youbastards Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 (edited) My wife and I have been talking about dropping our cable provider for months, and finally made the decision last night. Our cable bill was roughly $200 per month for Cable TV/Internet/Phone. By dropping the Cable TV/Phone, we will be saving approximately $150 a month from Comcast, and obviously some of the savings will be spent on other streaming internet services. Here is what we are paying for: - High-speed Internet ($40 per month) - Netflix Streaming ($9 per month) - Hulu Plus ($8 per month) - Amazon Prime ($80 per year) I just bought a Roku XS ($70) and an indoor HD TV Antenna ($40), which were costs we knew we would need to invest in initially, to save money in the long run. I haven't received the HD Antenna yet, so that is the only worry I have at the moment. I've heard that the picture quality can be better than cable, but it all depends on your location to the broadcast towers. Is there anyone else here that has made the switch and can offer any advice or things to watch for? Edited January 4, 2013 by youbastards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanester Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 Cool. I am consideringa similar move. I may need to hit you up for advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youbastards Posted January 4, 2013 Author Share Posted January 4, 2013 TitanTV.com provides a list of broadcast stations based on your location. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjwspider Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 (edited) Wow, credit to you youbastards for taking the plunge. I've been a Direct TV customer for many, many years now and consider them to be the best in the industry - often paying far less for more channels than my local cable company can provide. I'm interested to see how your approach works out and if you enjoy the experience. Of particular interest would be sporting events. I'm a big sports fan and often have the channel on ESPN or the local sports channels. It'd be interesting to see if you still have a lot of sports options available with your new setup. Edited January 4, 2013 by jjwspider Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youbastards Posted January 4, 2013 Author Share Posted January 4, 2013 Of particular interest would be sporting events. I'm a big sports fan and often have the channel on ESPN or the local sports channels. It'd be interesting to see if you still have a lot of sports options available with your new setup. Thanks for encouragement, but unfortunately I won't be able to help you with that one as we don't follow any sports. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrClean Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 You won't miss it. I did this over a decade ago. Between new outlets for getting media such as Netflix & Redbox, as well as an accumulated digital library, I haven't missed it a bit. All I have now is basic cable($9) which I never watch anyway & Roadrunner cable($50+). Personally I love my Micca MPlay Media Player I got from Amazon last year. Plays all formats of digital files, except iTunes purchased(which I play through my iPad HDMI adapter). All I have to do is hook up one of my external or portable hard drives via usb and it's ready to scroll through my library. Congratulations on the switch! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karamazov80 Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 We had an HD tuner awhile back, and it did work fine, though you might have to move the antenna differently to get different channels. I actually need to find it, because our cable provider just dropped CBS and I can't be missing NFL games. We were paying $130 or so for TV plus internet for awhile (after initially paying much less via some promotion), but I recently negotiated on the phone with the cable company so that now, we have no HD receiver, but we get the basic channels (up to 70 or whatever plus the major networks, Fox, and PBS come through as HD) and internet for less than $80 a month. We have a landline phone that is about $25, and we each have cell phones though mine is a pay-as-you-go deal that I hardly and costs on average about $7 a month to keep in service. We threatened to leave our cable company, and were willing to go with just the HD receiver, if they couldn't give us such a deal. About $35 a month for cable is acceptable to me. We don't get the HD signal for most things, but you hardly notice it after awhile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttheadsmate Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 (edited) Oddly enough I have spent today fitting & plumbing in my new HD ,3D,Smart,1080 Plasma TV....what a bloody performance I now have to consider whether or not to upgrade my Sky (Fox?) satellite subscription ? For the record I'm not interested in the 3D aspect of the TV it just came along for the ride in the spec. Edited January 4, 2013 by buttheadsmate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
murderofcrows Posted January 4, 2013 Share Posted January 4, 2013 My family did the exact same thing We have Apple TV instead of roku. So we throw / mirror aps to the tv from our iPads We love the cost down and honestly don't miss direct tv. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sky_dive Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 My family has thought about a similar move, but due to living right under where the planes run from Logan, we have decided to stay with cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Geohound Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 Welcome to the club, yb. I got rid of cable over 6 years ago. I get all my tv online through streaming services and stuff, and I have never regretted it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minijeff Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 we ditched cable a few years back and recently my wife and I bought an Apple TV for Christmas. We also have Netflix, which the Canadian content is less than the US but it is catching up and still has some great stuff on it! Congrats on cutting the cord I know we have enjoyed life since no longer mindlessly surfing stations and watching pointless TV just to fill the void that is now filled with much better things! Jeff of the Miniacs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcastick Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 We cut off Cable from Comcast last year and granted, I do miss a few of my favorite channels...it is not a huge thing. Since we live with my wife's family, we decided to get our own Netflix account since you can only share 1 account with only a few people and there are 9 of us....so we have our own that we will share with her mom, my brother-in-law shares his with the others. So we have Netflix Streaming with one Disc at a time, Hulu Plus and I installed the Crackle Channel and Vudu on my PS3. We also us an antenna for local channels but for us, it is always a crap shoot. Yeah, the picture quality is good but we never know when we are going to lose a channel. Our room is the old Sun room so the signal strength isn't very good in here so I'm sure we can use the assistance of a rooftop antenna. So it does indeed save money, but I do miss having cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hellpop Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 We did this a year ago as well. We had Direct TV, and frankly I thought it was a complete waste. Yes, it's nice to have so many options, but frankly I found scrolling through all those channels in the menus a pain in the ass. We would suspend it occasionally (basically outside football season) and never really miss it. So we ended up buying an internet ready tv, which allows us to stream Netflix and Hulu right into the TV. So now we watch Parks and Rec on Friday and Fringe on Saturday. Big deal. The ONLY drawback is news and sports. But for news we were turning to the web anyway, so that's not a big loss. Sports are, but if you are at all internet savvy you can figure out how to stream them (even if it's less-then legal). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterPL Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 We just cut the cord last weekend. The bill for the Comcast "Triple Play" was $233 and it just wasn't worth it. And watching commercials advertising ridiculously low rates for new customers wasn't helping. It just fueled my desire to move on to Netflix and Hulu. Only problem now is I need to find a way to watch current episodes of The Walking Dead and My Little Pony. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zombie Shakespeare Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 My solution is to steal usernames and passwords from family members who still have cable. I use my mother's so that I can watch The Walking Dead online on Mondays. Most channels have a site or app where you can watch their shows for about 30 days after they air. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youbastards Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 We just cut the cord last weekend. The bill for the Comcast "Triple Play" was $233 and it just wasn't worth it. And watching commercials advertising ridiculously low rates for new customers wasn't helping. It just fueled my desire to move on to Netflix and Hulu. Only problem now is I need to find a way to watch current episodes of The Walking Dead and My Little Pony. Congrats! For the few shows we want to watch that we can't get thru Hulu or Netflix, we get a season pass from Amazon Prime. Walking Dead is around $3 an episode for HD. We don't do that for a lot of shows, but it is still cheaper in the long run. If you have an Comcast/Xfinity for your internet provider, you can still access some of the basic cable on-demand episodes online or through the XBox 360 app. This is how we stream the few CBS shows we watch, as CBS doesn't stream thru Hulu. HBO Go...yeah, I borrowed my friend's account and linked my XBox 360. I hope one day HBO will offer direct consumer subscriptions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karamazov80 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 We just cut cable as of last Monday. Now we get Netflix, Amazon Prime, WWE Network, and basic cable channels. We only watched a few shows religiously on TV (wrestling and football for me, Big Bang Theory and Fashion Police for the wife). It wasn't worth the extra $40 per month we were paying for those shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanester Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 We are considering this even more as our bill keeps going up. We just dropped home phone, so now its on to cable. The only shows I watch with any devotion are Vikings on History Channel and The Walking Dead on AMC. How do you guys that have cut out cable TV manage to see your shows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hellpop Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Oddly enough, we just got cable, as my wife just took a new job, and they are paying for Fios. So far, I've watched WWE Raw twice, and we watched New Girl and Brooklyn 99 last night. Frankly, I don't expect we'll be using it all that much, at least not until baseball season starts up. As for how we see our shows, a combination of legal and illegal means. We subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, which lets us see most things we want to watch, though not always while the season is airing. Sometimes, we have to wait, which really isn't that big a deal. My wife prefers to watch things in chunks, and hates waiting between weeks, so when we can wait until a season ends it works out well. On the other hand, I have been known to download a show or two, particularly HBO stuff (the one thing she won't wait for: Game of Thrones). I would say, if you can wait until something is streaming, do it. If not, there are other ways. It's certainly not worth keeping cable just to keep up with two shows, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiniFiend UK Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 XBMC is your friend all the TV you will ever need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karamazov80 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Game of Thrones is the one really frustrating show for me, because HBO won't allow folks to pay for streaming episodes until the DVDs are released a year down the road. I would happily pay $30 or whatever to watch the season earlier, but. . . Walking Dead is on both Netflix and Amazon Prime I believe. You have to wait a few months or so to see newer episodes, but it's nothing like what HBO puts folks through. You have to subscribe to their channel to watch their shows on demand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Donster Posted March 8, 2014 Share Posted March 8, 2014 We cut the cord more a less 3 years ago and are down to basic cable. Which was working great until Comcast decided to make us start using a DTA Box to watch them. Now we're back to the crappy video quality that made us turn in the DVR boxes once we upgraded to HD So to those using HD Antennas, which one did you go with? I tried one of the GE antennas Target sells, but I didn't get the best results. I've had a few people recommend just regular rabbit ears, but I'm not sure those are enough. So I'm considering a MOHU Leaf antenna. Has anyone used them? This is more for my mrs. than me, I'm happy with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Although I am being kind to Hulu, which I find to be the buggiest app out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youbastards Posted March 8, 2014 Author Share Posted March 8, 2014 I've got a Leaf, works great once you determine where to mount it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karamazov80 Posted March 9, 2014 Share Posted March 9, 2014 We've got rabbit ears. Quality varies from channel to channel, depending on how well you can maneuver the ears to get the best signal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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