When I was younger TV antennas were the norm. With modern digital television broadcast tv offers so much "over the air". The quality of the image is so much better than cable and even satellite that it is well worth the cost of a good antenna system. Be sure that you get an antenna that picks up all the channels, both high and low band. How about your experiences and any reccomendations.
We do not have cable and use antennas on all the tv's in the house. The older tv does have a digital box to help pick up the channels in the area. The reception is good on the local channels that it receives. I don't think I miss much as far as reception is concerned. we do have to play with the antenna to get some of the channels to come in but I will not go back to cable. The cable channels shows I see online.
How do you stream? Do you stream to your computer or do you use a device such as roku or one of the game devices?
We used our blue ray player for a while (a $150 Sony), and it was fine, but eventually we started getting a lot of "buffering" on Netflix. At first we thought it was the internet or our router. Turned out to be the Blue Ray player. We've since upgraded to Apple TV. It is great. Fast. Normal. And fun to project things from the computer/phone/iPad to the TV.
How many "channels" do you get on the Apple TV? My Roku device gets several hundred and have a rabbit usb device for my computer that gets a lot of stuff. My son uses a playstation and only gets a couple of choices, Netflix and Hulu+. I think he also gets Crackle.
Many of the newer TVs have a built-in antenna. I own a Samsung HDTV which can be programmed to get air TV. The built-in antenna allows me to get unscrambled channels in digital. They come across much better than what I got in the past through Comcast.
In case you haven't heard about this yet, Sony's Blu-Ray players route Netflix traffic through their own servers before sending it over to Netflix - which is the reason for the slow downs. A lot of people have been complaining about this from what I've read. They should disclose that more clearly in their packaging as it's a definite deal breaker for me. I hope this does not become a trend among hardware manufacturers, because it is really annoying. To make matters worse, Comcast has been throttling Netflix traffic as well and trying to bribe more money from them. I was really impressed by the OTA channels in HD - they look better than regular cable - but I only get about three channels in my area.
you don't need to buy an antenna to receive over the air broadcast channels if you have an HDTV. All you need is a cable cord , and a some aluminum foil. Don't waste your money waste your money on a converter box. If you have Cable or Satellite this should be Irrelevant.
