I’m sure a lot people here have dropped cable, and I’m looking for tips and methods. Amazon Prime and Netflix seem to meet my needs for TV shows. Is there major avenue that I’m missing there?
Also, what do you do for live sports? What’s the best way for me to get NFL this fall without a cable subscription, for example?
I’m not a sports fan so I can’t help you there, but I did drop cable and have basically no regrets.
Itunes sells new episodes of many shows the day after they air - way before they would be on the other services. It also sells and rents movies, usually as soon as they’re out on DVD. So it’s a good source for new stuff, but you have to pay per item. To watch these on your TV you need an Apple TV box, which also streams hulu and Netflix. This is what I do - I buy episodes of my favorite show (Breaking Bad) so I can watch it the next day. I sometimes rent movies from Itunes, because they have new releases for like $4.00. Then I use the Apple TV box to stream Hulu or Netflix.
Hulu has Criterion Collection movies, which is great if you like that sort of movie (foreign, often older, often “artsy”). Hulu also has more TV shows, but Netflix has some good stuff too.
We dropped satellite a few months ago and are getting by splendidly with Netflix and Amazon. We also have Hulu, Vudu and a bunch of other channels through a Roku box but we don’t watch those other channels nearly as often.
It means that for some shows, if I want to watch recent episodes (like the current season of Breaking Bad) I have to pay about $2 per episode. But when you consider how much we’re NOT paying in monthly subscriptions, it’s well worth it.
As football season approaches I expecting some pain with not having ESPN, the NFL Network or the Big Ten Network. But I’ll get by - it might just mean more visits to the local sports pub, which will be more fun than watching at home anyway.
It took me six months to get off cable. Boy am I glad I did. Even with the negatives of cutting cable; I’m still happy with the choice.
Fortunately I’m in one of the cities that offers Aereo; which is awesome. It’s basically an internet based DVR for the channels that are in your area over the air. I think it’s only in Boston, New York and Atlanta for right now (https://aereo.com/faqs).
I have a Roku box; which is much nicer than when I was streaming my Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu through my PS3.
As you probably know by now the streaming content providers are coming up with their own programming now too.
Netflix: Orange Is the New Black is supposed to be a really good show (I don’t have Netflix, I’m still pissed at them for the disk/streaming fiasco of a few years ago).
Hulu offers The Awesomes, which is a pretty good cartoon series; and a light hearted comedy called Quick Draw about a Harvard educated man becoming sheriff in Great Bend, KS in the 1880.
I have to get my Breaking Bad fix through Amazon Prime at $2.99 an episode. But the final season is only 8 episodes long; and $24.00 is easily worth seeing Breaking Bad. Other shows I just had to say goodbye to. I liked the light hearted dr show Royal Pains, Suits and White Collar (all USA network, I think) and I can’t watch those anymore, and they’re not worth paying for to me. Oh well, eventually I’ll probably be able to see them.
Sports - well, I like my sports; but I just decided that I can work around the games I want to see. Truth is, I’m an Oklahoma fan living in Atlanta; so it’s not like I got to see the Sooners play very often anyway. It’s a nice outing to catch a game at my son’s house or at the local sports bar anyway.
Oh, one more thing on Roku that I think is REALLY COOL. When you turn to your Roku box; you can search for a tv show (or movie) and it will tell you where it’s being offered. So for example if I wanted to watch the move Pulp Fiction; I could type that in, and see who all offered that show. i.e. It might be showing on Amazon Prime and Netflix; then you could look and see if one is offering it cheaper than the other service.
Good luck. I for one love the extra $130 a month back in my pocket. I don’t even feel guilty renting a movie now because I know I’m still coming out ahead.
Do your guys’ companies give you a deal to keep internet but cut cable? It only cuts $5 a month off my bill to do so, so I figure cable is worth the $5 for me. I use WOW, but Comcast is the same around here.
This should be a sticky, IMVHO:
[ol]
[li]Drop any combined cable/phone/internet package you have.[/li][li] Subscribe to the best high-speed internet deal you can find.[/li][li] Sign up with Vonage for your phone service. (As low as $11 a month with all the features, if you can hold your outbound to 300 minutes. If you really need more, unlimited minutes is about $24 a month.) You can save a little more (down to about $10 a month) by going with a lower-tier provider.[/li][li]Buy a Roku. Nothing else matches the bang for the buck for streaming.[/li][li]Subscribe to Netflix streaming, Vudu and Amazon Video. (You might want to try Hulu Plus, some people find it useful. It seems to be mostly erratic garbage to me.)[/li][/ol]
Between no cable, one-half to one-fourth the phone cost, and buying the shows you really want to watch a la carte (around $20-30 a season) you should save a hell of a lot of money on an annual basis. All you’re giving up is the ability to browse 100 channels of shit and watch prime shows the night of broadcast; with streaming you have to wait until the next day. Oh, and no need for Tivo, DVR, anything - it’s all out there on the streaming servers whenever you want it.
Key is a really good, reliable, fast internet connection, which has many benefits anyway.
Such prices typically run out after a year or two, leaving you paying full rate for the services, or at least a lot more than you started out. Cable was up to $80 for us - mid-tier, no premium channels.
Yes, you can play switch-around games if that works for you, to stay in the low bundled pricing ranges, but really - it’s just a shell game you can do without.
Regarding a Roku - can you get Plex, TVersity or other media servers on that? In other words, can you get Hulu on there without having to pay for Hulu Plus?
I have always had cable internet without cable TV. It’s about $45/mo. I added telephone and right now it’s $60/mo, which is nice cuz telephone used to be $50 on its own.
I watch every Browns game every weekend on my television, via over-the-air digital. Crystal clear. I can watch some college football too. I do miss out on 90% of Indians games* but they have mercy on me and put it on the local NBC channel a few times a year. If I liked a more widely-loved team I’d get to see them more on Fox over-the-air.
I built myself a PC that connects to the TV, and got a remote that works with the PC. So I have every Web site that streams (including Hulu which only streams certain content if you were to use a device instead of a PC), Pandora, Spotify, all of my MP3s, and a blu-ray drive. I bought PowerDVD as my blu-ray software.
I have a little wireless keyboard, a little wireless mouse, and old surround-sound speakers hooked up to my PC. I don’t need anything more!
ETA: I listen to the Indians on the radio and follow along using their Gameday app online.
Wow, that sucks.
I’m at $85 a month for both for the 8th straight year, no contract or plan. No premium channels, but 82 core channels. And fast internet, of course.
It was easier for us to drop satellite, because it wasn’t already bundled with our phone/internet.
Munch - the Roku website should have a list of all the services they stream, and they are frequently adding new ones. [checks roku.com] Hmm, I can’t get the channel list to come up right now.
go to
on the left
Check Your Address for Free TV
you can find what over the air tv you can get and what antenna needed.
Some cities/locales do have better deals than others. It helps if there’s strong competition, but typically, only one cable provider is available in each area… which sucks.
Comcast is the worst at leader prices that slowly crawl up to a lot more.
Live Sports seems to be the killer app that will prevent cable TV from going the way of the landline phone. However… if MLB is your sport, then subscribe to MLB.tv and you are almost free to cut cable… however I think blackout restrictions prevent you from watching your home market team. And I’m not sure if they do post-season games, so you might miss the games that Fox didn’t broadcast over the air.
Rumors are that Google/YouTube is going to make a play for the NFL Sunday Ticket rights when DirectTV’s contract is up after this season. That could be a huge game-changer.
We’ve been loving our rabbit ears*. We got a DVD player that had a digital tuner in it, and most of our local stations have added additional digital stations (heavy on the vintage sitcoms and dramas, and PBS-style cooking/renovating/traveling shows)(which is FINE with us).
We have Netflix Streaming, but we haven’t used it in weeks-- there’s usually something on “Regular TV” worth watching.
And for NFL games… we can get most of the ones we want to see. And for the rest, well, that’s why God made taverns. I have a lot more fun watching those games.
Which brings up a good point: even “plain vanilla” channels make TV too much fun, and it’s hard to turn it off and read a book or Get Some Stuff Done.
Man, if we had cable… we’d be useless.
*You do know I’m talking about a small “set top” old-school antenna, right?
We have two that fight like crazy. I just called to check and Comcast openly admitted they cannot price match WOW.
I think every market should have at least 2 competitors.
They definitely have Plex. That’s what I use. It’s the best way to get YouTube on a Roku, too, since Google isn’t too keen on making a YouTube app for it. And if YouTube gets the NFL, that might be good enough for the OP, at least, for a while.
But does Plex really handle plain Hulu? I always get a bunch of errors when I try to watch anything, and I always assumed it was because I hadn’t signed up for Hulu Plus.
September 23rd, is the day Aero comes to Dallas. This is also the day I call my cable company and tell them to go pound sand.
Actually, I’ll probably still need them for Internet though. Which sucks.
The only time I watch sports on TV is at a bar. Yesterday I watched Little League baseball. The Mexican team beat those pesky Panamanians. Goooooooooo Mexico!!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in order to get Roku &c., you need a dedicated computer hooked up to your TV, don’t you?
We switched from Comcast a couple of years ago and even though the price has gone up, it’s nowhere near what we were paying before for basic bundled service (it’s RCN, in case anyone’s wondering. They’ve got fantastic customer service, btw, as well as a much more extensive On Demand).
I know of nobody IRL who streams anything from anywhere. People who drop cable either catch something online, go to somebody’s house to watch it, or just stop watching altogether.