bit of work.
]]>Even if you have a digital tuner you still need to rent a converter box to decrypt the digital signal that you already pay for, as I recently discovered. Nice racket they have going on there. I have a digital tuner card in my pc, but it won’t receive those channels, only the analog ones. (I like having the tuner card so I can listen to baseball games. Because greedy major league baseball won’t let local stations stream game audio or video over the internet.)
]]>There’s also a 5″ battery powered portable for hurricanes, but that will be useless now unless you rig it to a converter box that also accepts battery power.
Actually the local cable system is the first thing to go and the last to return in hurricanes because it’s mounted on the power poles, and when they are reconnecting the electricity, anything in the way gets cut.
My Mother doesn’t hang around for hurricanes any more, so I don’t worry about TV at all.
]]>One or the other TV is on perhaps 3x per week. I lived for over 20 years with no viable TV and no sense of hardship, but now I would miss a few news shows if I didn’t have access to them. And Stella would quit visiting if I had no TV. 🙂 As you note, it is more convenient for me to have them than it would be for you.
]]>If you live in an area that actually has broadcast television available, like a city, an antenna is all you need with a small digital set. It’s possible to pick up one station in this area, and it’s garbage. There used to be two, but the Pensacola station reoriented their antennae to cover Mobile, rather than the Panhandle to the East of them, so it’s cable or nothing, and I prefer nothing.
]]>One of our neighbors bought a new digital TV. After an unpleasant song-and-dance with Comcast, she also bought rabbit ears and told Comcast what it could do with itself. If all one wants are the digital broadcast stations, that apparently works. That is all I want, and that is my current intention when the time comes.
]]>