This motivation comes from years before “cutting the cord” was cool. For years I have wanted to get rid of cable, I am just tired of the excess fees that the cable companies charge, and how the rate just goes up month after month. Don’t get me wrong, they do deliver a good product, but to me it is not worth the price, and I don’t appreciate how they have no qualms with just raising the prices month over month.

Free TV

As you are probably aware, depending on where you live there are many great TV channels that you can receive over the air. For me, most of what I watch is prime time TV on the major channels, so this matches pretty well. You can search online at www.antennaweb.org for what would be available to you. For me, in the Boston area, this includes ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, FOX, WB, and much more other minor content.

Tivo

While I am not a huge fan of cable, I have really come to love Tivo over the years. They have treated us really well over the last 15 years with our various Tivo devices, and have a great interface that works well. For cutting the cord, I ordered a new Tivo Bolt, which handles both Cable and also TV over the air.

Antenna

I had originally had a smaller powered GE antenna, but given that I am over 20 miles away from most stations and it didn’t consistently pull in all the major stations, I decided I must go with something more powerful. After doing some research, I ended up with the GE Pro Attic Mount TV Antenna. It ended up coming in a fairly small unassuming box, but after assembling and installing it, it performed beautifully.

Antenna installed in Attic on beam

 

Antenna installed indoors in attic pointing towards the majority of stations

Cord Cut

The finished product is working great. My antenna gets great reception, and when paired with the Tivo DVR provides a great service for those channels. In addition to that, Netflix and Amazon are a great compliment providing everything I could need.