TOTALLY OT... cable TV

Bob

Well-known Member
Just an informal "poll"... I suppose it is now the "norm", across the country, for the cable Co"s to scramble ALL channels, even basic cable and local "off air" channels?

Case in point... our little town is "served" by Midco Cable and as of the middle of this month, they scrambled EVERYTHING.

You need one of their adapters on EVERY TV, or you get NOTHING (after paying for cable).

Rates have DOUBLED for basic cable over a few years to around $60 for basic cable.

They supply two adapters for free, additional ones are $2 a month each.

We have 5 TV"s, in a 3-person household, 3 of which are only occasionally used, but nice to have if a person is in the kitchen, or downstairs and want to follow a program.

We have the two "free" adapters, and the other 3 TV"s have gone dark "cuz I feel it is a rip-off to pay for the extra adapters for the little they are used, just to view the basic channels we have already been paying for.

I have stayed with cable vs. a satellite service "cuz the house was wired for cable when we bought it and satellite TV requires lots of extra wiring and $$$ extra boxes and we are not total TV addicts and were perfectly content with what we HAD.

FUNNY, we are all told to go "GREEN", and now, if I play along with Midco, I will have FIVE extra "wall worts" each wasting a few Watts of power 24/7.

Guess Midco is not a "GREEN" company!

My son (who lives on his own, away from home) told me how pathetic I was and just to pay the extra $72.00 a year and be done with it. (And then, a week later was looking unsuccessfully for a handout when HE ran short of money for HIS montly bills.)

Yep, and the water bill increase, AND the BIG monthly "facility charge" increase ($$$ I pay for having power at the farm before so much as turning on a light), and, and, and!

Add "em all together and it takes quite a bit of EXTRA "cha-ching" each year to make it all happen!

Am I being a Luddite for being awfully disgusted with it all?
 
(quoted from post at 23:08:24 07/29/14) Just an informal "poll"... I suppose it is now the "norm", across the country, for the cable Co"s to scramble ALL channels, even basic cable and local "off air" channels?

Case in point... our little town is "served" by Midco Cable and as of the middle of this month, they scrambled EVERYTHING.

You need one of their adapters on EVERY TV, or you get NOTHING (after paying for cable).

Rates have DOUBLED for basic cable over a few years to around $60 for basic cable.

They supply two adapters for free, additional ones are $2 a month each.

We have 5 TV"s, in a 3-person household, 3 of which are only occasionally used, but nice to have if a person is in the kitchen, or downstairs and want to follow a program.

We have the two "free" adapters, and the other 3 TV"s have gone dark "cuz I feel it is a rip-off to pay for the extra adapters for the little they are used, just to view the basic channels we have already been paying for.

I have stayed with cable vs. a satellite service "cuz the house was wired for cable when we bought it and satellite TV requires lots of extra wiring and $$$ extra boxes and we are not total TV addicts and were perfectly content with what we HAD.

FUNNY, we are all told to go "GREEN", and now, if I play along with Midco, I will have FIVE extra "wall worts" each wasting a few Watts of power 24/7.

Guess Midco is not a "GREEN" company!

My son (who lives on his own, away from home) told me how pathetic I was and just to pay the extra $72.00 a year and be done with it. (And then, a week later was looking unsuccessfully for a handout when HE ran short of money for HIS montly bills.)

Yep, and the water bill increase, AND the BIG monthly "facility charge" increase ($$$ I pay for having power at the farm before so much as turning on a light), and, and, and!

Add "em all together and it takes quite a bit of EXTRA "cha-ching" each year to make it all happen!

Am I being a Luddite for being awfully disgusted with it all?

We live in the digital age. I should be able to go in, start service and pick and choose what I want. But no, they will not allow that. I can't get just the Discovery, History, National Geographic , HBO and a couple of news channels. I have to still, in this day and age, buy a package. nope, ain't going to do it.

Rick
 
When they cut off the old signal, the six hundred and fifty dollar Hitachi color tv went in the dumpster. Getting along just fine without television.
 
Retired Farmer has it right.
You subscribe to their service.
If you don't like it, unsubscribe and toss out your television.
To think that people would actually pay to watch that mind numbing rot is beyond me.
And then to whine about it?
Sheesh.
 
It may not be a matter of "scrambled" channels but rather a switch to all-digital. Your analog TVs stopped receiving broadcast signals several years ago; it doesn't make sense for cable companies to provide analog signals when the stations broadcast them in digital. Do you have any digital-capable TVs, and can they accept the raw signal?

Our Florida condo has Brighthouse cable. I tried bypassing the rather expensive converter to run the digital signal direct into the digital TV and found that it would work but for some reason picture quality wasn't as good as through the converter.
 
We gave up on TV a long time ago. Would not have it when kids were small, tried for while when they were in high school(if we didn't join our neighbors and pay they wouldn't run cable past our house). Didn't think it was worth it and canceled after a while. Now all we have is Amazon TV if you subscibe to Amazon Prime you get shipping and TV for your $70 a year.
 
Since you have cable buy new TV sets, they have converters installed and no adapter is required. I get about 30 channels. Hal
 
I kicked the dish on down the road several years ago, and went back to antenna tv. Works for me, and no monthly payments.
 
They compress the signals in their own way, need their own converter boxes. The sat ones are the same. It is a way for them to generate revenue. $2 or $5 a month, fee after fee.

Paul
 
We had Direct TV until the prices got to be too much. Easy fix was to get rid of it. Put up a system of 5 TV antennas up on the hill behind our house and now get arounds 14 channels free of charge. Before the digital change we could only get one channel.
It took a little work but we now get channels from 70 miles away and most with mountain tops in the way.
a164219.jpg

a164220.jpg

a164221.jpg

a164222.jpg

a164223.jpg
 
Never had cable! Made a conscious decision NOT to have it when the kids were in school, did not need the extra distraction. Over the air, I still have more chanels than I need.
 
I got tired of paying direct tv rates and went to
antenna and get 35 channels free. Now I can watch
news, Lone Ranger, Bonanza, all the old shows.
 
I totally agree with the rip-off part. However, if it wasn't for the H-2, AHC and a few notable other channels, my grandkids wouldn't have any idea about what really happened throughout history. They sure aren't gonna learn it in todays schools.

We get the 250 channels package to get what we want to watch. My wife and I added up the channels we watch and it comes to about 50. That's including the adolesent channels my grandkids like to watch.

Yup, expensive, but the local daily newspaper is just about as expensive, and it's a lousey paper these days. The local stations you can pick up with an antenna are all network affiliated and not much to watch there either.
 
We kicked out DirectTV years ago. We now have just an antenna and pick up broadcast channels only. Every once in awhile, we will watch some old rerun off of Amazon Prime. About two weeks ago, we stayed in a motel room during our county fair. Guess what? The motel had about 100 channels and nothing was on. I'm not sure why I'd ever want to pay for TV again.
 
We pay a small fortune for cable - and I'll be damned if I know why.

There is NOTHING worth watching on television anymore.

I pick up the clicker and start at 01 --- click click click click... then I finish with "yup - 2000 channels of #)*($#" and put the clicker down - just leave the news on, because there's nothing else.

Even documentaries where you should be able to learn something have gone WAY down hill.

Watch any modern documentary and they all follow the same format - 10 minutes of dramatic build up to something that must be spectacular...

Then a commercial break...

Then back to the show - spending another 10 minutes reminding you of what they were spending 10 minutes building up to before the break, as if you forgot.

And they never get there - there's nothing spectacular at the end. That's what the documentary IS - just superficial drama.

It's incredible. Entire programs are 95% fill and 5% useful information - at BEST.

Getting VERY close to pulling the plug on cable completely.
 
Bob, You ask "Am I being a Luddite for being awfully disgusted with it all?"

No idea what that is however if you're one I guess I am too lol

For like 15 years (Before Nagravision 3 Scrambling and even back in the old 10 ft dish days) I beat the system and got Satellite TV basically free, however now I have the very basic Dish Network (own all my own equipment) and pay a little over twenty bucks per month.

However I installed a quality outdoor antenna and now receive maybe 20+ channels over the air and may just drop Sat TV altogether.

When were on the road for months in the RV (it has a crank up rooftop TV antenna) we do without many things and live so much cheaper with respect to all the conveniences and utilities you mentioned and are happy without them and get by just fine.

John T
 
"Paul" has it right... they switched to their own proprietary scrambling. "New" TV"s with QAM tuners that HAD been working no longer do.
 
As far as Direct TV I had it for years before I moved and it didnt require rewiring the house and they did all the work that was needed. I now understand they are going wireless. Lots better than cable aand better programming
 
lol i feel the same way, some of these 'reality shows' are really bad, for example the "finding bigfoot' and mountain monsters, where they take a whole hour, then in the end never find anything always just missing the critter, id like to find where there filming these and hide in those woods and just mess with them, give them a little non scripted critter footage lol i even do a decent bear,im as big as one, tried it on the wife a few years back on a dark night outside while she was out with the dog, y'all know she accused my folks of not being married, and then things went downhill from there....
 
If the cable company converters have an RF output jack for the Tvs, put a splitter on the cable and run to the other tvs. Then put the converter on the channel you want when watching in the other room. Of course that means the tvs connected to that converter will only receive the same channel. If you can use the audio/video cables on the local tv and the RF connection on the remote one, no splitter will be needed.
 
ha - geeze now that show will be more interesting.

I'll start watching it now waiting for you to hop out at them in a bigfoot costume.
 
See if you can put up an antenna and receive broadcast TV. I did that years ago and I only missed cable for some sports. I can usually stream a radio broadcast of most any sports game for free or if I really wanted to I could buy access, but I never do.

If you are within broadcast range it's not difficult to install an antenna. If you install it yourself it will pay for itself within 3 to 6 months. If you have it installed it will still pay for itself within 6 months to a year.

Many people are setting up a Home Theater PC (HTPC) to stream all their TV and movies online instead of paying cable. If you have a wireless network in your home it's much easier to connect additional TVs. If you have family members between 20 and 30 that are on their own, they can probably help you find something at a pretty low cost.

A Roku box is pretty inexpensive, around $10 per month.

A power strip makes it easier to shut off power to multiple electronics and wall worts when they are not being used, or during a lightning storm.

Good luck.
 
Never had cable, never will. In Dallas, I get more channels than I want. Delete most of them from the remote. Almost never watch the majors.

99% of what I watch is PBS, ION, MEtv, THIS. They run movies and some of the old sitcoms and classics like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Hogan's Heroes.
 
I booted the cable years ago because they got too expensive. Went to satellite. Then they got too expensive on top of too many problems with their garbage "made in China" equipment. I could count on having receivers replaced twice a year due to equipment failures - that THEY WANTED ME TO PAY FOR!!!!
I now have several hundred DVDs, Netflix, and an antenna. More viewing there than any human could be able to watch.
My biggest gripe with cable was the basic fact that I was required to pay for 200 channels that I DID NOT WANT to get the handful that I DID want. They do this to subsidize the hundred or so channels that would otherwise have no audience. After all, how many people would sit and watch the Golf Channel or the Knitting channel or the quilting channel, or the nose picking channel? Maybe a handful in every major market area??
Last I checked, Netflix was costing me about $8 a month, totally on demand. I watch whatever I choose, can start it and stop it anyplace I want, and it saves my place. I can rewind, replay, skip over or whatever.
As for "sports," who cares? If you want to spend your time or money supporting a bunch of overpaid, spoiled street thugs playing games, that is your choice. I couldn't be bothered. I see enough of those guys on the local news channel after they have been arrested for rape/homicide/firearm violations/illegal gambling. They will not get one red cent of support from me.
 
Get a Netflix account and then you can watch what you want and when you want. They have a lot of old TV shows in addition to a bazillion movies.

Except for TCM and the Military channel, there's just nothing worth 2 cents on cable or dish. History channel and discovery have all but gone down the toilet with filler show that take an hour to give 5 minutes of information.

I flip channels at the hotels and my inlaws have cable, but I've never had a cable or dish bill.
 
Radio Shack girl talked me into buying an eighty some dollar ROKU box. Should have just burned the money. What a joke! Ninety nine percent of the movies are pay per view, the rest are old black and white from the early days, and the others I have never even heard of. Found one Disney movie one night that I wanted to watch. Wanted seventeen dollars and some cents for an hours worth of entertainment. I wouldn't even pay that at a movie house.
 
(quoted from post at 09:04:07 07/30/14) Radio Shack girl talked me into buying an eighty some dollar ROKU box. Should have just burned the money. What a joke! Ninety nine percent of the movies are pay per view, the rest are old black and white from the early days, and the others I have never even heard of. Found one Disney movie one night that I wanted to watch. Wanted seventeen dollars and some cents for an hours worth of entertainment. I wouldn't even pay that at a movie house.

LOL, couple of years ago my wife and I went to the movies. between tickets a pop each, shared box of popcorn and some candy we spent very close to 40 bucks. We decided that we could buy movies for 5 bucks and up and the snacks could be had at home. So now a movie night cost about 10 bucks and we can pause it for a restroom break.

Rick
 
In the early days of (big 8 foot dish) C band satellite TV, you could buy seperatly, most of the channels you wanted with no package involved.
Worst part of that was having / maintaining a dish and actuator setup that could find and track a dozen analog satellites to get the 8-10 channels that you actually watch.
Now with digital KU band(little 12-18 inch dish), two satellites side by side with a fixed dish mount and dual feed horn will get all the TV you want. Problem is that you need to buy the 250 channel package to get the dozen channels you actually watch. For me, thats about $80 per month.
 
(quoted from post at 04:17:58 07/30/14) When they cut off the old signal, the six hundred and fifty dollar Hitachi color tv went in the dumpster. Getting along just fine without television.

That $650 TV would not work with a converter box?
 
We have cable too. A couple months ago TWO channels went "dark", not available. Strangely both those channels were Christian stations. The office where we got the boxes said eventually all the channels would be this way. Like you we had to get boxes and wife had kind of a hard time programming them while being coached by a foreigner on the phone. (if it was up to me we wouldn't have them)
 

If it wasn't for the fact my parents live in a TV reception black hole where even a jdemaris system would only receive 6 channels in good weather. We would not have the Shaw dish that they have an auxiliary receiver for .
Until the last ice storm took down my antenna. Reception was excellent from Port Huron, Flint, Lansing, Alpena and Sault Ste Marie . If the weather was clear. 1080i for "free" with more channels than could be watched.
Transmitter signals even if they were not aimed in my direction would skip across the lake. With surprising strength .
 
rural here
have tried them all over the years.
Dumped them all a few years ago.
I get 2 or 3 channels over the air with just an ancient
'bowtie' UHF antenna hung on the wall. stations about 30-40 miles away.
$5 DVD's and Netflix have the movies covered.
TV shows? well, just like the $5 dvd movies, I'm just a year behind the rest of the world. :)
Ones I want to see, I wait for the past season to come out on DVD.
Hey, it's new to me........
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top