Dropped Cable Today

[Chuckanut]

I was looking at Comcast site and it said it had a promotion going for Digital Preferred (like 160 channels - including TLC, CNBC, and a bunch of other channels I don't currently have) for $39.99 (2 year commitment). I currently have Digital Economy for $35. I called them and they said since I am an existing customer, I cannot use this promotion (You have to be off their TV package for 120 days to qualify), it will cost me $89.(What) I feel totally taken advantage of.

You have a problem with them treating new customers better than existing, long-term customers like you? Tsk, tsk....

 

[REWahoo]

If you have a PC connected to the TV... recommend HD homerun...

+1

HDHomeRun is a low cost (under $100) TV tuner designed to allow you to view OTA TV on your computer (you'll need an antenna). You can use Windows Media Center to record shows and it functions exactly like a DVR. We use the heck out of ours, like recording the Tonight Show so we can watch it the following day while we eat lunch...

 

[audreyh1]

We cut the cable in the 80's. DW has wanted it for years now, for just a few shows (Food network mainly). I'll just have to explain to her that I was ahead of the curve, and look at all these people just now catching up with us!



Whenever I bring up the idea of some sort of OTA DVR capability to DW, she says she can watch most of the shows she wants from the provider's web site on her computer. I guess it has all the commercials, so they are happy to have you watch, the medium is not important to them?

I'd still like a DVR, for the occasional TV I do watch (especially the local news), and would love to have live pause, instant replay for ALL the TV's - I HATE it when I miss a few seconds of something because I didn't hear it or got distracted by something. I like the 'simple.tv' concept (we already have the RoKu boxes), but last time I checked they still seemed to be in late alpha stage. And like 'simple.tv', I want it to record to a hard drive, as our internet isn't the fastest. Two streams tends to bog it down.

-ERD50

Anything I can play on my computer I can watch on my TV thanks to the built-in air-play capability of Macs with Apple TV.

Things like Food Network channels aren't available to me thought because they ask for a cable provider to watch them on-line.

 

[audreyh1]

Interesting, how did it affect your internet bill?

I have Cablevision in NY, other option is FiOS and I currently pay $68 for 15/5mbps internet and very basic cable (OTA channels only, mostly). I called and told them that I do not want TV and I was informed, my internet bill will be $70/month. I was like, she did not hear me correctly, I repeated and same thing.

FiOS comes out same after taxes AND want a 2-year contract, where they jack it up by $10 next month.

It is extra-ordinarily frustrating these buggers milking me out. I can't wait to have Google Fiber.

We had HD cable with no premium movie channels, 6mbps internet and digital phone for $150 a month. Upgrading to 10mbps Internet only drops it to $60 a month.

DH has wanted to do this for a while, but we had to get our alarm monitoring switched to cellular rather than dedicated phone line first.

 

[audreyh1]

Yes.

We live on a hill with line of sight to the TV "antenna farm" 42 miles away. Installed an outdoor antenna in the attic and connected to all our TVs using RG-6 cable (pre-wired when we built the house). With the rare exception of unusual weather conditions, the antenna provides outstanding reception.

Which antenna do you use? We also want to put in an attic antenna. We can connect it to our existing cable wiring inside the house.

 

[Klubbie]

I am leaning towards cutting the cable. Girlfriend loves HBO shows though which is our basic hangup. We are considering a basic package and her getting HBO for the months she watches shows.

Time Warner just sent me our bill and are raising costs and it is pissing me off. I can watch anything I want (except sports) without cable. There are a couple of shows I would have to pay per episode to watch currently, but even doing that the cost is substantially less than cable.

 

[REWahoo]

Which antenna do you use?

It is an old Radio Shack antenna I bought before we built our house in 1998. Very similar to this one:

AntennaCraft by RadioShack C290 Colorstar UHF VHF FM HD TV Antenna (C290) from Solid Signal

I have a large attic and hung the antenna from the underside of the roof using a couple of small lengths of rope. You can use this website to figure out where to aim it: AntennaPoint.com - Antenna Locator

 

[audreyh1]

The thing with cable…….

10 years ago I watched quite a bit of cable. But one of the main reasons we don't watch it anymore, and a lot of the broadcast shows, it that it has been overrun with ridiculous "reality TV" programs.

Most of the business channels turned into yelling political channels, so I quit watching those.

The cable news channels totally went brain-dead and downhill, so I quit watching those.

The cable "nature" channels seemed to go to an all shark and snake and whatever disgusting or prurient thing they could follow and make super scary, so I quit watching the nature shows I used to love.

The Weather Channel seemed to get overloaded with scary weather programming - with such totally predictable reveals - blah, blah, blah, boring! Their website has also recently gone downhill with headlines sprinkled everywhere enticing you to see videos with ridiculous headlines, many of which have nothing to do with weather! - extremely annoying. "Watch: Weatherman attacked by Spider on Air". "Man Brings a TIGER into a Bar". I quit watching cable to bet away from that crap!

The only channel that hasn't really changed in all that time is The Food Network, but somehow our provider dropped the HD version and you just have to see food porn in HD or it's not worth it! So I stopped watching that.

So that's really why we stopped watching cable.

end cable rant.

 

[Germonico]

I moved into a 3rd floor apartment over a year ago. I bought a digital antenna and only get 4 channels (Fox, NBC, COZI, and country music). When family comes over, they want to know where I get my "cable" channels from since the reception is so spectacular. I tell them it is over the air reception and is free. Can't tell you how good it feels to see the envy. Yes, I don't get the variety, but I have no problems finding something to watch on the limited selecton. Cozi TV just started airing "The Danny Thomas Show." Priceless and time honored humor!

 

[Derslickmeister]

Cable TV, actually Direct TV in our case, is one of the few luxuries that we still pay for. I just can not cut it out of my life. I love football (college football) too much to ever cut the cord . We have cut the landline (home phone) and have not regretted it at all, actually wished we had done that earlier....

 

[youbet]

I don't know why people get basic cable when they could just get an antenna and have perfectly clear HDTV for the basic channels. I don't even need a roof antenna, rabbit ears work fine. All the new TVs have built in tuners, all that is needed is an antenna.

Look around you. A number of folks on this board aren't living in your house at your location. The availability of OTA signals varies widely from place to place. I helped a buddy put up a high gain antenna at his house in northern Wisconsin last summer. Even with a rooftop, high gain antenna with preamp, he receives only 3 stations.

At my home in the Chicago area, we have about 30 stations/sub-stations.

Are you under the impression that OTA signals are uniformly distributed from coast to coast?

 

[youbet]

The thing with cable…….

10 years ago I watched quite a bit of cable. But one of the main reasons we don't watch it anymore, and a lot of the broadcast shows, it that it has been overrun with ridiculous "reality TV" programs.

Most of the business channels turned into yelling political channels, so I quit watching those.

The cable news channels totally went brain-dead and downhill, so I quit watching those.

The cable "nature" channels seemed to go to an all shark and snake and whatever disgusting or prurient thing they could follow and make super scary, so I quit watching the nature shows I used to love.

The Weather Channel seemed to get overloaded with scary weather programming - with such totally predictable reveals - blah, blah, blah, boring! Their website has also recently gone downhill with headlines sprinkled everywhere enticing you to see videos with ridiculous headlines, many of which have nothing to do with weather! - extremely annoying. "Watch: Weatherman attacked by Spider on Air". "Man Brings a TIGER into a Bar". I quit watching cable to bet away from that crap!

The only channel that hasn't really changed in all that time is The Food Network, but somehow our provider dropped the HD version and you just have to see food porn in HD or it's not worth it! So I stopped watching that.

So that's really why we stopped watching cable.

end cable rant.

While I agree with you about all the bad things that are on cable, those aren't my issue. I can always choose to not watch them and generally don't.

My issue is that I like certain sports at certain times of the year. And the cable companies have certainly done a fine job of grabbing those contracts. Very little sports available OTA. Not watching the Blackhawks during the Stanley Cup playoffs, for example, would have been a bummer. Not a life or death necessity of course. But I find watching certain college or pro sports during certain points of their seasons very entertaining.

So, for now, we still have cable.

 

[audreyh1]

While I agree with you about all the bad things that are on cable, those aren't my issue. I can always choose to not watch them and generally don't.

My issue is that I like certain sports at certain times of the year. And the cable companies have certainly done a fine job of grabbing those contracts. Very little sports available OTA. Not watching the Blackhawks during the Stanley Cup playoffs, for example, would have been a bummer. Not a life or death necessity of course. But I find watching certain college or pro sports during certain points of their seasons very entertaining.

So, for now, we still have cable.

Oh, sure, I understand why sports fans keep their cable. I'm just explaining why I stopped watching cable.

 

[gozer]

From 1996 to 2006 I lived without cable. Long story, but basically we determined that paying $40/month was too expensive for something we didn't have the time to watch. Remember the days when cable was $40 including 1 premium channel. HBO in our case. Back then we were working 60 to 80 hour weeks and had a munchkin to deal with.

So anyway, in 2006 things at worked had settled down and the boy was older. So we decided to hook back up to cable. Once I got the TIVO setup to pull from the cable instead of the rabbit ears, my wife and I sat down to watch our first cable show in a decade. It was "Dirty Jobs".

So Mike Rowe had this plastic glove on up to his shoulder and was doing something terrible to a cow. I looked over at my wife and said, "you realize we are paying to watch this."

 

[Cobra9777]

My Story...

Before ER, we paid Verizon FiOS around $200/mo for TV/internet/phone. We also had HBO and a house-full of set-top boxes. Here's how we cut the cable and reduced our bill to less than $80/mo with no impact on our services:

Home phone: First, we fired ADT and converted the security system to wireless with a local company monitoring for half the price. We canceled FiOS phone, but we still use our home phones using a Google Voice number and Obi100 VoIP device for free.

Internet: We pay $69/mo for 50/25. We could go cheaper, but we need the bandwidth since we are now using it for phone and streaming TV.

TV: FiOS has a bare-bones "broadcast tier" which, in conjunction with internet, is CHEAPER than internet alone. Works for me. This also saved us the cost and hassle of an antenna, plus we get beautiful 1080p and 5.1 SS, and about 20 independent channels on top of the network broadcasts. We subscribed to Netflix for $8/mo, which accounts for about 75% of our viewing. We also subscribed to Hulu+, but canceled mainly due to ads and the fact that most of what we watched was available for free anyway.

HTPC: Here's the fun part... We also hooked up a laptop to the main TV and are using XBMC (open-source media center software) and the HD Homerun (dual tuner) for Live TV, electronic program guide, and DVR functionality. XBMC also has add-ons (content aggregators) that allow easy access to any streaming content that we can't find on Netflix, including some live sports and cable news. We also hooked up an external hard-drive with our entire collection of movies, music, photos, home movies, etc. Basically, everything we watch on TV is funneled through the laptop and XBMC. This made it a lot easier for DW to buy-in to the whole cable-cutting thing, as it is quite easy to use.

Bottom line, we went from $200/mo to $80 with no impact whatsoever on what we watch or other services. As I said, we could probably cut the $80 to $50 with a cheaper internet package, but we are bandwidth hogs and love the FiOS fiber internet service.

 

[NH Hiker]

I tried Hulu once and didn't like it because of the ads, but for the $$, I might be willing to try it again if I ever decide to get rid of cable.

The worst thing about hulu+ is the ads are all the same. It is bad enough there are ads, but seeing the same commercial over and over again is painful. Having been spoiled by a DVR, I find it is tough to go back to commercials again.

 

[REWahoo]

The worst thing about hulu+ is the ads are all the same. It is bad enough there are ads, but seeing the same commercial over and over again is painful. Having been spoiled by a DVR, I find it is tough to go back to commercials again.

+1

We did the free one week trial of Hulu+ and were totally turned off by the commercials. We ended up with subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video (already had it). Between those two and OTA broadcasts (many captured on our DVR) we're never at a loss for something we want to watch.

 

[NanoSour]

Cut the cable cord 8 months ago at the start of ER. Used to pay $129/month for Charter Internet/TV; now paying $45. We go with OTA and Netflix streaming thru the Apple TV. Also lowered phone bill for 2 ATT iPhones from $95 to $40/month. By my calculations that's $1668/year in savings from pre-ER costs.

 

[target2019]

I haven't compared costs recently, but in the past I checked about dropping to just internet service with Comcast, and found that our internet cost would go up on a monthly basis. That may or may not be true.

What we did is drop down to the lowest TV package with internet -- about $78 per month. That is $14 for TV, $62 for internet (which includes $8 for the modem).

We had been able to take advantage of various promotions by calling every six months or so, and getting them to drop our total cost to $100-110 per month. At same point (maybe when they started building luxury office tower in Phila.) they would not drop the cost at all. So we are saving $20-100 per month, depending on how you want to calculate savings.

We added Netflix at $12-14 per month, and looking forward to the day when there will be true competition in this business.

 

[ziggy29]

When my bandwidth isn't constipated, this works well enough. The problem is that my DSL service (no real alternatives here) AND I have to extend the network from the church office to here because they aren't accepting new customers (which slows it down), and it often gets constipated to the point where this is unusable for a while. If that ever resolves itself here, I'll be a dish-ditcher too and get an outdoor OTA antenna thrown up somewhere.

 

[Senator]

I am/was paying near $200 per month. Internet, phone and TV.

I am making the same transition. I could give up my landline quite yet, so I went to Magic Jack. Internet goes up, and phone price goes down. Savings is $13 per month.

Now it's onto the TV. I bought a Roku box. I am putting up an outdoor digital TV antenna, and replace my analog antenna that has not been used in many years. It will run on my cable that is already routed. I plan on subscribing to Hulu+ and Amazon (next time I order something)

I should have a better subscription, and save over $100 per month. There are a new new/business channels I will miss, but the savings will be worth it. I can watch the clips on the internet anyway.

 

[ls99]

Would love to dump cable TV. unfortunatrly DW is addicted to several SciFi channels. And cooking shows, and.... oh well.

 

[Dreamer]

We are paying $205.00 per month for internet, tv and phone through Comcast. Our 2 yr contract is up in August of this year and I will be making some changes. I am really hoping that I can get DH on board.

 

[Al18]

I cut the cord 5 years ago. I'm using an attic mounted antenna connected to a TivoHD. The Tivo service charge is $10.75/month when I prepay for a year. I also have Netflix streaming and Comcast internet service. I don't pay a cable modem charge, as I bought my cable modem when I joined for $90 - it paid for itself in 11 months.

 

[gozer]

We are paying $205.00 per month for internet, tv and phone through Comcast. Our 2 yr contract is up in August of this year and I will be making some changes. I am really hoping that I can get DH on board.

For most people, I think it comes down to how much do you like sports. Pretty much everything else can be obtained over the air or through some streaming service for a much lower price. The cable companies have a lock on sports.

Once you start streaming you do discover shows that are not available on your cable. Of course just like cable, there is a lot of crap to wade through. Just depends on what you like. If you don't need to see the shows the second they originally air, then you might love streaming. For example, I have never seen an episode of Breaking Bad. But it is available on Netflix. I intend to stream the entire series this April. When Breaking Bad was originally airing, I had cable that included AMC. I could have easily watched it or had one of the tivo boxes grab it. But by waiting, I get reviews from other people and can binge watch it when I have the time. Some shows watch better when you don't have to wait weeks or months between episodes.