The Antenna: An Alternative to Cable Bills?

A few months back I was evaluating my budget, trying to find ways to channel more money into my pocket.  I found several lifestyle choices that I had to give up like luxury investments I could not really afford and one other option was giving up cable.

I set up a great entertainment system at home to minimize our need to go out and pay for more expensive live entertainment.  I bundled up my cable TV with my internet and my home phone.

Most people would probably say, you still have a home phone - why don't you cut that from your budget?  I would but I call overseas quite a bit, my family in the Philippines and my husband's family in New Zealand - my home phone allows me to call overseas as much as I want for only $20.  I even looked at Vonage, but unfortunately the Philippines is not in their list of countries.  I still have to explore the Magic Jack alternative - this maybe a feature for another post in the future.

I use the internet for side work and to promote my husband's business so I actually need that.

And I'm back to my cable TV.  I researched and found that there are HDTV ready antennas that can pick up regular channels like the televisions of old.  I bought one to test on my mother-in-law's HDTV yesterday (as a kind of feasibility study) and it worked perfectly (after we figured out that you had to re-program the channels to make it work which was not in the installation instructions).  The signal is affected by the wind (and Pasadena was still suffering quite a bit from the Santa Anas that day), but the picture quality is just as sharp as cable.  My mother-in-law lost a channel she always watched on her cable subscription, but she is going to save almost $70 per month.  And because she watches TV so infrequently, I think she can live with one lost channel - plus it will save her money.

For our home, I am still looking for more alternatives.  My husband is very attached to his HGTV and I enjoy watching the Food Network - we will lose both stations if I switch to antenna.  Hulu Plus may be a solution, but they can only stream up to 720p and that's less than the quality my TV now produces with cable.  To get my older TV to stream content from the internet, I need to set it up with a Roku box (or something similar, I still have to do more research on this).  Hulu Plus is $7.99/month, Netflix is $7.99/month and Pandora is $3/month, that will be less than $20/month - compare that with around $70/month with cable and this still saves me around $50 per month.

The initial investment for this cable-freedom plan for me includes the antennas (around $40 each x 2 although there are cheaper alternatives) and the roku box for my older TV (around $100) for a grand total of less than $200.  Do you think it's worth it?  I will save $600/year or more if my cable provider decides to raise their prices.

Food for thought in this tough economy, wouldn't you say?