Need some help here...

[speedo]

I live at 8100 ft in the mountains of colorado. No comcast, no centurylink...just rural internet which is sort of high speed. I don't watch (and haven't for 25 years ) watched basic tv. We rent movies and play them at our leisure. Dish and Direct are constantly advertising in our area...but they want to lock me into a two year agreement fot 250 channels of garbage with a ridiculous termination fee. I want to watch auto racing, college lacrosse, world cup soccer and skiing. The price for these few areas of interest with the aforementioned providers are about $120 a month which consider criminal. None of their basic packages offer these as a standalone...I have to ad them as extras. I know that the world is changing quickly...anybody have ideas as to how to access these sports without being tied to corporate america's 2 year package plan? Understand...I am not apposed to paying for service recieved. My issue is that I have to pay for something that is 99% garbage to get the little bit I am interested. Thoughts appreciated.

Speedo

[Kris Clewell]

The choices are the same for cable, dish, whatever. The big issue is none of us get to choose the stations we want, and none of the ones we dont. Stations like Bravo, or Lifetime wouldn't survive without being bundled in with the rest of the stuff we actually want to watch. Someday things will change but dont expect a change anytime soon...

If your internet could support it, hulu+ is cheap, as is netflix. I know that doesnt help your sports desires, but thats all I got...

[tpdorsey]

If you have a recent TV with a built-in QAM tuner and any cable at all (even if you're not paying for cable service), you may be able to simply hook up the cable and tune in "over the air" channels. This typically includes local network affiliates, public TV, and maybe a few others. Depends on the local offerings.

There are also digital antennae for catching these signals actually over the air, but I don't know much about this.

QAM is not a well-advertised feature, so you may have to look closely at the specs in the user manual for the TV. Your cable provider will probably be of no help at all in getting this set up. But it does work.

[Peanut]

If you have a recent TV with a built-in QAM tuner and any cable at all (even if you're not paying for cable service), you may be able to simply hook up the cable and tune in "over the air" channels. This typically includes local network affiliates, public TV, and maybe a few others. Depends on the local offerings.

There are also digital antennae for catching these signals actually over the air, but I don't know much about this.

QAM is not a well-advertised feature, so you may have to look closely at the specs in the user manual for the TV. Your cable provider will probably be of no help at all in getting this set up. But it does work.

Not sure if this answers your question; however, there is a lot of good content on the Internet. Quite often, I will want to see college football games that aren't on broadcast TV, or even some motor sports stuff. If you check into this, you can then (laptop permitting) connect HDMI from a your computer directly to a newer flat panel TV... obviously, these all cost money; however, I probably access 50% of my TV content through an internet connection, such as is mentioned above. AND it's HD, as a bonus.

[uptheorg]

There are even better tv streaming sites on the internet (better than hulu). Most offer all the channels of the local dish and then some. They usu. have a subscription fee, or even a lifetime pass fee. If your internet speed is fast enough to watch video on your desktop or laptop computer, you are all set if you subscribe to one of these. What you do is get a device (such as VEEBEAM) to connect your pc to the tv wirelessly. I use VEEBEAM for about two years now and am very happy with it. Alternately, you could hardwire your pc to the tv. Your tv has to have HDMI ports to do any of this pc connectivity, but most tv's in the past five years have that. Do a google on VEEBEAM (no affiliation) to get a better idea of what I am talking about.