Antenna or streaming in Bunbury?
Half the calls we get now start with the same question: do I even need an antenna any more? It is a fair question and the honest answer is not the one an antenna business is supposed to give. Here is the real comparison for a Bunbury house.
What each one actually is.
An antenna receives the free-to-air broadcast off the Mount Lennard transmitter: ABC, SBS, GWN7, WIN and 10 West, plus their sub-channels. It is a one-way radio signal, it costs nothing to run, it does not care about your internet plan, and one antenna feeds every television in the house simultaneously. Streaming free-to-air uses the networks’ own apps over your NBN connection. Same content, entirely different delivery. Every set streaming at once is a separate stream competing for the same bandwidth, and everything depends on the connection staying up. That is the whole comparison in one paragraph. Everything else is detail about which trade-off suits your house.
Where the antenna genuinely wins.
- Reliability when it matters. Winter fronts take out power and internet in the South West with some regularity. A broadcast signal keeps coming. If the reason you want live TV is news and weather during a storm, that is not a small point.
- Live sport. Broadcast runs at a fixed bitrate regardless of congestion, and it is not twenty to sixty seconds behind. If you have ever heard the neighbours cheer before your screen showed the goal, you already know.
- Every set at once. One antenna, one lead-in, one splitter, and four TVs work. Four streams over a marginal connection is a different evening.
- Running cost of zero. Once it is on the roof there is no monthly anything.
- The older household. One remote, numbered channels, nothing to log into. This is not a small consideration, and it is the whole subject of our guide to setting up a TV for an older parent in Bunbury.
Where streaming genuinely wins.
- On-demand and catch-up. An antenna gives you what is broadcast now. Nothing else.
- Blocks with real reception problems. A heavily treed Gelorup block behind a stand of tuart can be expensive to solve properly. If the household mostly watches on demand anyway, spending $700 on a high-gain array to get a signal they will not use is a waste.
- Rentals and short stays. Nothing to drill, nothing to leave behind.
- Content the networks do not carry. Obvious, but it is why almost nobody is choosing one or the other in practice.
The ten-year cost, worked honestly.
Take a real Dalyellup coastal home. A marine-grade phased array with stainless fixings, sealed connectors, quad-shield RG6 and earthing to AS 1417 is around $540 fitted, and on that street it should give twelve to fifteen years. Call it $40 a year for live free-to-air to every set in the house, with no monthly cost and no dependence on the NBN. Streaming free-to-air is nominally free, but it requires an internet plan capable of carrying it, and if the honest answer is that you were paying for that anyway, then the marginal cost is close to zero too. Which means the money is not the deciding factor for most people. The deciding factor is whether you want live television to keep working when the internet does not.
The advice we actually give.
Most Bunbury households should have both, and we will tell you when you do not need us. If your antenna is healthy, keep it. It costs nothing to leave on the roof and it is the thing that still works during a June front. If your antenna is dead, ask yourself one question before replacing it: in the last year, did anyone in this house watch live free-to-air? If the answer is genuinely no, then do not spend $500 on our behalf, spend $250 having the streaming and home theatre set up properly instead. If the answer is yes, and in most Bunbury homes with sport, news or anyone over sixty in the house it is, then replace the antenna and stop thinking about it for another decade.
Where to go next.
If you are pricing a replacement, the antenna installation cost guide and the pricing guide have the numbers, and the best time of year to replace an antenna covers when to book. If the antenna is there but the picture is poor, read why TV signal is bad in Bunbury before you give up on it. For a new antenna installation, use the quote form. We cover Gelorup, Dalyellup and the wider South West.
Common questions about antennas and streaming.
Can I ditch the antenna and just stream free-to-air in Bunbury?
You can, and some households do it happily. Every free-to-air network runs a streaming app, and on a solid NBN connection they work well. The catch is that streaming free-to-air depends on your internet, it lags live broadcast by anywhere from twenty seconds to a minute, and multiple sets streaming at once all draw from the same connection. An antenna feeds every TV in the house at once, costs nothing per month, and works when the internet is down.
Which is cheaper over ten years, an antenna or streaming?
An antenna is cheaper if you only want free-to-air. A marine-grade install on a Bunbury coastal home is $340 to $580 fitted and then costs nothing for twelve to fifteen years, which works out around $40 a year. Free-to-air streaming apps are free too, but they require an internet plan good enough to carry them, and if you are adding a subscription service the comparison stops being about the antenna at all.
Is the picture quality different?
Broadcast is generally the more consistent picture for live free-to-air. A properly aimed antenna delivers the full broadcast stream at a fixed bitrate regardless of what anyone else in the house or the street is doing. Streaming quality flexes with your connection and with congestion, so it can look excellent at ten in the morning and soften during the evening peak. For live sport the difference is most noticeable, and it is why sports viewers keep the antenna.
What about VAST satellite for fringe blocks around Bunbury?
VAST is the satellite service intended for homes that genuinely cannot receive terrestrial television, and eligibility is assessed rather than optional. In practice almost nowhere around Bunbury needs it. Even the difficult spots, treed Gelorup blocks and the pockets shadowed behind the scarp, are usually solved with a high-gain phased array and a masthead amplifier aimed at Mount Lennard for far less than a satellite install.
What is the sensible setup for most Bunbury homes?
Both, and it is not a fence-sit. Keep a healthy antenna for live free-to-air, news and sport, because it is reliable, free to run and feeds every set at once. Use streaming for on-demand and for anything the networks do not carry. The households that regret dropping the antenna are the ones who did it in summer and discovered in June that their internet and their television now fail at exactly the same time.
Where we work.
Not sure which way to go?
Tell us your suburb and what the house actually watches. If you do not need an antenna, we will say so.