Lately I’ve been mourning the loss of Locast – my favorite legally questionable TV streaming service. Locast wasn’t even available in our DMA (Designated Market Area) but thanks to some stupid VPN tricks I was able to cherry pick which broadcast NFL games to watch. Location spoofing allowed us to root for Mrs. Dress Pockets’ hometown team instead of the NFC North teams we are saddled with on any given week. Locast was also used in a pinch when our TV antenna acted up and NBC cut out which happens more times than not over the past couple years. We watched some Tokyo Olympics coverage, Saturday Night Live and Sunday Night Football as if we were in Chicago. I gladly paid the $60 “annual donation” to Locast for my creative but limited use of broadcast television over the Internet.
I found myself looking at alternatives to fill my Locast void. I don’t value TV enough to pay $65+ per month for cable, satellite, Hulu or YouTube TV. I debated Sling Orange vs Blue but even $35 per month is a bit much. I settled on Peacock Premium for my NBC fix at $5 per month and researched what was included in the fine print. Mrs. Dress Pockets said we should cancel our $10 per month Netflix standard definition plan if I pulled the trigger on Peacock. Check. But before I created yet another username and password, the engineer in me started questioning why NBC wasn’t working with our rickety antenna banded to the crumbling brick chimney while CBS, ABC, FOX and 7 PBS sub channels came in crystal clear?
Some searching led me to find that NBC in our DMA broadcasts over VHF (very high frequency) while the FCC DTV reception maps revealed that all the other channels broadcast over UHF (ultra high frequency). Plugging in our address also showed that the NBC tower was slightly southeast (175º) while the others were slightly southwest (185º and 196º). Time to run outside and supervise the kids playing in the leaves. But also an opportunity to scope out the roof and see many of the VHF antenna poles were now anything but horizontal. I deployed the step ladder to scramble up on the porch roof and pulled the ladder up to reach the second story. I had to rotate the antenna mast to return the VHF poles to horizontal without tumbling off the roof and then decided to point the directional antenna due south (180º) to cheat towards the NBC tower over the south by west angle that was used previously.
Down the roofs and back inside it was time to scan for channels again. A minute or two later and NBC was back baby. Furthermore I didn’t lose any of the other channels. Take that Peacock Premium (arguably one of the stupidest streaming service names)! I was out with the kids again later in the day and saw some of the horizontal poles had already gone for a walk in the wind. It may be time to replace the 20-40 year old antenna but I’ll oddly feel better about spending that $50-$150 over another monthly subscription service.
The Netflix account will stay suspended and we talked about activating it again after football and SNL seasons end. Optimizing our sporadic Netflix use into a 3-4 month window will save 66-75% per year. $10 per month doesn’t break the bank but there’s a slippery slope to adding a half dozen or more $10 per month subscription services. Perhaps we won’t really miss Netflix at all.
