My wife and I are considering cutting extra expenses to the bone for a year; just for the heck of it. We watch too much tv, I don’t HAVE to use my smart phone now that my company outlawed receiving email on personal devices (HIPAA being what it is). I’m eating out too much. Right there are the 3 biggest expenses I have in my home that I don’t really need.
This post specifically is about getting rid of cable TV. There are certainly shows that I’ll miss; and a few that I really don’t know if I can do without. i.e. Justified; Breaking Bad. How do you people handle it? What options are there besides ROKU?
I’m considering AppleTV as a Roku alternative. With an iPad and iPhone in the house, we think we may get some extra utility from the Apple version.
I’m also interested in hearing about what it’s like living with Streaming only. I am planning a 1 month trial, with a unit that I can return to the retailer, and free 1 month trials of Netflix and Hulu, it seems like it may be a good way to have both options side by side for a bit.
We quit cable a couple years ago when I was between jobs, and I swore up and down I would restart it the minute I started working. Turns out, I didn’t miss it at all.
Seriously I can no longer imagine paying $120/mo. I have Netflix streaming and Amazon prime. We have a roku, xbox360 gold and a PS3, so the streaming device part isn’t an issue. I think news & sports are usually the only stumbling blocks. I don’t watch sports and I get my news from teh intarwebz. I would never, ever go back to cable unless it was 1/10th the price it is now.
We quit cable over 2 years ago. We have a small computer box hooked up to the TV (net-top box?) and we can watch Hulu and a bunch of TV network websites through that. Our TV also came loaded with Netflix capability, so we use that a ton too. Between that and the main broadcast channels we still get, we’ve barely missed cable at all.
Also, if you’re okay with waiting to watch them, your library may have a bunch of TV shows available. We caught up on How I Met your Mother that way.
I still have satellite TV, but I have a Roku on one TV and a blu-ray player with Internet connections on the other. The blu-ray has worked quite well, but for some reason, Hulu Plus isn’t available on it. The Roku on the other TV has Hulu Plus, and I like that service. However, I haven’t been very impressed with the Roku. It goes wonky every now and then, and I have to reset it periodically. It’s not a huge problem, it’s just annoying.
Any high speed connection. To be clear I no longer receive cable television but I continue to get cable Internet service. Both Netflix & Anazon check your connection and match resolution to your connection speed.
When my kids were school age, I didn’t pay for cable. If couldn’t get it via aerial antenna; it wasn’t available in our house. I never missed it. After they all graduated from high school, I said I’d get cable when I moved into a new house, which I did within 3 weeks of youngest child’s graduation! Hey I bought a new big screen tv, I HAD to have cable. :rolleyes:
I too have a PS3, and Amazon Prime. How do you watch regular network tv programs? I see two possible options: 1) get an HD antenna. 2) watch various TV Shows on their respective websites.
This has it’s own subset of questions…
Does ROKU allow you to view network websites on tv?
If so, how is it compared to the crappy browser that comes w/ t he PS3? (BTW, I think Sony really missed a huge selling point on that one)
What are some other options to essentially use my TV as monitor for web content?
Are any of you using an HD antenna? How do you like it?
You missed option three: I don’t. But if I cared I would get an antenna I suppose.
I have no idea but as far as I know Roku is not a web browser. This is how I use my Roku: first I turn it on, then I select either Netflix or amazon prime. That’s all I’ve ever done with it. I have no idea what it can do beyond that.
Six months ago we quit satellite TV. We have a Roku LT on each TV including the one that isn’t digital. The other two TV’s are HD. And we watch TV just like the olden days (as in my childhood). You don’t need a special HD antenna. Bunny ears work fine there are websites that will tell you what kind of antenna you need and what stations you can expect to get based on address. I get the local and PBS HD broadcasts. Each station has between 2 and 6 channels. I will likely get a better antenna possibly an amplified antenna that either mounted in the attic or outside. I could run the feed through the cable already in the house.
There is no browser on the Roku which is its one big failure. Perhaps they have them on the higher end or newer ones.
Between Roku (Netflix+Vudu+HuluPlus, with Amazon Video as a backup) and a BR player, we haven’t missed cable in quite a while. Both the BR player and TV do YouTube directly.
Put your money into a good, fast (10-20MB) internet connection and dump cable and landline phone. Use Roku, as above, for all video, and that cost is zero plus Netflix ($8) plus HuluPlus ($7) plus $2-5 an HD movie plus $2 an episode of whatever shows you watch. All of the latter are optional and can be turned on and off with your month’s budget.
Do the math: buying episodes of the shows you watch, at $1.99, adds up to a fraction of maintaining cable just to watch those shows.
Save more by dumping your phone service and replacing it with Vonage or another, even lower-cost net-based service. We have two full-featured lines for less than $30 a month. A single line is about $18 if you can accept 300 minutes of outbound calling instead of unlimited.
We slashed our comm costs from around $180 (Comcast triple, after all discounts ran out) to about $90, counting the phones, with fractional control on any additional cost.
This is the type of thing we’re using. It’s running Windows of some sort, so we can easily browse the net on the TV. We got a fancy remote with keyboard and trackball, too.
I have Netflix Streaming and a WiiU that I run it through to my tv. I also have an HDMI cable which I can use to connect my laptop to the TV to watch Hulu and any other video files that have somehow been acquired.
At some point I’d like to get a computer that I could just leave hooked up to the TV 24/7.
I actually just made this switch about a month ago, and I haven’t missed cable once. I got the Apple TV and signed up for Hulu Plus (we were already using Netflix.) I also got a HD antenna, but haven’t had to use it yet because the cable company still hasn’t shut off my TV even though I turned in the equipment and everything (shhh). Maybe it would be different if there were any shows I considered “appointment TV,” but there isn’t anything I don’t mind waiting a day to see. I always had to record everything, anyway, because I have two small kids who I’m always trying to put to bed when the good shows are on.
Yes, yes, it’s amazing the things computers can do these days.
We’ve had a media computer for years, and it’s always been such a PITA to use that it was rarely turned on. I guess if you’re of the e-device-in/at-hand-alla-time generation it’s one thing; may as well just jack the thing into the big screen. But mousing around the screen and having to click this and that and change screen modes and keep everything updated just wears thin after a while.
When I am at an intellectually and physically low point where I want to “watch TV,” I want to hit On, Channel, and just watch, not fugaround with more tech.
No need to get nasty about it. The OP is looking for alternatives to cable, and I shared what I’ve been using for two years to watch TV shows via the internet. I’ve never found it to be a huge pain to have to select or click things (considering most TV remotes these days are even harder to figure out than the keyboard remote I’m using), but mileage does vary… which is the point of a thread like this.
My TV is smart and remembers all the settings when I plug the laptop in from the previous time and when I am at a intellectual and physical low point, I want a nap, not TV.
So, is it generally the case that new broadcasts from Network and Basic-ish Cable channels (USA, TBS, TNT, etc) appear on Netflix / Hulu soon after the broadcast? I DVR pretty much everything anyway and watch a few days to a week later.
That has not been my experience on Netflix, but it is generally true for Hulu. Netflix is still essentially like renting DVDs, where whole seasons show up after they’ve been on TV. Hulu is an alternative to watching the show on the network’s website. And, just like that website, the show won’t stay up too long, maybe a month or so. Netflix shows are there forever unless the entire show is removed.
Hey I bought a new big screen tv, I HAD to have cable. :rolleyes: