I cut cable TV. And I'm enjoying free and cheap alternatives to cable and satellite.

I was a loyal cable TV customer all my life. I started having cable once my parents bought an old analog Sony TV set from an electronics store back in the early 90's. I was a little kid at the time and I had cable TV throughout my childhood and young adult years, especially when me and my parents moved to a house in Antioch, California, a suburb in the Bay Area. I enjoyed that I can watch 24 hour cartoons, 24 hour movies, and 24 hour music with the cable networks. My brother Ricky was still living in my childhood home in San Francisco, and he wasn't using cable TV there. When I moved back to my childhood house in San Francisco about two years ago, I had my mom's old 1993 analog Magnavox TV set up in my bedroom. Yet I couldn't watch anything on my TV except using my Xbox 360 to play my movies and TV shows I had on DVD. It wasn't until later years I found out that analog TV sets now needed a DTV converter box and antenna to watch over-the-air programming. Back in June 2009, the US government now ensured that all networks upgrade from analog to digital broadcasting. I didn't have an HDTV set, and it turned out only HDTV sets or Smart TV's didn't require you to buy a separate converter box to watch local channels and the big networks like PBS, ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and CW. They had digital tuners built in, so if someone didn't subscribe to cable or satellite TV, they can watch over-the-air broadcast TV channels through connecting their antenna to their HDTV set. 

Analog TV's weren't obsolete but they now needed a DTV converter box and antenna to watch free TV (the local channels and big networks) since June 2009 when the Digital TV laws were passed by the government. 

Of course I didn't have cable anymore once I moved into my childhood house. For the next year or so, I was stuck using my Xbox 360 gaming console to watch DVD's I bought from Rasputin Records or I borrowed DVD's from the library to watch whatever I could. Something in me was missing. I wanted to watch actual TV. So I went on the Internet to find out how my old 1993 Magnavox tube TV can receive free TV programming from the local channels and big networks like ABC. Me and my brother Ricky weren't subscribing to cable or satellite, so our options were limited to watching over-the-air antenna programming of shows like Grey's Anatomy or Nashville. So I went to Radioshack the next day without getting enough hours of sleep, excited, and I bought me a DTV converter box and a Radioshack TV rabbit ears antenna. The reason why my brother didn't have cable or satellite was because we didn't want to pay $80 on basic cable with most channels we wouldn't even watch. Plus there was too much trashy reality shows and with so many channels and smut, it was harder to surf through cable to find good quality TV. Too much smut too. We thought it was pointless. My brother had a Samsung HDTV he bought from Costco in 2008, so he was able to watch over-the-air programming without a converter box as it had a digital tuner. Not sure what shows he watches though.

So I bought me the converter box and antenna. I set it up on my old analog TV, I scanned for channels and tweaked the rabbit ears antenna a little bit and I had about 36 channels! Some of these local channels didn't work because it had a very weak or no signal. I couldn't get KTSF very well because of a very weak signal on my antenna and DTV converter box. Now you see, I live in a metropolitan city that's very popular in America called San Francisco. Tourists come here and many people in the world would love to live here. Because I lived in a big city, I was able to get a lot of over-the-air DTV channels! Here's my channel lineup through my converter box and rabbit ears antenna.

My digital broadcast TV channels

Callsign		Network	Virtual Channel	Band
	KPIX	CBS	5-1	UHF
	KBCW	CW	44-1	UHF
	KRON	MYTV	4-1	UHF
	KQED	PBS	9-1	UHF
	KCNS	IND	38-1	UHF
	KOFY	IND	20-1	UHF
	KTVU	FOX	2-1	UHF
	KMTP	ETV	32-1	UHF
	KFSF	TELEFUTURA	66-1	UHF
	KCSM	PBS	60-1	UHF
	KGO	ABC	7-1	Hi-V
	KKPX	ION	65-1	UHF
	KNTV	NBC	11-1	Hi-V
	KDTV	UNIVISION	14-1	UHF
	KSTS	TELEMUNDO	48-1	UHF
	KTNC	TUVISION	42-1	UHF
	KTSF	IND	26-1	UHF
	KICU	IND	36-1	UHF
	KQEH	unknown	54-1	UHF
	KTLN	IND	68-1	UHF
	KRCB	PBS	22-1	UHF
	KVIE	PBS	6-1	Hi-V
	KXTV	ABC	10-1	Hi-V
	KOVR	CBS	13-1	UHF

CALL SIGN	NETWORK	CHANNEL	HD
KBCW	CW	44-1
KCNS	MundoFox	38-1
KCNS	Sino TV	38-2	-
KCNS	Estrella TV	38-3	-
KCNS	Japanese	38-4	-
KCSM-TV	Educational	60-1
KCSM-TV	MHz Worldview	60-2	-
KCSM-TV	Audio	60-3	-
KFSF-DT	UniMas	66-1
KFSF-DT	Bounce TV	66-2	-
KGO-TV	ABC	7-1
KGO-TV	Live Well	7-2
KGO-TV	Live Well	7-3	-
KMTP-TV	Ethnic	32-1	-
KMTP-TV	NTDTV	32-5	-
KMTP-TV	Asian	32-6	-
KOFY-TV	Independent	20-1
KOFY-TV	Me-TV	20-2	-
KPIX-TV	CBS	5-1
KQED	PBS	9-1
KQED	PBS	9-2	-
KQED	World Channel	9-3	-
KRON-TV	My Network TV	4-1
KRON-TV	Weather	4-2	-
KTVU	FOX	2-1
KTVU	LATV	2-2	-
K14MW-D	-	-	-
KTSF	Asian	26-1	-
KTSF	ICN	26-4	-
KTSF	Vietnamese	26-5	-
KTSF	World	26-6	-
KNTV	NBC	11-1
KNTV	COZI TV	11-2	-
KTNC-TV	Estrella TV	42-1	-
KTNC-TV	Estrella TV	42-2	-
KTNC-TV	This TV	42-3	-
KTNC-TV	Retro TV	42-4	-
KTLN-TV	TLN	68-1	-
KTLN-TV	Infomercials	68-2	-
KTLN-TV	SonLife	68-3	-
KDTV-DT	Univision	14-1
KDTV-DT	UniMas	14-2	-
KSTS	Telemundo	48-1
KSTS	Exitos TV	48-2	-

Now that I am enjoying TV. I found that most of the TV shows, entertainment, and other fine programming on these broadcast channels were better than what I was getting on cable. I get to enjoy the local news on ABC with Carolyn Johnson and Dan Ashley. I get to watch the latest hit TV shows on the networks like Dancing With The Stars and The Mindy Project. With cable, there was just 600 channels and pretty much nothing was on during most of those channels and I would never watch most of them anyways on my TV. So I wasn't paying for a hundred something cable TV channels I would never watch or had nothing on. I loved the fact I cut the cord and disabled my cable. Watching free TV should be something that is embraced. As of these days, I heard most people are getting fed up with the rising costs of cable and satellite TV and cut their cord for streaming video/Internet TV set-top boxes like Roku and/or just settled with digital broadcast TV channels with their antenna hooked up to their flat LED screen HDTV sets. Plus finding good TV shows and movies on cable gets mundane and tiring quickly!

Since I've been living like this for awhile already, do I really miss cable? Well I do miss watching channels like Comedy Central, Travel Channel, ABC Family, Disney Channel, BET, and TV Land. Instead of TV Land, I watch I Love Lucy reruns on MeTV. Instead of Comedy Central, I watch America's Funniest Home Videos on ABC. Instead of Disney Channel shows, I watch the Vortexx on CW on Saturday mornings. Now you see, I love TV but I don't let it consume my daily life. I have a girlfriend Faith who I'm in a long-term relationship with. I spend time with her in my free time. I make music with my guitar and use  Mixcraft on my laptop. I walk around the Excelsior District where I live at in San Francisco for a few hours in my free time when the weather is good! And I work a per diem job at a greeting card company. 

Because of the popularity of streaming video set-top boxes like Apple TV, Roku, and TV Pad, I learned online that using these electronics can be a money saving alternative to cable and satellite. In late April of 2013, I became one of the 5 million people who decided to give it a try. I bought Roku LT from Best Buy, and I set that purple box the size of a sandwich onto my TV. Because these things require WiFi at home to use, I wouldn't recommend a streaming Internet video box for people who watch TV but doesn't have Internet at home or isn't well adapted to this new technology. I wanted to try Roku out, and so far, I've been very pleased with it! I get to watch more of a variety of free content. Roku is basically streaming Internet video and watching it on your TV like shows and movies. Smart TV sets already have Hulu and Netflix built in. But Roku and streaming media boxes contain a lot of free awesome TV shows and movies and other interesting content. It gives you your own choice to choose what you watch that's made available. The thing about Roku is, it contains 600 online streaming Internet video channels featuring movies, the news, cartoons, and TV shows. A lot of the content is free, but it's mostly B-movies and I do get free Anime on the Crunchy Roll channel on my Roku LT box. To get the most of Roku, you need to subscribe to paid streaming channels like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. You get a lot of reruns of TV shows from the big networks like ABC, CBS, and FOX, programming from a few cable networks, and a whole lot more. Since Roku is fairly new, not every cable network has jumped on the bandwagon yet but it will happen soon considering the decline that cable and satellite TV had in recent years. Roku doesn't work like a conventional TV, you get to choose and click on what you want to watch on whatever channel you're on with Roku and you browse content for it, it's like using YouTube in a way on the Internet. I think Roku and these streaming media set-top boxes like TVPad are a great cheap alternative to cable. While you still have to pay a little money in your bank account for some of its better features, its still way less than what you're paying for in a cable or satellite TV bill. I use Roku to watch movies, TV shows, and things I couldn't get out of the converter box broadcast channels since it wasn't enough to satisfy my TV needs. It really worked! I get to watch reruns of Adventure Time and Beavis and Butthead by paying for the Hulu Plus channel on my Roku box, and I get to watch and stream movies as I browse for something good and interesting to watch on this awesome new technology called the streaming media player. And Hulu Plus shows some TV shows that they no longer show on both cable or satellite! Ooooh yeah!

I use Roku as a cheap alternative for cable and satellite TV. And I couldn't be any happier. Even my mom is thinking of cutting her cable for these streaming video set-top boxes! She was thinking of cutting cable for Dish Network because satellite is cheaper than cable, but we don't know for sure yet. I found the cheap and free alternative to cable and satellite, by watching over-the-air digital TV broadcast channels like ABC, KOFY, MeTV, CW, and FOX. And I use a streaming media player called Roku to watch more and more interesting TV shows and movies that I couldn't get on the broadcast channels or were only on cable or satellite. Who needs cable or satellite when you can find free and cheap alternatives to watching TV? :)

And I have a huge DVD collection of TV shows and movies. I downloaded them, bought them at the store, or I burned them onto DVDR's when I borrow them from the library. I don't really care what anyone says. I love TV. It's one of my interests and hobbies. But I do other things besides that too, keep in mind. And I'm here telling you all my amazing story of how I cut the cord and found the alternative to cable and satellite TV. :)

Thanks for reading!

Heavy Sigma & Patrick Lew Band Bio

For the last five years, Patrick, Dave, and the rest of the musicians and friends associated with Patrick Lew's Electric Army are positive everyday people doing music as a passionate hobby, and balancing everything important essentially before getting together to make music.

Patrick Lew's Electric Army reign over localized Bay Area rock music - and for that matter, the social-media - was a critical success and sporadic struggle since 2008. As a cult-like social media phenomenon on the Internet and their very own hometown of San Francisco, California, Facebook "likes" and Internet virality through the Electric Army's music websites online varied but never kept themselves or their fans quiet worldwide since their 2008 formation, the garage punk band while often a critical jackpot or success within the music industry - depending who you ask - have created very extraordinary experiences for themselves in contemporary society. Before they became band, Patrick, Dave, Faith, and the rest of the musicians and friends associated with this garage band phenomenon in Patrick Lew's Electric Army, were merely misfits and fairly below the status quo of society. They struggled years to accomplish what they've dreamed about, musically procrastinated for a long time, and yearned for in their pre-adolescent childhood aspirations to become and feel like a part of something, after being isolated for so long. Anyone who had played music, made contributions, and recorded with these peeps, was a precursor for bigger things to come in life generally speaking.

All the band members (former and current) were 1980's babies, who had their childhoods growing up in the 1990's, but growing up in that essence was found comfortable through the Grunge (Nirvana and Pearl Jam) and later, Britpop musical movement that found their way through the pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook, and still fairly primitive technologically resourced days of cable TV on a Magnavox.

Patrick was just 13 years old when he found out what he wanted to put his passions and interest towards, whether it made him successful or not. He was a pre-teen rebel at the infamous Rooftop Middle School in the city of San Francisco. Life wasn't easy for the de-facto leader of the band growing up. His beloved grandfather passed away when Patrick was aged four, and spent nearly his whole childhood sheltered and isolated from "the in-crowd." When he was just aged 13, he bought his first electric guitar at a mom-and-pop music store, and painstakingly practiced and procastinated when learning how to play the guitar.

While he wasn't particularly skilled as a musician, at least not yet by conventional standards, Patrick was going to Cumberland Church every Sunday in the Chinatown. It was here! Where he met his soon-to-be high school classmate Tommy and struck a close friendship which lasted since day one. The two friends began establishing themselves with aspirations to become professional - or semi-professional yet amateur - musicians and were damn passionate about playing rock & roll music. Regardless what many critics and haters thought of them since day one, never letting those jeers and poor criticism discourage their passion for playing music in garage bands. Tommy and Patrick formed a garage punk duo called Goldenweasel (which eventually became Band of Asians), and it was the tail end of the 90's as the two were about to graduate from 8th grade with diplomas before luxoriously attending Raoul Wallenberg Traditonal High School as freshmen.

Whilst their freshmen years in high school, Napster and mp3 technology was changing the way the music industry and how bands, musicians, any many other things could be heard and distributed. Computers and Internet, while still in its pre-Facebook days, were becoming more affordable for home office usage and digital music software was replacing the 4-track Tascam! While the Internet didn't virally made Patrick Lew a very successful millionaire rock & roll superstar with millions of "likes" or "fans" on Facebook, it did give him and a million other unsigned bands locally an option to get heard. But realizing the oversaturation of the Net of dozens and dozens of unsigned bands putting themselves out there, Lew had a lesson to learn in later years.

The next step meant! Jamming in their garage, playing their music aimlessly to create instrumental and songwriting ideas, fine tuning their musicianship, and everything else. This took quite a long time, as Lew procrastinated and practiced for years on-and-off to consolidate himself as a guitarist, songwriter, and musician. Plowing through a series of unsuccessful garage bands, and battling his own problems in his life before putting it back together.

In 2008, that dream being a successful musician making money, touring and performing in bands across nightclubs and theaters, and being super publicized and making professional studio recordings, were slowly but surely fading. Even though realizing music wasn't going to pay the utility bills, groceries, and the rent, Lew enrolled into a university in Hayward called CSUEB. Resumed his music as mainly a hobby, but cutting any expensive seriousness that would devour time, money, and effort into making a music career work in the long run. He graduated university in June 2011 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Music. Although music was no longer meant for seriousness for a potential career and benefit. It didn't mean he had to quit doing what he loved doing. He had to make music primarily as a hobby, and play guitar with the friends he chose carefully to play music with as a favorite past-time when everyone isn't busy with school, work, and other important or busy things in life. Flashing back three years prior to graduating college, Lew formed the Patrick Lew Band - later band named the Electric Army or simply, Patrick Lew's Electric Army.

Together, the PLB Army recorded and created music at the expense of their much heavily invested musical gear that Lew spent on with some of his college aid money. Somewhere in Patrick Lew's king-size bedroom inside a house in Antioch, California, that became the band practice room for the PLB Army where they made music. Sometimes, digital and electronic collaboration via Internet was related to the music making priorities. Through Skype and private email messages through social-media website GIANT, Facebook. This led to how Lew created music alone and with the assistance of others as sidemen musicians on record.

To get themselves out there however! They had to have a website. Most of Lew's free time leisurely on his Netbook was spent making a few websites here and there and posting the music by Patrick Lew's Electric Army up for everyone to hear online - SoundCloud, Reverbnation, etc etc. Lew and the rest knew this was going to be mainly a passionate past-time hobby recreationally, not a career path for success and to make a living financially. While the PLB Army doesn't really perform locally live, given the lack of many kinds of resources to do so. This doesn't mean the Patrick Lew Band doesn't perform onstage. They busk low-key shows and gigs anywhere they can. Whether it be downtown SF near the Powell BART station, churches, Antioch house parties, or secluded small Contra Costa County warehouses. That's their philosophy on how they handle their musical entrepreneurship. While the Patrick Lew Band is open about opportunities for exposure in music, they're not getting their hopes up. Many of the band members are rapidly approaching the big Three-O, and have other personal and career priorities for the most part.

But let's hope the music stays what it is and forever. Music will always be the weapon for the Patrick Lew Band.

WATCH THIS GROW! ENJOY THE MUSIC AND PLAY IT PASSIONATELY.