Ditching Satellite TV - Installment Two

Recap. My wife and I decided we were fed up with $100 per month satellite TV bills and found an alternative after months of searching. Fast forward two weeks and the equipment has been delivered and installed. A refurbished Apple TV for $75 from Apple.com, an RCA Model 165 digital antenna purchased from Amazon.com for $45.  I'm not going to lie, it was a liberating feeling when that postage paid box came and I boxed up the old satellite hardware and shipped it back knowing the bills would stop. 

How's it working so far? We love it. We opted for both Hulu Plus and Netflix so our total monthly cost for television has dropped from $85 per month to $16. Both streaming services excel in different areas and the having both offers a great variety of cable television programs and movies. The digital antenna was super easy to install and we pull in 25 HD channels for free including the major networks, public TV and some really cool local stations.  We have twice the viewing options as we did before for far less money. 

I only have two gripes so far. The first is not being able to see the TV schedule for the channels pulled in from the digital antenna. I suppose that was how the old TV Guide magazine survived all those years. For less than 25% the cost and twice as many viewing options I can live with it. The second gripe? The satellite TV company will not quit calling me asking me to come back. They offered to cut my bill in more than half the for the first six months and offer the pay per view movies for free…"it's just like Netflix, they said."  Sorry, it's a case of too little too late.  To be continued...