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

[CatinKS]

We "Pause" Dish after college basketball season until football season. Save enough money, only $5 a month, keep equipment and can still watch recorded shows or DVR the OTA channels that are feed through the DVR. Saves enough money can keep using the other 7 months is my justification.

We stream baseball for our local regional broadcast.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I cut the cord in Jan. 2016 when I moved from a small town to a cabin in the toolies close to the Canada border.

I did get satellite radio at the same time, and I won't give that up. With some negotiating I get it for about $100 a year. I bought a mobile antenna and can take it with me in my vehicle.

When I was a kid we got 2 of the 3 big networks (this was in the 70's) off of a big old antenna on the roof.

I wouldn't consider cable today.

 

[swakyaby]

Dropped DirectTV around 2002 due to their annoying annual price increases, and went to OTA antenna and tivo dvr and Netflix DVD/blurays. About 6 years ago, continued with OTA for local stations and Fire Recast DVR, and changed from Netflix dvds to streaming hbo, amazon prime, and disney+

 

[CRLLS]

This is a very current situation for us. We just cancelled our Dish service this month. We could afford it, but their content was rapidly declining with increasing costs. The straw that broke the camel's back had finally arrived. We did the same with our wired phone service this month too. We are a bit slow to make changes, I guess.

 

[HarryHawk]

Never had a cord. When my son was still at home, he always complained that we didn't have cable. My response - "Let me think about this for a minute, I'm going to spend money so that you can waste time watching more television".

We needed a new tv a while back and ended up buying a ROKU tv for no reason other than it was the cheapest tv Costco had. I think my wife spends more time clicking thru the various channels and apps than she does watching actual content.

He also wanted a mobile phone - All my friends have one.

Me - I'm glad to know that, in case of an emergency you will be able to borrow a phone to make a call.

 

[Fielding]

I didn't fit into the poll. I'm the rare "cord never". I watch plenty of TV, have a Tablo and Roku, but I've never subscribed to cable or satellite.

Same. I'm mid-50s, and have never paid for cable or satellite my entire adult life, save 2 years when I co-habitated with a girlfriend who wanted it.

A better boundary to mark for me would be "When did you stop going to the video rental store?"

 

[swabby01]

If it were me, I would dump the Directv, but my wife has a hard time if she can't record her food network shows. Streaming seems to much for her to handle without help. We live surrounded by 60 foot tall evergreens, so OTA is limited. Since we can't record streaming (except I know youtube has this option built in), we have both Satellite and Netflix, Prime, HBOmax, Disney +, etc. Most streaming is free or shared. Our adopted son is hispanic and loves his international soccer so DTV gives him all the spanish and soccer he needs. Hard to replace with streaming, and much more reliable than DSL internet. So, I guess we are stuck unless we go with Starlink.

You can get Discovery + and stream pretty much ANY Food Channel shows plus SO MANY MORE including Magnolia Farms, History ......... for around $6 a month. That plus Hulu does it all for a fraction of DTV, Only advantage I see for DTV now is if you have a Solar/Battery system and live in an area that has periodic black out / Brown out power issue you still watch TV while everyone else reads by candlelight,

 

[ArmchairMillionaire23]

I've never had cable or satellite TV. So there wasn't any cord to cut.
But I'm just the opposite when it comes to a phone line. I used to have a flip-phone when my j*b required and provided it. But as soon as I no longer was required to have one (back in 2008) I got rid of it and haven't looked back.

 

[JJpop]

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.

I had the same problem.
I finally dumped DTV and went with You Tube TV.
I really like You Tube TV and get all the sports content.
The only downside is if your wifi goes down.

 

[Cerys]

2019 I picked up a Roku and we started watching content on that. My husband was having issues we thought it was a seizure disorder and medication problems, and turns out it wasn’t it was a brain tumor. He could not work the Roku. It was not a good time to quit dish Netwerk. He was no longer working and he needed the TV. After surgery he really couldn’t do anything new. He knew what he knew and he held onto that. So if he wanted to watch something that he knew was on the Roku, he called me. I was home too we closed our business at his diagnosis.

I was too mired in grief to deal with the ordeal of stopping dishnet work. But after three years when I bought a new house, it was a clear-cut I’m done.

Now my sister has Alzheimer’s. And she would love nothing better than to cut her cable But she does not have the ability to work anything else. She asked me about it at least three times a week, gotta love Alzheimer’s, and I explain it in simple terms and she can’t grasp it. She also no longer has the capacity to learn and what she does know is going away in dribs and drabs on a daily basis.

I have yet to experience the wonderful world of Netflix. I’ve basically kind of turned the television off. I watch it at night, and I watch network tv. So, for right now, my TV is free. Other than the Roku, I use an antenna.

 

[Sunset]

Never had a cord. When my son was still at home, he always complained that we didn't have cable. My response - "Let me think about this for a minute, I'm going to spend money so that you can waste time watching more television".

We needed a new tv a while back and ended up buying a ROKU tv for no reason other than it was the cheapest tv Costco had. I think my wife spends more time clicking thru the various channels and apps than she does watching actual content.

He also wanted a mobile phone - All my friends have one.

Me - I'm glad to know that, in case of an emergency you will be able to borrow a phone to make a call.

I laughed so hard when I read your post, I read it out loud to DW and she laughed too.
It could have been in the Funny Joke thread.

 

[boilerman]

We were DIRECTV customers for 23 years until last week when we cut the cord. We have subscribed to the NFL ticket for many years due to our team being out of market but with the NFL package moving to You Tube TV, we took the leap.

We are trying the 2 week free trial with You Tube TV and are very happy. Cut our bill from $214 a month to about $70 a month (if we keep the 4K service.)

 

[Skitso999]

1994, when I moved out of my parent's home! Have used over-the-air antennas and/or streaming ever since them. I'm living in a home now with no internet so I'm back to OTA antenna and a cheap DVR. I check out what movies I might like to watch using TitanTV.com and then program the DVR to record it.

I literally have about 200 movies I'd like to watch on the external hard drive at this time. Never at a lack for something to watch!

 

[Midpack]

The only downside is if your wifi goes down.

That is a downside, but fortunately both states we've lived in had very reliable internet service, outages have been very rare (and typically momentary) for us since Feb 2018.

That said we had periodic outages with Comcast cable way back when, and we definitely had more outages (than streaming) with DirectTV and Dish satellite due to weather.

 

[Gonz]

I cut the cord around 2007 or whatever year Amazon Unbox started. I stopped owning and watching TV around 2001 so have been streaming radio stations and a few shows online much earlier.

Cut the cord with telephone land line in 2003.

 

[68bucks]

I have DTV and pay through the nose. I would drop them and stream except for 2 things. First problem is bandwidth. We have 14 MB but I think we could get up to 25. I have streamed as a test and it's so so. If there were multiple streams I'm not sure it would be good. Second thing I don't like is the lack of a universal guide. If you have more than 1 streaming source seems like you're always jumping around, waiting for something to load. I tend to be a channel surfer so that is a pain. Maybe I misunderstand some of the streaming issues though.

 

[Midpack]

I have DTV and pay through the nose. I would drop them and stream except for 2 things. First problem is bandwidth. We have 14 MB but I think we could get up to 25. I have streamed as a test and it's so so. If there were multiple streams I'm not sure it would be good. Second thing I don't like is the lack of a universal guide. If you have more than 1 streaming source seems like you're always jumping around, waiting for something to load. I tend to be a channel surfer so that is a pain. Maybe I misunderstand some of the streaming issues though.

Hulu+Live has a "universal guide" just like any cable or satellite service. YouTube TV has something similar I believe. But if you prefer subscribing to multiple standalone services, there would be some jumping around. We don't find that difficult like the millions of dedicated streamers, but I know it's a common barrier for those considering cutting cable/satellite - my DW was one of them, that's why we ended up with Hulu+Live.

An HD stream requires about 5mbps, and we used to have a 25mbps service and it was fine, even with two TV's on at the same time. That would not be enough for 4K TV, but not that much content (yet). But I agree, 14mbps would give me pause for streaming.

 

[Newventurer]

Just cut the cord, including land line phone - kept the internet but bought my own modem/router. Now paying $60/month to cable provider instead of $230. Splitting the cost of YouTube TV 4K with daughter $40/month. We get more channels that we actually watch than we did with the cable provider’s middle of the road lineup. Couldn’t be happier

 

[68bucks]

Another thing that has made me debate cutting the cord is sports content. Seems like you need to have multiple subscriptions. I like baseball, football, motor sports, some of the alpine ski events and so forth. I know some of the bundles, like YouTube TV, are carrying more sports. I also have sketchy OTA reception. I still hate paying DTV and their support is pitiful.

 

[Crewer]

We have never had cable/satellite TV. Got a Roku pre-2011, I think - did they have them then? I think it was before we moved in 2011 but could be wrong. For awhile we watched free movies on that but mostly did DVDs from library. When digital TV came in we got so many more channels. But antenna input to our TV seems to be dying so we don't get many anymore. We have a Mitsubishi 55" rear projection TV that is about 20 years old so not replacing it until absolutely necessary. We're not sports people and have plenty to watch. DS gives us Netflix for Christmas each year and I donate to the local PBS station so have access there. But mostly we stream movies and series from Hoopla and Kanopy using the library access. We have plenty to watch.

 

[HF63]

Well, the wife finally had enough of Comcast price increase and cut down the channels.


I been teaching her how to use some app's like Pluto TV and she likes it so far. The sports channels is my only pain but so far I can deal w/ it by viewing the replays on You Tube.

 

[Midpack]

Well, the wife finally had enough of Comcast price increase and cut down the channels.


I been teaching her how to use some app's like Pluto TV and she likes it so far. The sports channels is my only pain but so far I can deal w/ it by viewing the replays on You Tube.

That's exactly what happened in our house. DW wasn't interested no matter what I said, until Dish informed us our monthly charge was going from $86 to $98. DW said "NO way" and we switched to PSV in Feb '18 and later to Hulu+Live. She's been very happy with streaming almost from the start, she literally had it figured out in 2-3 days!

 

[Philliefan33]

Another thing that has made me debate cutting the cord is sports content. Seems like you need to have multiple subscriptions. I like baseball, football, motor sports, some of the alpine ski events and so forth. I know some of the bundles, like YouTube TV, are carrying more sports. I also have sketchy OTA reception. I still hate paying DTV and their support is pitiful.

With YouTubeTV you get live sports on the three major networks, ESPN and ESPN2, Fox Sports, and in the Philadelphia market we get our regional sports network (for almost all of the Phillies/Flyers/Sixers games). If we didn’t get the regional sports it would t work for us.

You could do a free trial without cancelling your current service.

 

[foxcreek9]

Another thing that has made me debate cutting the cord is sports content. Seems like you need to have multiple subscriptions. I like baseball, football, motor sports, some of the alpine ski events and so forth. I know some of the bundles, like YouTube TV, are carrying more sports. I also have sketchy OTA reception. I still hate paying DTV and their support is pitiful.

YTTV does not carry any of the Bally Sports (old Fox Sports) regional sport networks and will likely never will, until Bally goes belly up (which may happen this year). At first missed not seeing the Cardinals and Blues, but it's not worth the extra money to go to a provider that does carry Bally. So I now watch the white sox occasionally.

 

[Skitso999]

Just cut the cord, including land line phone - kept the internet but bought my own modem/router. Now paying $60/month to cable provider instead of $230. Splitting the cost of YouTube TV 4K with daughter $40/month. We get more channels that we actually watch than we did with the cable provider’s middle of the road lineup. Couldn’t be happier

Since I wanted to keep my traditional phone number, and everyone I ever knew has my old phone number, we signed up for the Ooma phone service. That uses the internet and costs only $8 per month for a traditional landline phone. Works great and we've never had a problem with it.

I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't like cell phones that much, but is forced to carry one anytime they leave the house!