Corn Flakes: About Those Over The Air Channels

This is a follow up on the Cord Cutting article I did earlier. Watching OTA channels is… well, it’s an adventure.

For the past two months I’ve been watching over the air TV. If you’ll remember an article I did about a month ago about cord cutting, I was using a Mohu antenna that resembled a piece of cardboard. After that article I was contacted by a company, Antennas Direct, but offered to send me what they felt was a better antenna, the ClearStream2MAX™. I accepted. Their antenna is certainly more robust than the earlier Mohu I was using, but it is also more intrusive.

It’s not that much more expensive, and it comes with a outside mount, but being the lazy guy that I am I simply hooked it up to the cable that was formally connected to the Mohu and started watching over the air TV. It did a better job picking up channels than the Mohu, but it’s a little more expensive and like I said earlier, a little more intrusive. Here’s a photo compared to the Mohu. Notice that it has a stand.

Watching over the air channels has been rather weird. It’s weird because you have no control over what’s happening. Anymore, when you’re watching TV through a satellite or cable connection, you are typically using a DVR. You can pause whatever you’re watching, get up and go get another beer, sit back down and continue. I don’t have a DVR with the over the air channels. It’s like watching TV from about 40 years ago – you actually have to watch the TV. You have to watch the commercials as well.