Hello Nerds-in-Crime! Thanks for joining us today for our last post of 2016. Never fear. We’ll be back in 2017 with even more righteous topics. Plus, don’t miss the unveiling of our first Nerd Garden class in February.

But now onto today’s topic. Lately, we’ve been revisiting cord-cutting and, as promised, today we’re going to give you the skinny on the antenna we installed.

Before we do that, here’s our current TV setup:

  • Amazon Fire TV Stick and Roku Stick
  • Amazon Prime

Why The Antenna?

Since we’ve been streaming our movies and shows to our TV, it’s been awesome. Plus, we’re saving around $100 a month. Still it’s proven a challenge  getting local news and sports via the Internet. We decided to go Old School and throw a TV antenna up on the roof.

via GIPHY

Yes, you can still do that. The technology has changed a bit since TV broadcasts were forced to go digital. The antenna we purchased was digital.

With our new antenna in place, we now get around forty local TV channels for free over the air. And since it’s digital, a lot of these come though in HD. Nice!

What Do I Need?

Today we’re going to walk you through how we went about setting our antenna up. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any live footage of me on the roof–Steph was too nervous for me to take on the role of action hero. You will, however, get some free music, instructions, and snarky comments (directed at one another). That’s just how we roll.

Shopping List

Did you like the video? Ready to install your antenna? All you need is:

  • A cordless drill
  • A screw driver
  • A wrench
  • Caulking to seal the hole in the roof
  • An antenna
  • A mounting pole

To help you get started, check out the equipment we purchased.

What Do I Do?

  1. Map out a plan for where you need to run your cable in order to connect it to your TV.
  2. Purchase your equipment.
  3. Attach your attenna to the roof.
  4. Run your cable through the house to your TV. Be sure to seal the area where the cable comes through the roof from the outside.
  5. Attach the coax to the Antenna Controller (comes with your antenna).
  6. Attach coax that runs from your antenna controller to the TV.
  7. Auto-program your TV. This should appear in your settings.
  8. Enjoy!

Happy TV viewing, fellow nerds! Happy Holidays and we’ll see you in the new year!

Steph and Aaron