Personal Finance News Friday 3/29

Phil's Personal Finance Tip of the Day:

Ditching cable for free local TV

By Michael Miller | Yahoo! Contributor Network 

When it comes to cutting the cable cord, it's easy enough to find a variety of television programs ready for streaming on the Internet, via sites like Hulu and Netflix. But what about the stuff that's not online -- namely, live local and network broadcasts?
 
Fortunately, you don't need cable to view your local news shows or watch Jimmy Fallon live. All your local stations broadcast their programming for free over the public airwaves, and in pristine digital format. Since just about every TV sold in the past five years or so has a built-in digital tuner for these over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts, you should be able to receive what you want just by hooking up an antenna and tuning your TV to the appropriate station number. And if you don't have a newfangled digital TV, you can buy a low-priced digital converter box that enables your old set to receive these new digital broadcasts.

Unlike old school analog broadcasting, the digital OTA signals you receive today are crisp and sharp, in perfect high definition with Dolby Digital sound. The days of fuzzy, snowy TV reception are long gone; if you can receive a station's signal, it's going to look pretty good.

Even better, most local stations broadcast not just their main signal, but also several subsidiary channels. (The digital broadcast standard provides the added bandwidth for these so-called sub-channels.) This means you get more free programming today than you used to -- and, in many cases, channels that aren't carried by your local cable company.

For example, I live in the Twin Cities and our local ABC affiliate KSTP broadcasts the standard ABC HD programming on digital channel 5.1. Digital subchannel 5.3 broadcasts the Me-TV network (classic TV programs), subchannel 5.4 is for Antenna TV (more classic TV programs), 5.6 is for This TV (classic movies), and 5.7 is for the Live Well Network (lifestyle programming). That's just one approach; other local channels devote their digital subchannels to 24/7 weather, children's programming, or foreign-language networks.

To read the entire article from Michael Miller | Yahoo! Contributor Network: http://homes.yahoo.com/news/ditching-cable-free-local-tv-225600501.html


Inspirational Quotes@Inspire_Us from Twitter:
The Six W's: Work will win when wishing won't. -Todd Blackledge

Hi my name is Philip J. Miano and I am the founder of PJM Personal Finance and Productivity Coaching specializing in Budgeting, Debt Reduction, Bank Reconciliations, Goal Setting, Time Management, and Organizational skills. Please visit my website: http://pjmcoaching.com.