Week one without satellite

It's been about one week since we shut down the satellite, and we're all still alive. Amazing, right? I mean, who would have thought you could live without TV. Well, you can.

Seriously though, I wanted to just share a quick update following our decision to disconect the satellite and search out other options. If you missed the initial blog post, GOODBYE SATELLITE TV, you can check it out here. But just to give you a summary, we decided to turn of the satellite for a couple of reasons. 1. We didn't like the majority of the programming being offered. 2. What we did watch wa not enough to validate paying for 200+ channels. And 3. We didn't want to pay for all the channels we had blocked, or never watched.

So away it went.

What are we doing now?

Well, we went and ordered a digital antenna from Amazon, plugged it in, ran the setup and channel search, and poof, 19, FREE, digital channels. And quality and signal is great. We are now getting all our local channels, and a few extras, and we're not paying a dime for them.

The antenna, $35. And super easy to connect. I will put a link to the actual device we bought below.

It's actually amazing how good of a signal we really do get. Amy said to me just recently, "I can't believe we've been paying for TV all this time." But no more!

So what's next?

Well, we still want to order an Apple TV box. This device will allow us to stream programs and movies via NETFLIX. All total, after our initial investment (the antenna and the Apple TV) we will only pay about $10 a month for TV. That's great.

But the best part...

We, as parents are now in better control of what's coming into the house. And if we choose to have a family game night instead of watching TV, we can without the nagging feeling that we're paying for something we're not using.

And that's awesome.

- jay

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