Originally Posted by romanojg

over a year ago our "main" local cable company came out with these boxes you had to have in order to see anything other than snow. You were aloud to get only 2 without paying, which bites when you have 5 TVs set up. I get only basic cable for about 33 a month but only a handful of channels are worth watching, most are music or selling channels, I decided to check out antenna's needing to cut back. The one that I really like is the flat one that they sell on TV for 1999 for 2, I got one from the exchange here and can see all but 2 of the channels I get on cable. I called the cable company to cancel the TV part and they said that I had a bundle and if I have internet only then my bill will actually go up 61 for both to 64 for just internet, its low level internet. I had gotten the firestick but you need internet to use it. While I enjoy my internet but don't use it that much I now have to decide to cancel all and return my firestick since I won't have internet to get the extra channels. Plus the cable company says they'll start charging for those little boxes in Jan so now my bill will still go up another 10. You can't win for losing. But at least I can get local TV, the Create TV, Ion and Grit and a few others if I cancel internet. Which is what I think I may have to do.

I think the cable company came up with these boxes as a way to have more control on us. When the government passed a law that all TV had to be broadcast over digital which gave access to more via antennas the little boxes allowed them to control what we could see. You have to have them sync your box to your TV, you can't move it to a different TV in your house and you only see what they want you to see. By the way, with that little antenna, I was amazed that the picture was so clear, not like it used to be, snowy on the old antennas