Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) 2017 - 2020

[COcheesehead]

Been following this thread and looking for ways to cut the cord, but nothing seems without issues or a downgrade in service.

We just called Comcast today and renegotiated our old fashioned cable and we were able to save almost $80/month and we lose only two channels: Indieplex and Retroplex, that we watch.

 

[Rustic23]

How do you all live without local News! No Rape, No Murder, No bloody car crashes! How does one adjust! :0

 

[COcheesehead]

I haven't watched local news in years.

 

[Midpack]

I haven't watched local news in years.

If it wasn't for weather, we probably wouldn't either. After living near Chicago for over 25 years, we've stopped getting alarmed at the latest murders, latest strike, latest politician arrested or latest carjacker crash...like most metro areas.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

How do you all live without local News! No Rape, No Murder, No bloody car crashes! How does one adjust! :0

Um...you forgot apartment fires. You know, when during an interview, a tenant says, "I LOST EVERYTHING!!!!" and the reporter says, "Investigators are looking into the cause of the fire"...I guess they don't teach the "fire triangle" in journalism school.

I do actually feel bad for the reporters. I would imagine covering the same old local issues gets old very, VERY quickly.

 

[COcheesehead]

Um...you forgot apartment fires. You know, when during an interview, a tenant says, "I LOST EVERYTHING!!!!" and the reporter says, "Investigators are looking into the cause of the fire"...I guess they don't teach the "fire triangle" in journalism school.

I do actually feel bad for the reporters. I would imagine covering the same old local issues gets old very, VERY quickly.

I know a couple local reporters. They don't get paid much and the number of jobs is diminishing. Local TV news will soon be weather following by a quick sports update and then more weather.

 

[aja8888]

How do you all live without local News! No Rape, No Murder, No bloody car crashes! How does one adjust! :0

I watch reruns of the First 48 and can choose my crime. Plus, I have seen all 17 years of them and have favorites. Otherwise, I watch live sports (Astros, Rockets, etc). Weather? I use my Chromebook to see what the weatherman is making guesses at.

We need internet, but not cable. If I could get DW to lay off the Comcast addiction, we would be like others here and just stream stuff and use Sling for sports.

Heck, for sports, we could just go to a local pub to watch it.

 

[audreyh1]

We've noticed the increased availability of foreign content on Netflix too. Some of it's eh, but much of it is pretty good. A refreshing change of pace from the same retreads Hollywood puts out.

Worth a try if you haven't.

Yes - we’ve found it super refreshing. Quality is very high in general - acting as well as production values. We’ve watched several Korean series, some from Spain, a little French, and even an fantastic Egyptian production - remake of a Spain series that blows the original away. We’re loving this!

Hollywood gets so clichéd, and a lot of the British shows fall into their own same old same old as well. So branching out from English has been incredibly entertaining.

 

[audreyh1]

How do you all live without local News! No Rape, No Murder, No bloody car crashes! How does one adjust! :0

I haven't watched local news in years.

It’s been so long now. Delighted to have that out of our life.

 

[Chuckanut]

Yes - we’ve found it super refreshing. Quality is very high in general - acting as well as production values. We’ve watched several Korean series, some from Spain, a little French, and even an fantastic Egyptian production - remake of a Spain series that blows the original away. We’re loving this!



Hollywood gets so clichéd, and a lot of the British shows fall into their own same old same old as well. So branching out from English has been incredibly entertaining.

See if the MHz network is in your area. Lots of foreign news and shows.

 

[CaptTom]

I have four weather apps on my cell phone (not counting marine weather buoy data and tides.)

I get local news on my laptop or phone. The big TV stations all have web sites, and one company owns all the local newspapers, and they have a web site.

I even watched the super bowl, free, on my laptop.

What would I want local TV over cable for?

 

[NoMoreJob]

I wish some technically savvy millennial would setup a business advising individuals on setting their homes up electronically but on a reasonable budget. That would include setting up antennas that could acquire a UHF signal 65 miles away.

I'm no millennial but could certainly do that. The problem is that I wouldn't be willing to then serve as ongoing technical support because I'm not patient enough. The other challenge from a support standpoint is that everyone's setup is different.

 

[audreyh1]

See if the MHz network is in your area. Lots of foreign news and shows.

Is that off air? Our TV reception is horrible around here and we totally gave up on it.

 

[audreyh1]

I have four weather apps on my cell phone (not counting marine weather buoy data and tides.)

I get local news on my laptop or phone. The big TV stations all have web sites, and one company owns all the local newspapers, and they have a web site.

I even watched the super bowl, free, on my laptop.

What would I want local TV over cable for?

Yeah pretty much get all weather info off Internet.

 

[Katsmeow]

We recently sold our house and are in a short term rental until we close on our new house. I had thought we might give up cable TV entirely and go with something like Playstation Vue. But, I am beginning to wonder if I get much benefit from it.

Where we came from (near Houston) we had Comcast and nothing else really. There was no competition. So you could get a year of a good contract, but then it would go way up. Yes, we could have dropped cable and gotten direct TV or Dish theoretically but internet alone with Comcast was so expensive that we wouldn't save any money doing.

Where we are moving to (near Fort Worth) we have more choice and competition including for internet. My first thought was just to get internet (about $45 for the first year) and then get Playstation Vue (lowest cost is $35 a month).

I actually don't watch much TV at all. I mostly watch HGTV and MSNBC, occcasionally other news shows. Honestly, I could be pretty happy if I just had access to those two channels. But, of course, you can't really do that. DH watches some sports but isn't insistent on it. So we could do internet/PS Vue for about $80 a year (plus tax). We have one Roku TV that could get Playstation Vue but we would have to buy something for the other TVs to access Playstation Vue. And, after a year, the internet would go up. We could then switch to the other internet provider though and get a good price and go back and forth each year.

But I am not sure this really works out better than just getting a cable TV/internet bundle. Similar bundle seems to be about $90 a month and I don't have to buy a device for the other TVs to access the content like I would have to do with the Playstation Vue. Of course, I am sure there are other expenses like for the DVR but it doesn't sound like I get much financial benefit from Playstation Vue.

Of course, after a year that $90 goes way up. But, since there is competition here, in a year I could switch to internet/satellite with one of the other providers and do that for a year and then switch back maybe having some chance of a better price since there is competition.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

Katsmeow - The Cable deal breaker for me was when they began scrambling the signal which required a proprietary box at each TV. Scrambling was not part of the digital push, just a little extra revenue grab. Each box was $6 to $10 per month. I had 5 or 6 TVs so this was an Extra $30 to $60 per month.

 

[Midpack]

So we could do internet/PS Vue for about $80 a year (plus tax). We have one Roku TV that could get Playstation Vue but we would have to buy something for the other TVs to access Playstation Vue. And, after a year, the internet would go up. We could then switch to the other internet provider though and get a good price and go back and forth each year.

Similar bundle seems to be about $90 a month and I don't have to buy a device for the other TVs to access the content like I would have to do with the Playstation Vue. Of course, I am sure there are other expenses like for the DVR but it doesn't sound like I get much financial benefit from Playstation Vue.

Of course, after a year that $90 goes way up. But, since there is competition here, in a year I could switch to internet/satellite with one of the other providers and do that for a year and then switch back maybe having some chance of a better price since there is competition.

Sounds like streaming won’t save you much, you’re $ options are considerably different than where we are.

I’ve said it before, it’s not as straightforward for anyone who wouldn’t have internet anyway. We’d have intent even if we didn’t watch any TV.

Internet costs us $50/mo, hasn’t one up in years though I’m sure it will eventually.

Dish satellite was up to $96/mo for 2 TV’s and a 2 year contract is required. PS Vue costs us $45/mo, plus $5/mo for PBS and that’s for up to 5 simultaneous streams (3 TV, 2 Mobile) with no contract. So streaming is about half the cost than the cheapest satellite package we could find. And the channel lineups with PS Vue are less cluttered than any cable or satellite lineup we’ve seen, IOW to get the channels we wanted we had to take 80 other channels we’d never watch.

We have two Rokus and a Chromecast. Over even two years (typical cable/satellite contract), the streaming devices amortize to very little.

And internet, cable and satellite providers are wise to those who switch after every contract to take advantage of first year teaser rates. It will work for a while, but eventually they’ll refuse, you can do a search and find customers who’ve run into that.

 

[zinger1457]

And internet, cable and satellite providers are wise to those who switch after every contract to take advantage of first year teaser rates. It will work for a while, but eventually they’ll refuse, you can do a search and find customers who’ve run into that.

I've been doing it for 20 years and they haven't gotten wise to me yet. In fact usually within a couple of months after dropping one provider I start getting mail from them with special offers to come back.

 

[dixonge]

Here in the deep southwest (south of Guadalajara) there are less choices to clutter the decision process :/

When your internet is a bit spotty w/ a max of 10mbps download and maybe 1mbps upload you can probably rule out MMORPG gaming and you can't always count on streaming. This has forced me to mostly download and watch later. Some friends just moved farther out of the city and have 3mbps down, so we can share downloads with them via sneakernet. Our current apartment did come with a nice setup though - 44" 4K TV and sharing of landlord's Netflix premium account!

I now have three units (Raspberry Pi, Minix PC, Hackintosh) connected to TV via HDMI, then run the audio from the TV out to my Logitech computer speakers w/ sub.

 

[jim584672]

I've been doing it for 20 years and they haven't gotten wise to me yet. In fact usually within a couple of months after dropping one provider I start getting mail from them with special offers to come back.

Once you get wired for both and go bare Internet it make the change easy. Play one against the other every year is the way to go.

 

[COcheesehead]

We just call Comcast about every 12 - 18 months and ask for a reduction. They take something away or modify the package, but we end up always dropping our bill.

 

[bUU]

We just call Comcast about every 12 - 18 months and ask for a reduction. They take something away or modify the package, but we end up always dropping our bill.

We had been doing that forever but recent attempts were met with refusals. The only way to get that introductory discount was to upgrade to a higher level package.

 

[COcheesehead]

We had been doing that forever but recent attempts were met with refusals. The only way to get that introductory discount was to upgrade to a higher level package.

We just did it yesterday. We don't ask for the intro package, just a lower rate. They have never refused.

 

[Aerides]

We just did it yesterday. We don't ask for the intro package, just a lower rate. They have never refused.

We do the same. We say we want to cancel TV and just keep internet (the first time we really did, and were planning on cord cutting). "Cancel" appears to be the magic word.

After 3 years of doing this we're still paying barely $20 a month more to keep TV, and that includes HBO. So it's in no-brainer territory for us.

 

[Midpack]

We just did it yesterday. We don't ask for the intro package, just a lower rate. They have never refused.

For 7 years Dish always found a way to reduce our monthly cost, or waive an increase - until they just wouldn't anymore. I guess I could have switched every 7 years, but the cost for cable/satellite is double or more, so we didn't.

Others have run into providers who stopped working with customers, or extending teaser rates, but whatever works for each of us.