About 6 weeks ago we decided to finally stare down Ma Bell
and “cut the cord”. I know we are not
the first to go down this road and I’m grateful for some friends that have
shared their experience. From them we
learned there was life after cable, though we were a little sceptical. We didn’t come to the decision lightly, while
we don’t watch a lot of TV in the summer, the winter evenings can be long, and
the thought of not having a 100+ channels to surf was a little daunting.
Suddenly, I was
having flashbacks to my childhood, growing up in Haliburton. In those days cable was not available and
satellite TV was not yet invented. We
had a black and white TV, and on the side of the house a 25 foot pipe held a
massive antenna on top. On a good day we
got CBC, CTV and years later Global. Channel reception was contingent on weather
and whether somebody could be coerced to go outside and turn the antenna while
somebody else hollered out the window when the TV static and snow stopped and
some semblance of a picture came through.
The programming fair of the time included The Beachcombers, The Tommy
Hunter Show, Hockey Night in Canada, Mr.
Dress-up, The Friendly giant, and of course the Wayne and Shuster specials. Maybe that's why I was so thin in those days, with nothing to watch on TV, entertainment was found elsewhere.
Major milestones in my youth were the arrival of our first
colour TV, a 20 inch “Zenith”, and the motorised rotor that turned the antenna with
the turn of knob on a box beside the tv and an electric motor turning the
aerial. This was high tech, circa 1975!
My 6 year old was not
interested in my nostalgia and was clearly horrified by the prospect of his TV “changing”. It was high drama when he thought he may not
be able to watch Garfield and Scooby Doo before bed, and what about Wild Kratts
after school?
Needless to say Bell was not amused, and the "Loyalty department" worked very hard to change our minds. Never the less on Saturday morning a few weeks ago we awoke
to a new era….no more cable TV and no more calls from the Duct cleaner
Telemarketers on the land line, the cord was severed!
Now 3 weeks into this new era we are doing okay. During the weeks leading up to the end of our
Bell services I did some research and chose an HD Antenna from a local computer
shop. This was not the monster antenna of
my youth with the long aluminum arms, but instead it’s a plastic rectangular
box with two plastic arms sticking straight out of each side.
When I
arrived home with my $40 purchase my son and wife looked more than a little sceptical
about my choice of satellite replacement.
I too was curious if this contraption would do anything or if I had just
flushed $40 down the toilet. But surely everything
you read on the Internet is true…right? I pulled it out of the box, attached a few
feet of cable to it, set it on the living room window sill, attached it to the
TV….and prayed that a picture would present itself. And voila, after a channel scan, about 20
channels came through. The biggest surprise
is that we never knew how poor the satellite picture quality had been until we
saw the High Definition that came from the free "over the air" signals. Suddenly Peter Mansbridge looks much older,
and the NFL games are spectacular. Now with this modest success I was emboldened to physically
remove the dish off the roof and replaced it with our new best friend, the TV
antenna. Now with better aiming and 15
feet elevation, the reception is even
better and we now consistently get all the major US network channels from Buffalo
and Rochester and the Canadian Networks, plus a few bonus channels I’ve never
heard of before. Combine this with our $8 dollar a month Netflix service and I
can honestly say my only regret is waiting so long to make this change. I realize we are fortunate to live close to
Lake Ontario with no high rise buildings near us to block signals, but I remain
amazed how well this has worked out. Now
we just need to funnel all those $ savings into a vacation fund…Cuba here we
come?
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