Cutting the Cord

[jvlgato]

I am considering getting rid of all cable/sattelite TV service (currently DirecTV) and going with the combination of Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and online sports subscriptions. I have neighbors doing this and they've liked it, while saving a ton of money.

For what I pay for DTV, and how little we watch TV, it's hardly worth it. As it is, we currently watch mostly Netflix and Amazon anyway. For sports, I'm watching mostly on iPad, because my kids are on the TV, and I've found this to be fine, sometimes preferable, since I don't have to scroll through 600+ channels to find the game I want. Plus I can watch it on my lap while I passively watch whatever the kids are watching .. 'Air Bud' was on a few nights ago.

I'm curious who here has already cut the cord, what their experience has been, and tips/advice/new services as I move forward, and as technology progresses.

Edited March 1, 2013 by jvlgato

[kevin gilmore]

here is an alternative which i'm doing in addition to everything else.

 

a 1 meter dish pointed at amc21.  and a satelliteav hd receiver.

total cost about $250. plus installation. Tune it to pbs and have

gobs of free programming forever. In very high bitrate mpeg4

which can't be broadcast at that speed.  Nova and the like

are just stunning eye candy. Add a usb hard drive for $50

and record the stuff for playback later.

 

http://www.satelliteav.com/p/shop/?ws_pid=1593&ws_cat=446

 

http://www.lyngsat.com/AMC-21.html

 

or add a motor, then more free tv to watch than you can possibly imagine.

Edited March 1, 2013 by kevin gilmore

[blessingx]

No cable here for years. Get content from Netflix, Hulu+, BT, Digital broadcasts over antenna, and through browser. Currently done with iPad/Nexus 7, MacBook, and Roku/GoogleTV boxes. Don't watch much sports and tend to watch more films than TV, so situation may be different, but besides an occasional broadcast I haven't missed cable at all. Thankfully BT helps with the Girls and recent Breaking Bad ep. fixes.

[jvlgato]

KG, have you stopped getting any cable or paid satellite? Thanks for the links. I'll have to think about whether I want to deal with more dishes on my rooftop. Looks pretty amazing, though! Ric, good to know you havent missed cable. What is BT?

[spritzer]

BT is BitTorrent, i.e. how I watch US tv... 

[jvlgato]

Hmmm ... all very interesting ...

[oogabooga]

We cut the cord last year when we moved to Montreal. I bought a HDTV antenna (channel master) and put it in the skylight. We get 17 channels, including the PBS, CBS, FOX, and NBC affiliates from Vermont. The quality is full HD is looks great (except FOX, which broadcasts in HD, but all the shows are in SD quality for some stupid reason).

 

tvfool.com can tell you what channels you are likely to get.

 

Often the latest TV shows are also streaming from the major TV networks in Canada, so we get decent quality (not quite HD, but better than SD), with about half the commercials.

 

 

 

Usenet used to provide a lot of TV shows but it's now being DMCAd on a daily basis so it's harder to get stuff.

[mikeymad]

I have been without TV feed for about 2 years now.. no big deal. pay about $60 for my internet. Get's me pretty much everything I need.

[deepak]

John what internet service do you use for sports and is it in HD? Hockey/NFL/college football/F1 are the only real reasons I keep cable

[audiosceptic]

We tried getting rid of cable a year or so ago. I bought a Mac Mini with Eyetv to DVR OTA channels. I subscribed to Netlfix streaming and Hulu+. We looked into MLB.tv because we're Brewer fans. I abandoned this and went back to cable for several reasons.

 

1. Commercials. Hulu+ includes commercials and no way to skip forward. I hate commercials.

2. Broadcast quality was just OK on both Amazon streaming and Hulu+. Why spend the money on a nice HD TV and look at lesser quality broadcasts?

3. Eyetv was buggy. Plus I could never get the remote to work like a normal TV remote. I always had to switch to keyboard and mouse to fix/play shows.

4. Not family friendly. My wife and kids hated it. If I were alone I think I could make the change.

5. MLB.tv did not broadcast home games.

6. I missed Dexter, Shameless, GOT and other premium channels. Yes I could BT stuff but that was not an option for my family.

 

So I'm still paying high cable fees but always looking at ways to reduce costs. About every 2 years I call TW cable and threaten to cancel and they always reduce my bill if I promise to stay.

[aardvark baguette]

i wish i had the willpower to move my tv out of the living room

 

i could put sound panels there.

[Tyll Hertsens]

Cut the cord a couple years ago and live on Netflix and a subscription to MotoGP.

 

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I basically watch everything on an iPad. Just never bothered with the whole big screen thing. An iPad at arms length in bed is bigger than a 6 foot screen at the other end of the room.

 

Guess I'm a luddite.

 

April watches on her computer or phone. She does BT and watches anything she desires.

[Absorbine_Sr]

I have been without TV feed for about 2 years now.. no big deal. pay about $60 for my internet. Get's me pretty much everything I need.

 

Mikey, where do you get your Formula One broadcast from?

 

Edit: Wait, I forgot that NBC will be streaming it this year here in the US.

Edited March 1, 2013 by Absorbine_Sr

[The Monkey]

Sports.  I need the live sports.

[robm321]

FirstRow

[blessingx]

 

Live over at http://utblive.com/

 

[mikeymad]

Mikey, where do you get your Formula One broadcast from?

 

Edit: Wait, I forgot that NBC will be streaming it this year here in the US.

 

 

how did I use to get it? download - why I was always in media blackout on race weekends..

 

also http://www.formula1.com for timings, etc.

[Wmcmanus]

I haven't had cable or anything remotely like it since my first year of law school in 1988. I was a full time student and half time faculty member, teaching accounting for the business school, so knew I couldn't afford to be tempted by any distractions and really needed to study as much as possible. I still had a TV and VCR and would rent a John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart movie once every other week or so. I've never looked back and quite frankly don't miss it other than live sports, but that gives me an excuse to spend more time in pubs.

I buy a lot of Blurays of current movies, as well as complete series box sets (HBO stuff, etc.) of good TV programming, and also use my 65" plasma for watching baseball (through a feed from MLB.com which I subscribe to). What I miss mostly is college basketball, but there's probably an internet-based subscription for that as well.

Edited March 1, 2013 by Wmcmanus

[oogabooga]

Sports.  I need the live sports.

 

Over-the-air HDTV is great for this, but you'll only get whatever's on the major networks, so no ESPN, etc.

 

Edited: - forgot to type NO in front of ESPN...

Edited March 2, 2013 by oogabooga

[Dusty Chalk]

I find the easiest way to cut the cord is to stop caring about anything that is on television.

 

I've got Community and Castle on Hulu, I miss Archer and...um...okay, just Archer, can't think of anything else I'm missing.  Oh yeah, Parade's End.  And yeah, I'll probably have to wait 'til 2015 to see stuff like Season 3 of Sherlock.

[kevin gilmore]

I still have dishnetwork because of all the scifi...

I know its stupid expensive for what I watch.

[jvlgato]

Glad to hear so many have already done this, it gives me hope!

 

Live sports is definitely the last and toughest area, and it's what has kept me from making the jump. It's not quite there yet, but it might be close enough for me. Most of the major sports have an online subscription option wherein you can view most, but not all, online or OTA. Here is what I've found so far:

 

 

NBA: You can get online subscriptions to watch both live and past games online via mobile and computer. This is what's turned me around, because it's actually been pretty great to be able to watch the games on my iPad wherever I am at the time, while the kids are doing whatever they are doing. I can watch live, pause, rewind, watch an hour later, the next day, whenever and wherever I want. And the pic quality is really good on the iPad. I haven't tried connecting it to a big screen TV. I don't know how far back they store previously played games, but I've gone back and watched games from a week or two ago. It's pretty much Netflix for the NBA, and I think this is the future of sports.

 

NFL: live games are available OTA for whatever is showing locally on the major networks. I don't believe I can get ESPN OTA. oogabooga, You get ESPN ... OTA?

 

You can get NFL subscriptions from NFL.com which allow you to watch every game online, BUT ... after the game is over.  Plus, the service is blacked out during Sun,Th, and Mon night games, so that you have to watch the live game currently playing. This was a deal breaker to me before, but since having kids, I've found that I rarely sit all Sunday afternoon and watch football like I used to. Now it's DVR the games I want and watch when I can, which is usually weird times like 6am or 9pm when the kids are asleep. I actually might be better off having an online subscription so I can watch on iPad while the kids watch their kid shows or whatever it is we're doing that doesn't really require my attention, but does require my presence. DTV must be paying the NFL crazy money to prevent access to all live games online. They must realize they would lose a ton of subscribers if it weren't for their monopoly on live NFL.  Access to all live NFL games are only available via DTV subscription. The technology is there, because if you subscribe to DTV, you can have access to it, so it's purely a contractual restriction.

 

MLB: haven't tried yet, but I saw on their web site there are online options for live and past games.

 

Other sports - don't know, but just Google the sport and 'online access' or go to that sport's web site, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they had an online subscription of some sort.

[thrice]

We haven't had cable for about 4 years. We just use Netflix streaming and iTunes. It's worked so far. I like waiting for a whole season of a show so I can watch at my own pace.

I also do not care at all about sports, so that makes it easy.

[Wmcmanus]

I find the easiest way to cut the cord is to stop caring about anything that is on television.

 

I've got Community and Castle on Hulu, I miss Archer and...um...okay, just Archer, can't think of anything else I'm missing.  Oh yeah, Parade's End.  And yeah, I'll probably have to wait 'til 2015 to see stuff like Season 3 of Sherlock.

This was pretty much the way it worked for me, especially in the early years when you couldn't buy entire seasons of HBO shows and the like on DVD. The real poison was when I'd be visiting my parents for several days and make the mistake of watching an episode of The Sopranos or Oz, and then think, "Damn, this stuff is good. I'm really missing a lot..."

But nowadays, if you're the patient type, you can wait get everything you'll ever want or need once the box sets come out. I've got The Wire, Friday Night Lights, and Six Feet Under sitting here in the queue. It doesn't bother me that I didn't see them when they were being produced, and I like the fact that I can control when I happen to get around to them.

I've listened to a hell of a lot more music in the past 25 years since I gave up TV (as an addiction in its own right). If I had cable, I'd sit and veg out in front of the TV day and night, surfing channels. What a waste of time! THAT'S WHAT THE INTERNET IS FOR!!!

[acidbasement]

We've never paid for cable or satellite.  Netflix and blu-ray, pretty much exclusively.  We have little kids though, so we don't have a whole lot of time for watching anyway.  I would love to have HBO and a few other channels, for the new shows, but it would cost something like $80/month in Canada to get the necessary satellite bundle.  It's far cheaper for us to wait until they're available on blu-ray.  We don't torrent much, and never new stuff, because we're paranoid about what will happen in the wake of the new anti-piracy law passing in Canada.