How to get off Comcast and score free, legal, digital TV in Chicago or anywhere, really
techloop.windycitizen.com
techloop.windycitizen.com
So I ditched them. In Boston, MA, Comcast charges $42.99/mo for cable internet with a cable plan, or $57.99/mo for internet w/o a cable plan. Their cheapest cable plan is approx $12/mo, so to get the best deal on internet, you need to sign up for cable TV too (I think they do this to meet some stupid subscriber quota numbers).
Well, Earthlink offers internet for $45.99/mo over Comcast's cable lines. It's just as fast. You don't need cable TV to use it. I called them up and they switched me over in about 10 minutes.
Add in Netflix at $11.99/mo (w/Blueray), which is about as much as Comcast's basic cable, and I can stream movies over the net through my Xbox. Nice. Next I scored an Apple TV and threw Boxee* onto it. I can stream just about every program I want to watch over the net for free with extremely few commercials.
The quality isn't as nice as Comcast's HD feeds, of course. But it's good enough. If I really want super-high quality, I get a blue-ray disc from Netflix. I could care less if the Daily Show comes to me at 1080p.
*Boxee does work on Apple TV, but Hulu doesn't. Well, Hulu loads and plays sound, but the current version of "Apple TV Boxee" skips Hulu video frames horribly. But no big complaints - it is alpha after all. I'm sure they'll fix it at some point. All the other channels/video-feeds play fine though (with occasional glitches here and there).
Imagine if someone in a conversation said to you "the best way to hack the web is to ignore it altogether".
Besides that, using OTA only works well if you a) have a good line of site to the broadcasting tower (trees create multipath signals, which give you ghosts) b) aren't too far away (25+ miles) c) don't mind storms interrupting your TV shows and d) can find some way to snake coaxial cable into your house since e) you'll want a good outdoor antenna (Channel Master makes great ones), not some bunny ears.
The nice thing about having BASIC1 is that you can pull the HD channels off your cable connection without paying any additional fees. Often, the bit rate isn't as good as OTA but it's a more dependable signal.
Guy hacked up a solution for about $160. Pretty impressive!
(There is also no reason to keep Comcast around for your Internet connection, either. Just get DSL.)