Mr. S and I are toying with the idea of getting rid of our DishNetwork subscription. We’re not interested in switching to DirecTV; we’re just tired of “57 channels and nothing on.” There’s not much on the current TV landscape that interests us. We already have a decent DVD collection of both TV shows and movies. We’re thinking that we could invest in series DVDs of our favorites, and use Netflix/iTunes for new stuff. News and current events from the Internet, I suppose.
He likes watching MSNBC now and then, and it would seem a bit odd not to be able to turn on the TV for breaking news, or, say, to have missed the hoopla on election night. And sometimes it’s relaxing to just flop and channel-surf instead of picking something to throw in the player – but also disappointing to find nothing we want to watch. Sometimes it sure seems like we’re throwing away our $60/month.
Have any Dopers done this? How does it work out for you?
I haven’t tried yet, but it looks like you can burn iTunes video to CD/DVD. Is that right, and would it then be playable in our DVD player (assuming compatibility of media)? If that’s correct, then we could catch, say, the new season of Monk (until they kill it after this season, heh) via iTunes.
We have just a regular TV/DVD/VCR combo in the living room. Both computers are in the office, not suited for both of us to watch a movie on the computer comfortably. Yet it would seem a pain (and a bit of a waste) to have to burn to disk anything that we download for watching in the living room.
Can the newer TVs be hooked up to a DVD player and also be set up to play stuff directly off a computer? I’m totally not up on the new entertainment technology.
I’m gonna go try burning my one lonely iTunes TV episode to DVD.
I’ve thought about just a C Band satellite subscription, especially since FX (available only on small dishes) dropped The Riches.
Digital broadcast might be enough for you; news would be what I would miss most.
We went network only for a couple of years. You can get the breaking news on the computer. Of course, the computer isn’t as much fun for the big weather stories, and we are coming up on storm season …
We just signed back up for the boring winter nights.
We just tried canceling for the same reason as you. To top it off, we found an offer on Comcast that gave us just the local channels, as well as Discovery, for $15/mo. So I called yesterday, explained why we were canceling, and the guy offered a “new” program that includes all the local channels, MSNBC, Comedy Central, TLC, and a few others, for $15/mo as well. To top it off, he took $5 off per month for 10 months as well.
So basically, we’re now paying $15 a month for the channels we were watching beforehand anyways. I’d suggest giving them a call and seeing what they offer you.
I’ve been thinking of seeing if I could ditch cable and go with digital broadcast TV. These days with Netflix and online programming, I think I could live with broadcast. The only thing is that I have trouble with reception, at least on the analog TV channels. Is digital TV reception better or worse than analog? Even if I had to buy a fancy antenna, though, it would still save me money in the long run if I could cancel my cable.
Digital is a mixed bag in that it is pretty much all-or-nothing. Either the signal comes in perfectly or it starts breaking up with audio glitches and noise on the video. But it’s not like analog, where you can still pull in something with little signal; drop too much and it’s gone entirely. Go to www.antennaweb.org and put in your address. That’ll give you an idea of the size antenna you need.
We don’t get any TV reception and who the hell cares?
We have Netflix, so we can see any kind of movie or TV show (yes, we have to wait but who really cares?) that we’re interested in. We do NOT have to watch stupid shit, or bother with commercials. I really don’t feel like we’re missing much.
Between public radio and the internet we can still keep in touch with the world.
Yeah, trouble with broadcast is that we’ve always been in a dead zone for TV reception (ditto for public radio). Antennaweb.org says we need the Mondo Big-Ass Antenna. Figures.
We just finally took down our giant (C-band?) dish, which was trashed in a hailstorm in 2000.
I’ll have to run this stuff past Mr. S. It’s encouraging to know that it’s worked for others, though.
I second this idea. Our experience with Dish also involved them upping the ante (offering a new equipment upgrade free) when I told them I wanted to cancel service.
My wife & I have been married 12 years and have NEVER had cable. Nor dish. Nor anything else, other than “rabbit ears”.
Mostly, it’s because of the “57 channels but still nothing on” scenario: Why pay $60 or $70 bucks a month if there’s nothing on? We never have.
We get by just fine with the regular broadcast stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX, plus one or two UHF stations).
That and the Internet, plus borrowing movies/tV shows on DVD from the library.
We do just fine . . . and we have two young kids!
Figure we both work and the kids are both in school, so realistically we don’t have much time to watch TV anyway.
Dish and cable TV are a waste, IMHO. We’ve never felt “left out” because we don’t have it.
We just upgraded to a 32-inch LCD flat-panel tv with digital reception technology. And we still don’t ever plan on getting cable or dish. Again, digital airwaves, DVD, and the the Internet give us more than we can digest! And with the new ports available on the latest flat-panels on the market, we can now hook up my laptop to the TV and play YouTube and other Internet stuff directly on the 32-inch screen!
I recently upgraded my TV to a 37" flat-panel and hooked up the computer and every other device to it. With a universal remote, wireless keyboard and mouse, I control everything from the couch. Besides DVD’s on the DVD player, I watch internet movies from Netflix, Hulu, Joost, and also TV shows that I used to miss all the time from the Big Broadcast Networks - I’ve skipped the DVR completely.
I dropped cable ($60 a month) about 6 years ago and haven’t looked back. The options keep getting better and better without it. I think the drawback of keeping your service even if they renegotiate it for you, is it might not incude HD programming, which the computer and over-the-air digital will provide.
Well, yeah, but once you’ve had it, it’s hard to get off it, you know?
Now this is interesting, and kind of what I was looking for. (But our [non-flat-panel] TV isn’t all that old!)
Don’t see this happening; computer is in a different room, about 20 feet away, and I’m not moving it. Plus I have a multiple monitor setup and I’m loath to mess with it (this is my main work computer).
Interesting. I have an 8-GB iPod. Not sure how “hooking it up to the TV” would work. Also perhaps a pain to transfer files all the time, as I keep it mostly full with music.
Huh? (Off to investigate.)
Not happening.
Huh? (Off to investigate.)
So now it looks like if we both want to watch stuff off the Internet in the comfort of the living room, we’re gonna need a new TV, I’m guessing. Hmmmmm.
I’m right on the cusp of doing this myself. We have an AppleTV that we use to watch all of our DVD’s on (yeah it was a pain to rip them all and encode them, but worth it for the convieniance). We can also purchase movies and tv shows directly from the iTunes store from there. There is a fairly simple hack out there for the AppleTv that will also allow you to view shows from Hulu, and I’ve heard rumor of a Netflix option coming soon. Right now the drawback is that we have TV’s in 4 rooms, so I’d have to get an Apple TV for at least 3 of those. Plus Apple TV only outputs to an HD Television, which would be a problem in the rest of the house. But a few more tweaks, and some more hacks coming out, and we could be kissing our $80 a month hello as we drop DirectTV.
Wasn’t planning to . . . but we had a winter storm here last night and the signal went out. No biggie, it’ll be back tomorrow, right? Nope, still sitting there sneering at us, Acquiring Signal, Progress 0 of 5.
I did all the troubleshooting I could find, then called tech support and they ran me through the same stuff and more, and decided there was definitely a problem outside. We’re out of warranty, though, so it’ll cost $50 just to send out a technician, or $30 if we want to buy a warranty now for $6/month.
Um, no. I talked to Mr. S and he agreed. So I just called and canceled, which went surprisingly easily. The guy did offer to send a tech for free, and I think he mentioned some other additional discount, but I told him that it wasn’t just the repair, that we just weren’t interested in most new TV lately, and had been thinking about dumping it for a while, and this was just the nail in the coffin. So he canceled it for me, easy peasy. I didn’t even get any shit for not being the main account holder.
So there’s another ~$70 in our pockets every month. Trouble is, now we’ll have to buy an HDMI-capable TV to watch anything new via AppleTV, iTunes, or whatever. Plus the AppleTV box if we go that route. I have some research to do.
I posed a similar question a couple months ago, and pulled the trigger on cancelling the DirecTV in favor of the netflix/AppleTV route. I simply cannot recommend the Apple TV highly enough. I’m actually fairly certain (I’ll check when I get home) that you can use it via component and don’t need an HDMI. I also think you can do it over SD tv, they just don’t really advertise that fact. I did the math and I’ve bought iTunes season subscriptions for basically everything I watch regularly for less than the cost of one month of DirecTV.
I have a computer hooked up in my office that streams to AppleTV stuff I downloaded or ripped from DVD (that I own already). It streams fairly well over wireless, but I just hooked up powerline ethenet and that works even better. Doing the hack above (15 minutes and steamlined so that a trained monkey could do it…so no need to be a techie at this point) gave me hulu (the limitation here is that internet speed in Alaska is piss poor on a good day, so my streaming quality is not what it should be) for access to stuff I want to watch without downloading. Netflix is now available to stream over my XBox too, so that’s a nice little bonus.
Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the decision, and would do so again in a heartbeat. I don’t even reomotely miss 99% of what was available via DirecTV (except Showtime…no legal way to get those other than wait for netflix). This is the way of the future, between downloading music, podcasts for radio, and streaming/downloading TV and movies.
Can you explain this in tiny words? I’m afraid I’m a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to this stuff.
(My TV is several years old, not a flatscreen/LCD, and doesn’t have any computer-type ports on it. I seem to recall from reading up on the AppleTV that it wants at least one of those.)
I’m glad to hear you’re happy with AppleTV; that’s a point in its favor.
Ah, OK, “component video” means just regular video cables. But I think (after further reading) that our TV still isn’t compatible; it’s not listed on the AppleTV specs page. That’s OK; I’d love an excuse to buy a shiny new LCD widescreen.
I also meant to mention that INternet streaming isn’t really an option because I’m on satellite Internet, and they kind of frown on that. But I do have a wireless network already.