One of our original moving aboard resolutions was to turn our backs on television, period. We were confident we would quickly clear our minds of the banal garbage that we had endured for years and find countless other ways to entertain ourselves in the evenings by reading, crosswords, board games, blogging, movie streaming on the laptop, visiting neighbours, doing boat projects, exercising, etc, etc, and all the time saving a bunch of money in cable fees!
Well, we did all that and stayed strong for 18 months but, during a recent visit on board a dock mate's 60 foot custom ketch, we finally folded! When we went aboard a small LCD TV was mounted on a bulkhead playing an interesting PBS natural history program, with excellent reception and picture quality. No Glomex antenna on the mast, no cable to the slip and no dish.......how can this be? We quickly established that an inconspicuous, flat digital antenna carelessly thrown on top of a locker, and almost invisible, was responsible. Even more impressive was the fact that another 46 channels were available and over half of them were English Language. 25 free channels through the air, including several of the major networks...Wow!
Obviously our marina location in the San Francisco Bay area had a lot to do with the large choice of channels but, even so, good quality free through-the-air TV is accessible in many coastal areas and it would be nice to have a the ability to take advantage of it whenever we have shore power. After getting back to Circe we discussed the neighbour's set-up and pondered following suit.....just to play DVD's on a big screen you understand and very, very occasionally watch a "good" program. We rushed off to Best Buy the next day and picked up an identical rig for Circe.
RCA Digital Antenna in occasional cabin roof location that gives better reception for distant stations. The normal antenna location is in the port side hutch (see top pic).
Screws for temporary antenna mount in cabin ceiling trim strip.
Back of RCA digital passive antenna showing molded registers for mounting screws.
Dynex 19" LCD television with integral tuner, wireless remote and DVD unit. We can also hook up the laptop to the TV and use it as a remote monitor if needed.
Side view showing DVD controls and a Sanus Wall Mounting bracket.
After a couple of weeks we are still managing to control our viewing to occasional 'good' programs but time will tell if we can maintain for the long haul. No doubt about it, no easy way to say it....................we are two weak pathetic creatures! Sigh!
No comments:
Post a Comment