Seedfork's blog: Finally did it...cut the cord to cable!!! 05-21-2018

I have been on a learning experience! For at least the past two years I have been threatening to get rid of my expensive cable bill. My wife watches a lot of TV, not so much for me. So what ever I did had to satisfy her Fox News, and Price is Right, Westerns and a few more requirements. I bought a new Roku TV, from Sam's and three indoor antennas from Wal Mart one at a time, each coasting more progressively. I got the best reception with the cheapest of the three .I say she watches a lot of TV, not exactly true, she just keeps it on while she surfs on her Kindle, she can seldom tell me what is on when I ask.
Anyhow, I had to cut out a few TV's when the cable company starting requiring a box for each TV. So last year I bought her a small TV for the kitchen and an antenna. It picked up 5 stations. So when I turned in all my cable equipment I stopped by Wal Mart and purchased another antenna for the new Roku TV. Sad to say I could only pick up four channels with the antenna. So we tried that for a few days and everything was working fine for a while. But when I dropped my TV service, it was packaged with phone and internet service. The service rep told me that I was not actually with spectrum, but I was actually with Time Warner/Spectrum. If I would keep my service he would swap me over to Spectrum, it would only be $5.00 more. I would get more channels, including movie channels, and I would get faster (over double the internet speed). Well why in the %#$#@, had I been paying the higher rate in the first place for the last year or more? I told him no, I wanted to pay less and to drop me from the plan. So that still meant that being I had a package I would no longer be a Time Warner/ Spectrum customer I would now be a Spectrum customer. Oh....That did not mean that I would get those cheap rates you see advertised for 100 mps for new customers for the first year. No, even though I would be a new Spectrum customer I would still have to pay over twice that advertised rate to get that speed, which happens to be the slowest speed they now offer it seems . Well, I liked the idea of faster internet speed, being I had to cut cost last year, and went down to 30 mps. So over three times the speed really appealed to me, and with the Roku TV working of the wifi, and my grandson's TV and gaming devices and phone etc. the faster speed would be great.
I checked my internet speed a few times and saw no increase in speed, so I thought maybe they had to switch some things over. I started having sporadic internet service, as soon as they switched me over to the new plan. Plus it was causing other computer related problems, finally the internet went out completely. My speed did not increase either.
After calling customer service a few times, getting the internet to work, then failing again, they decided that a technician would have to come out on Monday, and I would be out of service all weekend. Thank goodness for the antennas!
So the tech came out today, checked the equipment on the pole, that was fine. Checked the wiring leading into the house, that was fine. Check the connection inside the house, that was fine. He
managed to get the internet up, then asked me to go online and register the new modem I had to get. Spectrum told me my old modem was not capable of handling the higher 100 mps speed. Well, they did provided a modem with the new service. So whether or not I got the new modem my bill was still $70.00 per month. So I go online register the new modem and he says that will fix your problem. No new wiring, no new equipment, no great technical diagnosis, just register the modem and I'm good to go. Now why on earth did the support people I spent so much time with over the phone know that!
I checked my speed and now I was up to 80 mps and the service guy said if I would hard wire my wireless router I would do even better. I might do that later, but for now I am satisfied with how things are working.
Now back to the antennas. After buying the third antenna, the last one for the TV in my study, I got no signal at all. I have decided that the only stations we can pickup are directly to the east and that as the signal progressive passes through the house it gets weaker and weaker. So I am thinking of taking the last antenna back and getting an attic mounted one and see how that does. By playing around with the little TV in the kitchen and learning that you have to move the antenna to just the right spot, the antenna wiring has to be adjusted along with the little amplifier , finally I learned that just by moving the TV an inch or so I could pick up two more channels clearly. It seems to be that digital channels come in clearly or not at all on this TV at least, but everything has to be just perfect or you will get pixelation.

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