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Comment by techbullets | Hacker News Reader

With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else. Plus, most of the things that we watch are on-demand anyway - we don't have patience to sit through commercials for 1 hour to watch 20 minutes of a Sci-Fi episode.

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I've been using Chromecast since it came out, and prior to that I had a similar setup that I configured myself. Never really needed/wanted an antenna, as I don't really watch much T.V. anyways.

What's interesting, is that when my parents saw my setup they immediately canceled their T.V. subscription with Comcast and bought 3 Chromcasts (one for each room) & a Netflix subscription, and switched to an antenna for their local news.

Once their friends saw this setup three or four of them setup the same thing.

It seems pretty popular among the older generations which grew up with antenna anyways, plus with the ease of using Chromecast, they can cut their bills down and get everything they want.

I might be classified as older but I'd suspect that with this story topping HN, the number of responses, etc. that it's less of a generational thing and more of a people of all ages are sick of cable companies thing.

> With Chromecast (or something similar to connect your computer to TV), and a decent Antenna, you do not really need anything else.

Unless you want to watch a lot of sports.

You can get a lot of NFL and college football from the antenna. I use my parent's cable login to cover the rest (WatchESPN) but of course that's not a real solution available to everyone.

NFL is doable although there's no obvious solution for MNF except using someone else's login.

NCAAF is a little random since some games are on non-cable but a majority aren't. I'm on the west coast and the games are usually on FS1 or Pac-12 network.

NBA is pretty much impossible until the ABC has their Sunday games and the NBA finals.

Pretty much all of the MLB stuff (except for playoffs) is cable only. NFL will at least of the either Monday or Thursday game along with your local on Sunday.

Even the playoffs for MLB are cable only.

http://m.mlb.com/postseason-schedule

OTA FOX only gets one or two playoffs games and the World Series.

In previous years it was possible to watch most of the games online via "live alternative video feeds (excluding the broadcast feed)", and now even that is not allowed.

Check out all the disclaimers and fine print here

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp?&affiliateId=...

I suspect that some league (NHL perhaps?) will specifically exclude webcasting from its next huge TV contract. Or it will extract a higher price not to be the first to do so. It will be the beginning of the end for regional sports channels, and eventually for ESPN.

For the cost of one to two months of Cable TV you can get all the regular season games online; since I'm a fan of an out-of-market team anyway, it's a no brainer for me.

Half of NASCAR Sprint Cup races are OTA, the other half are cable only. I don't really get to watch xfinity cup or other NASCAR events.

This is my current setup, I have a chromecast on each floor with an antenna.

of course if you pay for everything on-demand, you don't need anything else...

Me too. This works very well.

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