Yea, my TV is a now ancient 6 year old Samsung 32 inch, 720P. Connected to it is the Fire Stick, Media PC, and a now rarely used Netgear NTV200 streaming player (similar to a Roku). 6 months ago I cut the cord with my Cable TV company and haven't looked back. I'd love to erect an HD antenna but even if I got the OK from the landlord I am too far from any stations. There's apps out there that you can use to determine what stations you could receive in your area and they come back and say even if I went 50 feet up the results would be marginal. So I do without and I survive just fine. I'm not looking forward to the day of no choice and the replacement TV is "smart" with all the BS and privacy issues that come with it.
Mmmokay... as long as the TV doesn't have my name and address, I couldn't care less what it sends back home to mommy. I agree; no voice, no camera, leave the WiFi disabled and plug in hardline.
I loathe commercial broadcast; it exists solely to broadcast commercials, any actual
content that might come along is an afterthought. We cut the cord in '12 and haven't looked back. I didn't want my kids growing up thinking it was normal to be bludgeoned with high-volume, high-pressure advertising screaming for your attention 24 minutes of every hour.
If you count the high-speed internet, we probably pay just about as much as we did when we had basic cable. But the cross-channel noise in our home dropped instantly by at least 20dB once we stopped having the commercial PA system constantly blaring at us. We now have complete control of the shows they watch, we don't have to worry about them becoming hypnotized by some stupid advert for an inherently messy toy or product, and we are able to treat TV time as we do Internet time: as a parentally-supervised activity.
Even now, half the time we'll start some show for the kids and when it's done playing, they just let it stay paused until it shuts off; they're busy doing other stuff. Little girl playing educational apps on her iPad, and the boi has started actually reading stuff on his Kindle. Game time 1 hour a day limit, screen time 3 hours total all devices. Hell, even I have trouble sticking to that one; but they have each other to torment, so no end of playtime goodness there.
If you miss broadcast, Winegard has a series of LNA-boosted attic antennas that are effing amazing; I had one of their "UFO" disc antennas years ago on top of my motorhome; I could get decent signal 50 miles from town. Looks like the 7550 is their TOL now, rated 70 miles. Only way to get better is their biggest Yagi. Manual is below.
mnem
*Toddling off to ded*