Do I need the coaxial cable? 16 February 2019 at 2:54PM in TV MoneySaving 5 replies 993 views

pincopallino

Hi - just wondering, how important is the coaxial/aerial cable still, or is broadband enough to watch most/all TV these days?

I am planning to move things around in my flat and it would greatly help if the TV didn't need to be connected to the aerial cable. Am I going to miss out on much TV? Most things these days seem to be available via streaming services.

I hardly watch any TV myself other than iPlayer/Netflix. But I'm also thinking of future buyers if I was to sell the flat. Could not having a TV cable be an issue?

Maybe a dumb question, but I'm rather naive technologically!

Bigphil1474

If you want to watch freeview on your TV then you need the aerial. If you only really watch Netflix and I-player, then you can do that without an aerial, but if you are thinking of future buyers, they may need the aerial for that. Doubt it would make a huge difference to the selling price of your property though. Assuming there is one already, just tidy it away if you don't need it, then any future buyer still has access to it. If you have a dish connected up, then you can access freesat through that as an alternative.

mobileron

An aerial will cost you £100 plus,get a firestick for £39.00 and will do all u need.
So thats a good moneysaver for you.

techquest

Or a Kodi box. Though you will still have rj45 cables running the service from your router to the box, unless you use a powerline type set up.

mobileron

Firestick will do all that for you.Plus change your tv to a smart one,ensure you have HDMI connector.

Nilrem

The issue I tend to point out whenever someone says to just use a firestick or similar for TV viewing and to do away with the arial is that your TV antenna will likely work even when your phone/cable line is down, or your ISP has messed up it's DNS/routing
Also remember the issues you can run into when changing ISP, and if you're on a limited data plan or your BB speed isn't high enough to say allow TV viewing and computer related stuff.

If you've got some DVD's etc it's not so big an issue, but even the most reliable ISP will have downtime either due to planned work, or something unplanned (network upgrade gone wrong, flooding knocking out a junction box, some wally in a Digger cutting through the cabling several times in the space of a week*).

I'm on cable and normally it's 100% reliable for months/years at a time, but when there is an issue it can take a day+ to sort it, and ADSL tends to be far worse in terms of arguing about if it's the ISP or openreach and getting someone out to look for a fault that might be anywhere along the route a 50 year old copper pair has taken (and might disappear for a while when the sun dries out rain/damp that's got into a junction box).

Short answer, keep the TV arial if you watch TV and want something that is just going to work if just as a back up

*They did that round here for some BT cables twice in about a month, and a friend lives in an area where whilst they were building a new estate they cut through the main power cable for half the town, three times in a week resulting in street cabs and the exchange losing power that affected even the parts of town that still had power (from what he said it sounded like they didn't check the route of the cable properly/trace it after the first cut, nor the second).