Poll: When Did You Cut the Cord (Cable and/or Satellite)?

[audreyh1]

For a white noise factor, we stream a ton of these YouTube cozy jazz videos (commercial free thanks to a another family member adding us to their account) on our 65" TV. They are static screens for the most part, with falling rain or snow or waves, plus instrumental jazz. They 'fill' the room without being a distraction. Super cozy.

With the Apple TV we play music of choice and turn on the Apple TV screen saver which cycles through various outdoor videos slow and peaceful on our large screen.

 

[pacergal]

We are holdouts, still have cable! We honestly don't watch much.

DD dropped hers last year and DS doesn't even have a TV.

 

[Midpack]

No entry for "Never Had Cable (so never anything to cut)"

Yeah, that seems so foreign to me that I didn’t think of cord nevers. Sorry.

 

[thod]

Had to go back and check my Quicken data. It appears the last check I wrote to Dish Network for satellite was in Feb 2016. Just an OTA antenna since then, with a DVR and some streaming services.

 

[Ally]

We still have cable, but mostly watch streaming with Roku. Every time I think about cutting cable and call them, they lower the price. We love their high speed internet, so even if we dropped cable, we would keep the internet. Just last week, they reduced our cable costs to less than $20 over the cost of the internet. We don’t have anything but the basic cable, but still that seems like a deal. My husband watches old movies and some sports, so it seems worth it.

 

[old medic]

We never had access to cable, and only had satellite for a few years... Son hooked us up with a PanSat satellite system... Man alive was that something... you had to be careful scanning around on that thing... And still, The meme was true. thousands of channels and was watching Andy Griffith re-runs..
About 2015 we cut the landline/broadband line and went to using our cellphone hotspot for internet.

 

[wmc1000]

Count us in on the 2008 cord cutting list! Never looked back after that.

 

[Surewhitey]

2003 cut the land line phone and went to Vonage voip. Moved to Mexico in 2007 & never had cable TV again. Haven't missed any of it. Our pet / house sitter has us logged into her HULU & Netflix, so we sponge off her (with her knowledge of course)... So she doesn't have to re-login, really.

 

[Car-Guy]

We have DSL "out here" and it often "drops out" and requires resetting but it is rarely actually "out". That disrupts streaming services and is a PIA but workable. So we still have DirecTv (~230 mo) plus Netflix Streaming and DVD service. (~$25 mo) We also have and watch many of the free streaming services. Tubi, Roku, etc, etc, etc. Never watch OTA since we only get one or two stations "sometimes" and they are awful. But, the DW likes her TV soooooooooo.....

As a side note: Our main big screen TV died out about a week ago and according to her, the "end of the world was near". To save the world, I moved our other big screen TV from the guest room to the living room (PIA). Our new big screen TV arrives in the next day or so, then I get to move the guest room TV back and then setup the new one. I can hardly wait.

 

[sengsational]

Yeah, that seems so foreign to me that I didn’t think of cord nevers. Sorry.

Including myself and counting the generation that "welcomed" the Cable monopolies into existence, I count 2 reports so far, so long tail, certainly. I've always been in a place where I could get OTA big 3 plus PBS. The latter made up the majority of viewing, but on a total hours, we just didn't and don't watch much TV.

 

[Luvtoride]

I have a question. Maybe I didn't read every response, but how do you watch local sports teams (not football) without cable? Being in the NY/NJ area, with many local sports teams how would you watch the hockey games, baseball games and basketball games of the local teams?
Yes, I do pay an additional fee for the "regional sports package" but that is the primary things I view through my cable TV provider. I know there are streaming services for each sports league, but often times the LOCAL teams are blacked out from viewing on those services.
I guess watching sports isn't much of an issue for most of you who "cut the cord". Most of the non-sports content we watch is on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+, Paramount Plus, etc. Other than watching the local news and sports (no, I don't want to attach an antenna to my TVs) there is very little else that we watch through regular cable.

 

[sengsational]

Sports is where they got you by the shorts. One technique to get around blackouts is to use a VPN and watch on an app...a couple more monthly expenses

 

[Luvtoride]

Sports is where they got you by the shorts. One technique to get around blackouts is to use a VPN and watch on an app...a couple more monthly expenses

Thanks Senga, convenience is a big part of the consideration and what I'm paying for with Cable.
I understand your suggestion and I am able to access sports via various websites and screen share from my phone/ iPad to my TV. The fact that I have a great large screen OLED TV to watch sports makes these work arounds unacceptable. I guess continuing to pay for Cable falls under BTD or hobbies in retirement that I will just need to continue to budget for.

 

[razztazz]

I dumped cable in Jan 2011. It seemed to be not cost effective. I watched the same handful of stations all the time. And this was with the expanded "2nd lowest rung" basic package. The stations that I had liked History, Learning etc were becoming some sort of parodies of cable TV. Almost everything I would have missed on cable I found there was a way to stream in online. Digital sub-channels were coming on big around that time and were not in the basic packages.

Then someone mentioned "Ya know there's a little box you can buy that turns your analog TV into a digital TV." So, I got one a cheap antenna.

 

[qwerty3656]

I have a question. Maybe I didn't read every response, but how do you watch local sports teams (not football) without cable? Being in the NY/NJ area, with many local sports teams how would you watch the hockey games, baseball games and basketball games of the local teams?

YoutubeTV has local channels (including sports). It's not super cheap (64.99 - you can sometimes find a deal for cheaper for some period of time), but cheaper than cable (and no hidden rental fees, taxes, etc). YoutubeTV also just got NFL sunday ticket.

 

[retire48in2018]

Check different streaming options

Like Fubo for example. Some have regional sports packages

 

[tulak]

I don’t remember exactly, but it was in the earlier 2000s. I didn’t want to raise kids hooked on tv ads.

The last service we had was DirectTV. After that I installed a Windows Media PC for over the air DVR and Netflix for DVDs. Eventually that evolved to streaming.

 

[SnowballCamper]

I never paid for cable. My dad was too cheap to get it when it came out (and it was probably a lot of money to get them to run it down a 1/4 mile driveway). I might have had a basic package with internet service sometime around 2004, but not for more than a year. I did recently splurge on YouTubeTV...but will probably cancel when daylight gets longer in a few months.

 

[Ally]

I have a question. Maybe I didn't read every response, but how do you watch local sports teams (not football) without cable? Being in the NY/NJ area, with many local sports teams how would you watch the hockey games, baseball games and basketball games of the local teams?

Yes, I do pay an additional fee for the "regional sports package" but that is the primary things I view through my cable TV provider. I know there are streaming services for each sports league, but often times the LOCAL teams are blacked out from viewing on those services.

I guess watching sports isn't much of an issue for most of you who "cut the cord". Most of the non-sports content we watch is on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+, Paramount Plus, etc. Other than watching the local news and sports (no, I don't want to attach an antenna to my TVs) there is very little else that we watch through regular cable.

We have the very basic cable, which has ESPN and Espn2, plus fox sports. To get any of the other games, we subscribe to ESPN plus during college basketball season. None of our local high school sports are on a tv channel.

 

[Luvtoride]

We have the very basic cable, which has ESPN and Espn2, plus fox sports. To get any of the other games, we subscribe to ESPN plus during college basketball season. None of our local high school sports are on a tv channel.

Yes, ESPN+ and Hulu have some sports, but I need MSG, YES and SNY to get all the games of professional sports teams in NY/ NJ.

As for YouTube TV, I just checked the available channels in my area. It does cost $64.99/ and only offers SNY, not the others.

 

[Sunset]

We cancelled our cable in 2004 because we were going to switch to dish and decided may as well cancel the cable before a trip and get the dish when we return. Not wasting money paying for a service while not there.

When we got back, the cable still worked. As the lazy cable company handn't unhooked it. So we watched it free, thinking they will unhook it next week
That went on for 2 years..
Then it stopped working and we tried the new OTA and got lots of channels so we never bothered with dish.

Not paying cable has saved us a TON of money.

 

[DayDreaming]

No cable cutting here. We have basic digital HD that has all the channels we want plus high speed internet. No "Paid" streaming channels at all. There is plenty of no charge content on the net.

If there was a reliable high speed internet alternative, we would drop cable. However, having basic cable is only $25 more than the cost of cable internet alone, not worth cutting for that.

Same here - Basic cable TV which is basically the OTA broadcast channels + internet. That package is cheaper than internet alone for some strange reason. So I can't really say that I've cut the cord.

 

[5Miler]

Always had cable in my home and Comcast slowly started scrambling everything, first HBO and then Showtime and finally all channels so a cable box was required on each set. For an additional monthly fee of course. When DM passed in 2012, I switched over to Windows Media Center with Comcast Cable Cards eliminating the fees for all boxes and actually getting a minor credit each month for the cable cards for having "customer owned equipment".

Last January the semiannual price increases finally tripped my trigger so I cancelled cable, reverting to our OTA antennas for local channels on Media Center and supplemented with YTTV to keep DGF happy. Also dropped Comcast internet and signed up for AT&T Fiber for lower cost and higher bandwidth. DGF does supplement with Acorn TV and Britbox for parts of the year but our costs have been cut by roughly half and I'm no longer aggravated by Comcast digging deeper in my wallet every 6 months.

 

[Midpack]

Interesting poll. I thought we were early adopters in Feb 2018, but I see the biggest chunk here beat us to it (I blame DW).

All but one of our friends are still on cable or satellite even today, even though some have seen our setup work…

And I see almost 3/4’s here have cut the cable, more than I would have guessed - LBYM still drives us.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I'm sure there are alternatives to cable now for most sports

Other than Hulu+Live, YouTube TV, Sling TV and the like - not that I know of, someone tell me more. If there were, cable and satellite subscriptions would fall even faster!

It's true that more and more sports teams have got streaming options. However, major league baseball teams are the last holdouts, with only a handful of teams with streaming options, my favorite team not among those. So I'm stuck with cable for now.