The frugal way to do TV...

[Fumesucker]

1. On antennas (antennae)..

The real trick to getting good over the air TV and saving that cable/satellite bill is the antenna, in a lot of locations you can use indoors right by the set, it's even possible to build your own fairly decent antenna for very little money if you are at all handy.

Antennas Direct has some good models, for an outdoor unit the DB4 gets excellent reviews on Amazon and costs under $50, it will make a huge difference in your reception if you are just using something like rabbit ears.

http://www.amazon.com/Antennas-Direct-DB4-Multi-Directional-Antenna/dp/B000EHYG9K




For an indoor unit the Terk HDTVa is pretty good and will pull in stations in a moderate signal strength area..

http://www.amazon.com/Terk-Amplified-High-Definition-Antenna-Reception/dp/B0007MXZB2/ref=sr_1_23?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1325978244&sr=1-23



And here are instructions if you want to make your own antenna.. There are lots of others on Youtube and on the net in pictorial/text form.

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Getting the antenna as high up as possible will give you the best signal, if you are having problems picking up the stations you want the first thing to do is raise your antenna in some way, you also need to make sure it's pointed in the right direction, many antennas are directional and will pick up markedly better when pointed correctly.

You will need coaxial cable to connect the antenna to the tuner (TV set or converter box), coax doesn't like to be crimped or sharply bent so try to avoid kinking it.

I encourage you to ask questions if you want to do this, I'm a lot better at dialogue than I am at just expository text and I'm happy to answer anything you might want to ask.

I've done this for friends that are well out in the boonies and couldn't get any TV at all before and have eight or ten channels after a homemade antenna was put up and properly adjusted..