This is a very old thread, but I thought I'd add a little info here on my latest adventure.
I live in Avondale, AZ, and as the crow flies (but we don't have crows in this part of AZ, so it must be a grackle), I am 17 miles from the broadcast antennas on South Mountain in Phoenix.
Yesterday, I looked at my cable bill and decided I don't need cable enough to pay $90 a month for it! I took the cable box and remote down to the local Cox outlet and gave it back!
I told my wife I was going to buy a good outdoor antenna and mount it where the Dish was when we had one of those. Always the skeptic, Gina (my beloved wife) asked how much would THAT cost, and how would I know it would work? So, I dug out my Redneck Antenna, and hooked it up to the cable connections outside our house. I just propped the antenna on a planter that is out there. Came back in and fired up the TV, changed the source from Cable to Air, and did a scan. 42 channels! 2 don't work well, the rest are great! 1/2 of the channels are in Spanish, but all I really cared about were the main ones I used to get as a kid; CBS, ABC, NBC. As a bonus, I get FOX.
Well, I am so pleased, I am going to mount my RHDTV antenna on the eave where the Dish used to be, and see if I get away with it. Our HOA Nazis are mostly octogenarians who troll the neighborhood looking for weed or paint issues, parked cars, etc. I'm hoping they miss it completely, like they have my illegal rollout patio cover that I've had for 8 years.
Pleased as punch, I am!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/econ_goldtooth.gif)
The one thing I know I will miss is the DVR. Then I found a little device called Simple.TV. For $199, I get a box that connedcts to my network, I hook an external hard drive to it (I happen to have a 500GB drive I'm not using at the moment) and I have a DVR that can play back to any TV in the house (up to 5 TVs can watch different recorded programs at once. I only have one TV, so that's a non-issue). For $4.99 a month, I can have an app that dives me directory features like I had with cable, but I don't need those, so I won't make that investment.
Does anybody have any knowledge of the Simple.tv? Is it as good as advertised?
![Thinking :thinking:](./images/smilies/econ_thinking.gif)