Cutting the Cord

[Matt Meiser]

I know this has been asked before but things are changing so rapidly it's worth a new thread IMHO. I'm ready to cut the cord and think I have my wife convinced too. Currently paying DIRECTV $125/mo and it's time for it to go. We mostly watch stuff from NBC, and ABC. I don't think we watch anything from CBS. We use PBS, Hstory and Discovery as fillers and we should be doing something more meaningful with that time. I'm looking at Hulu, Netflix (already subscribed), and off the air programming to replace it. I'm thinking a DVR is not worth the investment at about $400 for a TiVo. Currently have Roku boxes and Smart TVs scattered throughout the hose.

Am I on the right track?

[Joe A Faulkner]

Do it. You don't need TV. Visit your local library. Spend more time in the shop. Take up pottery or leather work or quilting

[Jim Becker]

While I'm not completely ready to "cut the cord", I am ready to seriously cut back to the most basic TV level I can and still get Food Network on my FiOS service. It doesn't work financially to go Internet only because of how things are bundled and with such poor cell service at our home (requires microcell), I'm not ready to give up the land-line, either, for emergency (and alarm) reasons.

Both of my daughters have streaming services for their own purposes; one with Hulu and Netflix and one with Amazon Prime and, I believe, Netflix. But they are now adults and can subscribe on their own. I only need local HD network channels (ABC for mornings, CBS for Colbert and FOX for "MasterChef") as well as FoodNetwork for "Chopped!".

One thing you might look at is Google's YouTube TV offer for your network stuff if you don't get good OTA on those channels.

[Bradley Gray]

I have an FTA (free to air) sat dish - A Ku band dish about ! meter across with a rotor, all controlled by a receiver with a remote. We get national feeds for PBS and NBC, retro TV and a bunch of other stuff with no bill. Cost about $250 for the gear.

[Bryan Lisowski]

I have been thinking of cutting the cord as well, initially the cost will be somewhat significant, but in the long run should be cheaper. Are biggest thing is upgrading the Internet, right now we have DSL and it won't support streaming. With going to Comcast we will reduce the service cost a bit over Verizon but will need to buy modem and router to avoid the rental fees. I'm just not sure if doing PlayStation Vue is better than Roku. A subscription to PS Vue is about $55 a month for basically the same channels we get through DirectTv for $125 a month. Adding Hulu or Netflix would be additional, but I think we would still come out ahead. Just don't want to make the wrong choice which has slowed going forward.

[Chris Parks]

Ditch TV altogether is the best way. I was forced off it through work and now never watch at all and now I have convinced my wife to actually switch it off when she complains about nothing to watch where before she would just watch a repeat.

[George Werner]

Two weeks ago I returned the cable boxes to Spectrum and cut my service down to internet only. For TV we are using Hulu, Netflix, SlingTV and iTunes. It covers pretty much everything we need except for the prime time sitcoms my wife likes. I'll be putting up an antenna in a couple weeks to pull in NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox and will be good to go. At the end of the day with the changes I've made, I've gone from paying $290 a month to $90 a month and still have access to all of the same things we watched before.

[Pat Barry]

I need the sports programming that I get via DirecTV so that's what keeps me from cutting it. Otherwise, not sure how my wife would get TCM, Lifetime, DIY, HGTV, etc. We already do the Netflix and Amazon video but its not the same as DirecTV, not to mention we get the local network broadcasters via DirecTV without the hassle of a rooftop antenna.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Matt, a couple of years ago I came to the realization that I was paying $4K per year on personal communications.

The first thing I did was get rid of cable which saved me $1K per year, we went to off air. I live in Toronto and have about 20 channels, including CBC, TVO and PBS from Buffalo.
Those are the channels we normally watched, and now we get them uncompressed, the quality is amazing, it looks like the stuff we get at work from the studio.

I also mooch off my daughters Netflix account for those rare occasions we have extra TV watching time. I don't have any recording means and don't want one......Regards, Rod.

[Rod Sheridan]

Do it. You don't need TV. Visit your local library. Spend more time in the shop. Take up pottery or leather work or quilting

Post of the day..................Rod.

[Matt Meiser]

Why read? Danged books ruined everything, getting information out to the people and all. And getting them from one of those socialist dens they call libraries???

Anyway...we have excellent reception for the major networks as I put in an antenna up in the attic. We actually watch them through an add-on tuner to our DirecTV DVR that adds them into the channel guide because the "locals" for our market aren't the most local stations. I could cover 80% of the stuff we are actually excited to watch there. I would like to be able to watch those shows on-demand either via streaming or a DVR. I looked at a Tivo and that's about $400--less than 3 months of DirecTV but if we can use Hulu (or ???) then that would make them available on more than just the main TV. I know Tivo has a solution to that too, but don't want to start putting a ton of money into equipment.

The other thing I'm going to look at is what is the lowest level TV service we could bundle with our Comcast internet. The way bundle pricing works I might be able to get something effectively pretty cheap.

[Kurt Kintner]

We fired Dish Network about 4 years ago ..... We get news off the internet....
Movies and tv shows off Amazon Prime and YouTube .... Total cost $99 a year...

Only thing we can't get is Georgia Bulldogs football.... We go to MIL'S house
for that ....

[Brian Henderson]

We got rid of cable years ago when we realized that we hardly ever watched it. Mostly, it was on for background noise. So we cancelled it and haven't missed it a bit. We doubled our Internet speed and stream anything that we want to watch. We also got rid of our home phone at the same time when we figured out that the only use it got was people calling us trying to sell us things. Don't miss that either.

[Trevor Howard]

We got rid of cable 5 years ago, the times we wanted to watch TV had nothing worth watching.
Started with Netflix then added Hulu, now when we want to watch we can usually find something.

[John K Jordan]

Do it. You don't need TV. Visit your local library. Spend more time in the shop. Take up pottery or leather work or quilting

Have a personal library and Kindle, wood and metal shop, AND a farm with animals.

I haven't watched a TV program in over 10 years, maybe 12.

JKJ