I've had it with Uverse. What are alternatives? EDIT: updated w/ TiVo/OTA review

Switched from DirecTV to dish a few years ago. Sure beats the hell out of cable. If you don't need Sunday ticket, I find their hardware better than dtv.

As the above poster said just complain that dtv called and they will keep prices low

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From a cord cutter perspective has anyone done TiVo with and OTA antenna?

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Yes and I'm asking myself why I didn't do it years ago. I'm a pioneer cord cutter who started streaming eight years ago and finally settled on a combination of Windows Media Center and Roku. Even had the house wired for ethernet. Then about a month ago Microsoft broke WMC and I started shopping around.

I had originally rejected Tivo because of the recurring subscription cost but my thinking has changed. Twelve bucks a month is a small price to pay for the best program guide and user interface on the planet. It seamlessly merges the streaming options with the OTA program guide and eliminated the need for the Roku.

I just replaced my XBoxes and Rokus with the recently released Tivo Bolt and three Tivo Minis. Tivo has been in the DVR business for a long time and they've refined their product to the point that it leaves the competition in the dust.

Anyone interested in an XBox or a Roku? Selling cheap.

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I was looking at the bolt/mini deal - I'm guessing that means that the minis pick up everything that is recorded on the bolt and eliminates the need for multiple OTA antennas.

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That's correct. The Bolt has four tuners built in so you can record three/watch one, record two/watch two, etc. The tuners are more sensitive than the HD Homerun tuners they replaced and I picked up a few more stations.

I live within the city of Baton Rouge so I'm not that distant from the stations. I have an amplified Terk flat antenna that I put in the attic using a wall mount for a small TV that let me position it exactly. I haven't touched it since the initial setup. Tvfool.com will give you the compass heading to all of the stations within range. I used the compass app in my smart phone to aim the antenna.

BTW, digital channels are all-or-nothing. You either get reception or you don't. There is no snowy picture that gets worse the farther away you are. I have had a few very brief dropouts during heavy thunderstorms but these were not as frquent as the ones I used to get with Dish.

One caveat: the feed from the Bolt to the Mini is uncompressed so you need either a wired ethernet connection or MoCA. The Tivo boxes have MoCA adapters built in.

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What is moca?

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Multimedia over coax. It's a way of leveraging your existing home coax wiring to transport ethernet. I would stick with ethernet if at all possible. The newer Tivos support gigabit ethernet. The Bolt does not have a built-in MoCA adapter which means you would have to buy an external one for a hundred bucks or so. If you have cable coming into the house (as opposed to fiber) you would also need a filter at the point of entry to prevent your network being fed back out the cable lines to your neighbors.

If you feed the OTA signal over the existing cable wiring you only need to connect the Bolt master to it. The Mini would be connected by ethernet. If your router doesn't support gigabit ethernet you would need a small gigabit switch LIKE THIS to get full speed between the Bolt and the Mini.

What about Sling?

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What about Sling?

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I've been using sling for about 4 months now and while the price for what you get is great, the app and experience are horrible. There's so much interruption with sling. I can't tell you how many times I have to reload channels or close and re-launch the app. Sometimes channels just flatout won't load, and it's usually at the most inconvenient times. I've had blackouts during football games. And yes, my internet connection is solid. I don't think I'm going to continue my subscription, honestly.

Went to Best Buy and got a TiVo bolt and an HD antenna. Won't be fully set up until Monday since the Uverse router fried and I'm without internet for the weekend.

Live TV works great. The mohu leaf antenna is lights out awesome.

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From a cord cutter perspective has anyone done TiVo with and OTA antenna?

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Did it for 3 weeks, cancelled during 30 day money back policy. If you're just getting OTA channels, pretty much every show you'd be recording on Tivo you can get on Hulu, now ad-free, for $11.99 vs. $14.99 a month for Tivo. The integration of streaming services into the box was nice, but the only time I'm ever on live TV is for a network TV football game. Otherwise I'm on my FireTV with Hulu, Netflix and Prime, so the feature isn't that meaningful. Add SlingTV or HBO Now on months certain shows air and then cancel when they're over. Keep Sling TV all year if you need ESPN.

Here's the deal for those following this thread: TiVo is awesome. Like mindblowingly awesome. I'm able to pick up HD OTA channels (which is actually a lot of channels not just ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX/CW) there are a lot of extra channels you can pick up.

So hooking up the TiVo and the ability to DVR anything on those channels is great but the really cool thing is it integrates seamlessly with Netflix/Amazon Prime. If you have a show you want to DVR you do the regular search for show, choose, select but TiVo has this thing called OnePass which also adds all of the seasons that are on netflix/amazon/HBOnow to your DVR list so you also have access to those shows to stream seamlessly. No more changing inputs for Netflix/Amazon Prime, etc.

I still have SlingTV for live college football and some other channels which i can't DVR but i'm cool with that. I feel like TiVo will come up with a competitor to SlingTV eventually anyways.

The TiVo Bolt is what i purchased which allows you to add mini-TiVo extenders to other rooms at no additional monthly fee (i haven't done that yet though). It ain't cheap though. $299 but that includes one year of TiVo service which is i think $15/month which is like $180 so that makes the true cost of the unit about $120 - not bad.

Ben Glenn I have the mohu leaf ultimate antenna which is an indoor antenna good for 50 miles. Weather does affect the signal and so of course it rains for 10 straight days after I set it up. Even still very little issues picking up channels. A couple of the channels don't play nice but I think I found a spot where they both can be picked up. No problem with the other channels.

If you want to be 100% certain on your signal then the next level up from mohu is the skyHD outdoor antenna. $100+ but once you set it up you probably will have a strong signal with no future adjusting necessary. That one can be mounted outside or in an attic. I may spring for it one day but so far I'm happy with what I have.

There are other antenna brands but mohu was pretty highly rated and light years better than the crappy RCA one the Best Buy guy recommended. Jerk handed me the RCA and said it would work like I was an idiot for thinking about buying anything else. It was the cheapest one and performed like it. Shitty thing could barely pick up one channel. As soon as I plugged in the Leaf before even mounting it it started picking up channels so I'm a Mohu believer.