How I cut the cord and cut my cable bill in half
After 20 years of paying Comcast for cable TV, internet and phone, I decided to cut the cord, well sort of.
Ok, a few facts and figures first. In our household, we pretty much had everything Comcast had to offer. HD TV with a DVR set top box, a second HD set top box for the upstairs TV, all the major pay channels (HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Cinemax), their VOIP landline phone service and their ISP services (internet). This bundle of services is named the “Triple Play Package”. For this package, our last full cable bill was $236.39 per month. I understand a 5% increase is slated for February 2019.
I also subscribe to two streaming services: Amazon Prime ($119/year) and Netflix ($10.99/month), two nice services with some spectacular original content. So all together, I was paying nearly $260/month for entertainment, internet access and a VOIP landline. When I totaled it up, cable entertainment, internet and phone cost a whopping (at least to me) $3087.56/year. Some might quibble that the free shipping included with Amazon Prime brings the cost of that service down a bit. I quite agree and suggest that my real cost for Amazon Prime content is closer to $5.00/month (I factored in the savings in shipping costs for Amazon purchases) and so total annual cost is close to $3028.56. My goal is to halve the annual cost of internet enabled entertainment. Read on to see if I have achieved my goal and allow me to share with you my experiences and lessons learned. I would say that pretty much anyone with a basic consumer understanding of streaming content over the internet, RF coax connections, and HD TV antennas can be successful in cutting the cord.
I had a few goals besides lowering my cable bill that I needed to achieve before I could claim success. My wife is not nearly as great a consumer of TV content as her husband. Nor is she particularly technical or electronic savvy. The new TV watching paradigm must be user friendly for my wife. With this in mind, I’d like to offer a couple of comments regarding Comcast and their Xfinity products. I truly believe that the Xfinity X1 service offered by Comcast is first rate. The user interface is really quite good. The DVR functionality and ability to view live and recorded content remote from your home is a very nice service. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to use the X1 system. So the new system needed to approach the X1 level of simplicity. I am also a news junkie, so I wanted to have continued access to CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and for the strange and fictional news, Fox and Fox Business. I also follow a few shows on Comedy Central and TBS that I want to continue. A major goal was to be able to DVR content from the major networks – ABC, CBS and NBC. Last, I want to be able stream this content to wherever I happen to be.
I’ve been thinking about cord cutting for a few years and have been following product developments that would enable me to achieve my goals. The recent introduction of the Amazon Recast was the final piece that allowed me to take the plunge and cut the Comcast cord – almost.
My new system is composed of the following:
Samsung Smart TV
Sony Dumb TV
Amazon Recast
Onkyo 5.1 Receiver (circa 2000)
Amazon Fire TV Cube (includes IR blaster to control your receiver or DVD, ETC.)
Amazon Fire TV Stick
Clear Stream 2 Max Antenna from Antenna Direct
Amazon Fire TV Stick remote control with volume control
I created the final system a little bit at a time over the last year of so.
First, I purchased the Fire TV Stick for the upstairs dumb Sony HD TV. I wanted to add Netflix and Amazon Prime functionality to this TV. Wow, great user installation experience. Super simple to setup and away we go. Simply plug it in to a HDMI slot on your TV, switch the TV source input to the Fire TV Stick HDMI port, and follow the on screen instructions.
Next, based on my experience with the Fire TV Stick, I purchased the Fire TV Cube when it first came out. The Cube differs from the Fire TV Stick in several important ways. The Cube incorporates the Alexis application. Wasn’t sure how useful Alexis was going to be, but more on that later. The Cube can also control other pieces of your entertainment equipment like my old Onkyo 5.1 Receiver. The receiver is not smart but is remotely controllable via an IR remote. I was able to easily setup the Cube to control receiver’s input, power and volume via an included IR blaster accessory. An early implementation had the Cube control the Xfinity set top box as well. The Cube provides a platform to support the other streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime from a common user interface and remote control.
The last piece was the Amazon Recast and a high quality HD antenna.
The Recast provides the ability to watch and record Over The Air (OTA) content. The key for me is the ability of the Recast to record OTA content and instantly fast forward or rewind this content while viewing. Using the remote one can fast forward 30 seconds with the push of the fast forward button or rewind 10 seconds with the press of the rewind button. Alternatively, you can speak to the remote and say “forward 4 minutes” and instantly content is advanced 4 minutes and the same for the rewind function.
My experience with HD antennas showed that type and placement of the antenna is critical. In the Portland metro area, I am able to scan and lock onto 48 OTA channels. I live about 10 miles from the major TV transmission towers serving Portland. The first antenna I used was a Mohu Leaf 30 mile amplified indoor antenna. I had difficulty positioning the antenna on a window that pointed in the right direction to get all the OTA network channels. The window at the front of the house was able to lock on to CBS and ABC but not NBC. The back window locked on to NBC but failed to lock on to CBS. I then moved the antenna to the attic above the garage thinking higher and better direction with fewer walls would help. It did partially, as I could lock on to all three major networks but the signal quality was poor. Not a satisfactory solution. I figured that a better antenna was the solution. I researched and settled on an Antenna Direct Clear Stream 2 Max antenna. Wow, what a difference. I was able to scan and lock on all 48 channels with good signal quality. Regardless of how good the antenna is, direction is critical. I ended up using an application on the Antenna Direct website that maps your location to the transmission towers providing compass vectors so you can accurately aim your antenna to the transmitters. I used the compass app on my IPhone to assist in lining up the antenna. I noticed that antenna miss alignment of a just a few degrees makes a difference. I could probably get better signal quality if I attached the antenna to an outside wall pointed at the towers but so far so good. I am a little concerned that as the trees on my property between the antenna and towers leaf out this spring and summer that signal quality may degrade. We’ll see. So now I have the ability to DVR (now a verb) all major networks with HD video quality.
One more note. The Recast box sends all its content via WIFI to the Fire TV Stick or Cube which then sends the video and audio via HDMI to the TV. I control the Recast box from the Fire TV app on my IPhone or from the Fire TV Stick or Cube on screen menus. The cool thing is the Recast box does not need to be located near TVs, just on the same WIFI network. I located the Recast box in the house near an unused cable TV connection. The antenna is located in the attic 12 feet above the garage floor. I re-purposed the coax cable installed in my house to feed the antenna signal to the Recast box. It would be pretty inconvenient to go up and down the ladder and back into the house each time I adjusted the antenna to rescan channels to check for improved signal quality. Instead, I could stand next to the antenna, run the Recast channel scan function on my IPhone and see if the latest adjustment did the trick. The Fire TV app indicates whether the signal strength for each TV channel is sufficient, if not, make a new adjustment and rerun the scan until satisfied.
The next issue to tackle was to fill in the other channels I want to access. The simple solution was to add a HULU subscription. HULU offers a raft of channels including the major network channels, but their DVR function adds a substantial monthly cost. I choose the $39.99 HULU + Live TV package. This provides all the channels I wish to watch. If PAC 12 games are important, you can checkout the offerings from Sling or Fubo.
The upstairs TV has the lower cost Amazon Fire TV Stick. Both can access the Amazon Recast (OTA channels), HULU, Netflix and Amazon Prime. I also added Starz because we are in the middle of watching Counterpart and Outlander. I expect to cancel the Starz package once we have watched the current season. Alternatively, I expect to renew an HBONow subscription when Real-Time with Bill Maher & Game of Thrones returns and the same with Showtime when Homeland & Billions returns.
Now the solution is complete and the user experience is close to the quality of the Xfinity X1 system. My wife can easily navigate the system and watch what interests her. As a result, the monthly payment to Comcast has shrunk to $49.99 (still using Comcast as ISP provider) resulting in a savings of $186.40 per month. The landline was mostly used by telemarketers and robo callers so cancelling the landline is no hardship. We now use our mobile phones exclusively.
Here are the components I purchased to allow cord cutting.
Total One Time investment: $567.85
Fire TV Cube $89.99
Fire TV Stick $24.99
Fire TV remote with volume control $29.99
Amazon Recast $229.99
Netgear C6300 Cable Modem and Wireless Router $124.99
Antenna Direct Clear Stream 2 HD Antenna $54.95
Coax cable $12.95
Old Total Recurring Expense: $252.38
Comcast $236.39 (includes ISP, landline, two cable boxes and modem/router, HD DVR, Showtime, HBO, Starz, Cinemax)
Netflix $10.99
Amazon Prime $5.00
New Total Recurring Expense: $114.96
Comcast internet service $49.99
HULU $39.99
Netflix $10.99
Amazon $5.00
Starz $8.99
Number of months to break even on the one time hardware investment: 4.1
Monthly savings: $137.42 or 54% reduction in monthly entertainment costs or over $1600/year.
Goals Achieved!
Side Bar
Alexis' functions
I mentioned that the Amazon Fire TV Cube incorporates Alexis’ personal assistant functions. I had never used Alexis before and found it to be intriguing and actually useful. This is a partial list of what we use Alexis for:
We use it to turn on or turn off the TV and receiver
Change TV volume
Set a kitchen timer
Control a Nest Thermostat
Control an Orbit Bhyve WIFI Sprinkler Timer
Check the weather forecast
Answer the odd question
Play music
Find movies
I want to offer a note about the Amazon remote control. I really dislike having a coffee table with six remotes. We seldom view DVDs, preferring to stream new movie content, so the DVD player is gathering dust and no remote needed. The remote for the receiver is rarely used since it’s mostly setup and the volume and power is controlled via the Cube. The Fire TV user interface is controlled by the Amazon remote easily selecting live channels or streaming content. The only problem was the standard Fire TV Stick or Cube remote which has no volume function. So you could either say “Alexis increase/decrease volume” which is kind of annoying or grab the TV remote which for me is undesirable. Enter the new Amazon Fire Remote with volume and mute control for $30. I think it’s a rip off but it is a more elegant solution. Hopefully, this will become the standard Fire TV remote soon.
