Comcast – Basic TV – Digital signal encrypted

So I fly back into town, sit down to watch the news and I have no signal. Call comcast and come to find that they now encrypt the digital signal and that if I get their adapter for 4.95 /month that I can then see my channels again.

I am not about to pay them 45/year to rent one of their adapters for basic stations when I am only at my house for maybe 60 nights per year.

What have others done? Is there an adapter at places like Best Buy or Target that will do the same thing the Comcast box does?

I have been toying with the idea of getting some sort of sattelite dish for the camper where I spend most of my time when I am in town. Is there something that allows me to move my sattelite package from house to camper when I want to?

At this point I am about ready to go back to rabbit years for TV and use my phones hotspot for internet.

Any input or advice is appreciated.

I’m at $90. per month for the two extra boxes. The tv in my office is dead in the water because I seldom use it but would like to. Not willing to pay though.

Your rabbit ears will need a digital converter as well if it’s an older set like all of mine are.

If it wasn’t for the Favorite Females that watch tv…I would just use the net.

I’m at $110 for direct tv. Never had a problem with them, and I shouldn’t for that price. I pay for internet from a seperate company. I have whole home hd dvr and 1 extra dvr. Always get my local channels without issue.

Last January I turned on the Golf Channel to watch the opening tournament in Hawaii. The channel was blocked. Called my provider, Charter, and was told “Oh ya, you just need to get a box for each TV and they are only 4.95/month each. And you might as well get them because pretty soon you will need it to get any of the channels”. That would have brought my cable bill to $80/mo.

Went on Amazon, bought a $40 antenna that would fit in my garage rafters, installed it, called Charter and canceled cable. We live 40 miles from the closest broadcast antenna and get ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox and a few sub-channels.

We have not had cable for 10 months now. $80 x 10 = $800 – $40 (for the antenna) = $760 more in my pocket.

And ya know what…95% of the time there is still nothing on I want to watch

BTW…no internet provider either…use PDANet on my phone. That and 4G service and we get 3.5 Mbps upload and 12 Mbps download speeds, which is more than enough for our current use.

We got rid of cable twelve years ago, was tough for a few weeks. The savings are nice but we spend a lot more time outdoors and just doing other things in general.