Has anyone "cut the cord" and gotten a thingie that goes on the wall for tv reception? It costs me about $40 a month for tv with Cox and I only watch 1-2 hours a day. A "thingie" will cost around $27. My neighbor is getting me one and will install it. I will post whether or not I like it.
The short answer is when these flat antennas you hang on the wall work, it's a great low cost solution. It's worth trying, and I hope it works the first place you hang it. But, make sure it can be returned if it doesn't work for your situation. The following will sound demotivating -- I don't mean it to be discouraging. I have one in my home that works well. That said... I've helped a number of friends with these and a few were totally successful, but the others were not. Trying to get it to work can be tedious if it doesn't work immediately. Mine took several hours to fine a location that gets all the channels I wanted. All the local TV stations have their transmitters on South Mountain roughly 20-miles from here. The TV signals used to be broadcast using analog technology (pre-2009) and you needed little more than a bent coat hanger of an antenna to get them. Now they are digital and much more sensitive to things that might impede the signal line-of-sight between the transmitter and your antenna. If there's nothing in the way, that coat hanger will still work. But there usually is -- a tree branch, a house, an aluminum awning, walls, etc. Moving the antenna even a little in your house can make a big difference in your success. For example, in one case a friend wanted the antenna behind a picture on the wall -- he could only get a couple channels. So we moved it a few feet to the side and he could get a different set of channels. In his case, we never found a location where he could get channels 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, and 15. He finally gave up and we put a conventional antenna on his roof. Another friend has her flat antenna stuck between two particular books on her bookshelf when she watches most channels, but she has to move it between two other books a foot away to get PBS (channel 8). When you're moving it around to find the sweet spot for the antenna, most modern TVs need to do a channel search to see what channels they can tune in -- the process can take several minutes and needs to be re-run each time you move the antenna. It can get very frustrating since moving it a few inches can make a big difference. In another friends home the channels they could get depended on where they sat in the room. And to end on the positive, several I know of are working that were hung on the back of their TV or just propped against the wall behind the TV -- they worked first try there right out of the box!
