Live TV - For the cord cutters

Its unavoidable , sometimes you got to have some live TV. Local news, sporting events, and the results for American Idol. But really add up the amount of time you actually sit down and watch those live events. For local news, you could easily go the website of any local news station and catch the headlines. For sporting events, those are usually only available during the season. I can't personally say anything about watching sporting events, because I don't like to watch them.

In those cases that you feel that you need some live tv, you have some choices. If you subscribe to cable internet, you might be able to get some local channels with your internet. Most cable providers are trying to free up bandwidth on the system to provider more services on the same copper line coming into your home. In the attempt to do so, they are switching the analog channels over to digital. These digital channels require a cable box in the home in order to watch them. Or so the cable company tells you. Actually they will encode these channels in what's called clear QAM. These channels can be tuned on most HDTV's that have a digital tuner. And all those new digital tuners that everyone had to buy a few months back as well.  The digital tuner in these box's and TV's are now required to watch some TV transmissions due to the fact that the FCC mandated that all analog broadcast cease over the air transmission and switch to the digital format in order to free up the spectrum. So if you have cable internet use a 2 way splitter and connect one cable to your TV and the other to your modem. Then run the channel scan. What you will see are that the local channels come through. Come through in HD.

The other choice is to connect a large antenna to your TV and tune in your local HD stations. You'd be surprised by how many channels you can actually get over the air. And with the switch to digital, the signal will either be there or it won't. If you can tune the stations in you'll be happy with an HD picture, that is totally free.

I currently am subscribed to cable internet. They trap out the analog channels so they can provide us with just the internet. If I connect the cable to my TV I get the local channels in their digital format for free. This makes paying for that internet connection a better value. Mainly because I'm not paying for 100 channels I will never watch.