Living South Padre Island

My Time Warner cable bill has been outrageous since we moved to the South Padre Island. I can’t blame anyone but myself for oversubscribing to add-on services, but cable isn’t worth two thousand plus dollars a year. So as we approched the June 12th switch to digital TV, I became determined to rid myself of cable TV and my Time Warner phone. To stay digitally connected, I had to determine what I would do with the three digital services Time Warner brought to my home.

Internet was easy. I work online and I need speed. While wireless Internet and DSL are both available on South Padre Island, neither are fast enough for me. So the choice was simple. Stay with Time Warner’s Road Runner service. I did that and even upgraded my service to Road Runner Turbo, which is noticably faster than the standard  Road Runner Internet service. (I said something nice about Time Warner, so this post is not a total cable rant.)

The decision on the phone was almost as easy. I like VOIP (voice over IP) service. It’s available in many forms including Time Warner’s Digital Phone. It’s really not much more than Skype, which is very inexpensive, but Vonage makes more sense and the phone isn’t tied to a computer. I made the switch to Vonage and saved myself $20.00 a month. Vonage is a superior product with more bells and whistles. I really like the ability to get my voicemail online and receive text notifications to my cell phone.

The hard decision was the cable TV. The question was whether I should switch to a satellite service like Dish or Direct TV, or should I really cut the cord and go to free over the air TV. Annualizing my cable expenses had made me more aware of how fast cable, or satellite, adds up. I decided to go for free TV and cut my cable bill from $240.00 a month to $55.00 a month for the Road Runner Turbo. When I add in the $31.00 for my Vonage digital phone, I’m still saving over $150.00 a month. That’s a saving of $1800.00 a year, but the flip side is that I’m giving up a lot of TV options; but really, is cable TV worth it?

I think I get a lot of value for my free TV setup. Here’s what I did.  I installed a $60.00 Radio Shack antenna I bought in Port Isabel in my attic above my garage. I live in a single family home about three miles north of the Queen Isabela Causeway. I pointed the antenna slightly south of due west. When I found I was dropping some channels, I added a Phillips 28db signal applifier at the antenna. That helped as I am about 40 miles from the transmitter towers. Now I get the three major networks crystal clear, two 24 hour weather channels with background music, Retro TV which is a scaled down version of TV Land, and PBS. I also receive several Spanish language analog stations from our neighbors to the south in Mexico.

If you haven’t seen free high definition digital TV, you’ll be suprised. It’s better than cable or satellite, hands down. Many of the programs are broadcasts in HD 1080i or 720p. Most primetime shows are broadcast in 1080i. While some programming is still standard definition, the quality is great without the ghosting you’re familiar with on analog TV. You can’t even get 1080i from cable or satellite, so free HDTV is in a league by   itself.

Ok, I agree that most of us like a little more flavor in our TV choices other than what ABC, NBC, and CBS offer. I’ve had a basic NetFlix subscription for years and have never used their movie download options. NetFlix has about 12,000 choices of movies available for instant download. I hooked up my laptop to my HDTV with a S-Video and M-M RCA – Stereo Mini type audio cables and whalla, I cannot only watch movies from NetFlix, but also free TV shows and movies from Hulu. I can also rent movies and TV series from Amazon and iTunes, as well as watch anything available online from MSNBC, CNN, YouTube, Comedy Central and dozens of other video sites. So far and I don’t feel deprived and I’ll use the $150.00 a month savings to get out on the town more often. I like free HDTV!