Does anyone use an antenna instead of cable or satellite? If you do, are you able to pick up Huntsville stations? Most of the ones I see are 50-mile range antennas which probably would not work. I would like to hear about your experiences.
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I'm just west of Elgin and I pick up most Huntsville stations with a small amplified antenna on the top of my RV. With a larger antenna mounted on top of a house or pole you could probably receive an adequate signal in Florence/Shoals area. The government website http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/dtvmaps/ is very handy for determining the stations that you should be able to receive at your location.
Thank you!
What are you looking for on local channels, David?
Or are you looking to cut them from your cable/satellite package?
Or?
Thanks,
Bud
I would like to cut our satellite service. Have had it forever and have good service (DirectTV) - it is just too expensive and there is never anything to watch. I would like to pick up the network affiliate stations in Huntsville and use Netflix and other services for movies.
Yeah, I'm about done with cable. It is expensive, and even though I pay for it, I still have to watch commercials. I only watch about two shows a week, and can probably get those on the internet.
In western Colbert county, my RV antenna & amplifier can only pick up PBS (36) and CW (15) local stations. No Huntsville, Tupelo, or Jackson Tn stations. Direct TV is my alternative. I have been toying with the idea of cutting the cord & using internet & antenna. Using the web site that F350 provided above, was accurate for my longitude/latitude location. My neighbor is elevated ~ 40ft higher and has less obstructions than my location and can pick up a few Huntsville stations, but very very weak and somewhat unreliable in bad weather. Also, the antenna web site indicated some Huntsville stations would be weak for my neighbor, so maybe the web site is reliable, predicting the signal strength available for your geographical area where you live. Wish the Huntsville stations would put a Re-Broadcast Transmitter near shoals area to transmit their signal out to Waterloo, Pickwick, Miss. Line and south to Franklin county areas.
I have a portable TV that picks up OTA signals, I pick up WHDF 15, WHNT 19, WHIQ 25, WAAY 31, WFIQ 36, WAFF 48, and WZDX 54 on a regular basis. It should be noted that WHIQ and particularly WAFF are a little weaker. WZDX and WHNT are the strongest, I think WZDX is the easiest to pick up. Some of the time I can pick up WKRN 2, WREG 3 not sure if I got a picture or not, WBBJ 7, WDBB 17, WATN 24, WLOV 27 which actually came in a little last night, WMJN 29, WLMT 30, Down the street I pick up what is now WSES 33 but not where I live as of yet, WIAT 42 this one didn't give me a picture though, WEPH 49, WTJP 60, and WHVD 67. A few more have come up on my TV at times, but didn't give me a picture.
David L. private message me and I can give you more details. By the way, I don't know if this will be of any help to you, but http://www.almediapage.info/shoals.html features Shoals TV.
Why not just pay for basic cable and stop trying to jump through hoops?
Cut your cable costs with a basic cable TV package
Cable companies don't promote the cheapest TV service, but it's worth searching out
Lots of folks fed up with high cable bills talk about cutting the cord and dropping cable TV service entirely. But what if you can’t get TV signals with anantenna? There’s a cheap alternative you might not know about—broadcast basic or limited basic cable, which costs just $15 to $20 or so a month.
These basic cable packages include the major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and PBS) and a handful of other channels, including home shopping, educational, government, and public-access channels. You’d be giving up dozens of cable channels—CNN, HGTV, TNT, and so on—though you could catch some of that programming from streaming services, possibly a season or two behind.
You might have to pay several dollars a month for a set-top box or adapter for each TV since the FCC now allows cable companies to encrypt all transmissions.
For obvious reasons, cable companies don’t push their barebones packages, so be prepared to hunt around your provider’s website to find it. We checked on a few of the biggest companies’ sites to see what we could unearth. On Comcast, a search for “basic cable” turned up a comparison of limited basic versus expanded basic, but no pricing. We had to do a live chat to determine the price: $16.10 a month including one receiver, which is required.
Thanks, just now catching up with the replies.
Bestworking, I did check about the basic package and it is just a few dollars cheaper than what I have now. However, that may have not been the "basic" package I was looking at. If not, it is not advertised on their site, like the article states.
Now you know how to find them.
I have DISH myself and had AT&T U-Verse before I moved to my current location. I saw an advertisement on DISH the other day stating 190 channels for $49.95 (or something close to that) along with their Hopper device which I believe records also and that's with a two year agreement but the thing is that the monthly price stays the same throughout the 24 month contract.
I think that's what I heard. Made me wish I was out of my current obligation because it's a better deal than I have now but I can't take advantage of it until my contractual time is out. Anyway if it's true might be worth looking into because I also very much like DISH's service but then like most all Satellite service it does have outages during heavy rains and snow but honestly that hasn't been too many times for us.
http://www.ispot.tv/ad/74me/di...dish-is-how-we-do-it
The above link is a site that refers to the ad I was mentioning that I saw. As for which is best I can only say I have had Comcast, DISH and AT&T U-Verse and of those there are things I liked about U-Verse and things I liked about DISH but both of those are far superior to what I had with Comcast and were more competitive, for the most part, with their pricing.
You might want to try Sling through Dish. You can stream cable over the Internet. I'm planning on trying it once my contract is up.
Can't go with that stripped-down basic package. I would miss my nightly appointments with the queen of political acumen, Rachel Maddow---the highlight of prime time TV!
I noticed WAAY has a new sub channel when experimenting with OTA reception tonight, naturally it's 31.3. Right now the channel is blank, but the label on my portable TV reads WAAYQVC? Would QVC really lease WAAY DT 3?