Cable cutters step inside

Iceman21

Iceman21

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Iceman21
Who has cut the cord to their cable or satellite provider?

How have you done it? Savings per month?
 
<----------This guy.

I cut the cord a couple years back and miss it little. I have Apple TV and ChromeCast as well as a NetFlix, Hulu, and soon...HBO Go! I'm excited for that last one.

Anyway, only down side is the few big events each year. Super Bowl, Oscars, New Years Ball Drop, Macy's parade, and the Nightly News is a day late. I don't even watch that as I'm on the computer all day and get news alerts to my phone and Twitter but my wife like Brian Williams so she deals with the day late thing.

Savings? Well, cable was like $70 per month and that's gone. Now I just pay $8 each for NetFlix and Hulu. ATV and ChromeCast are each one time costs of $99 and $35 respectively.
 
Internet only. Plex + CouchPotato + SickBeard ....

Warning: must be rated nerd plus to complete the install. We spend much less time in front of TV, we read more, and play more card/board games....and talk more. :)
 
We chucked DTV a few years ago. I don't think the savings were huge (60, 70, 80?/mo), but DTV screwed up our bill and weren't very nice about it, so we dropped them like french class and haven't looked back.

Roku + Netflix + Amazon Prime. Anything we just "can't miss" I get off of usenet and stream through our O!Play. There is nothing we've missed that we can't get an hour later than anyone else. We're not sports nuts.

Our internet is TWC Cable @ 100/3. No other credible offerings here. FIOS is literally across the street, but they won't come here. :( We're 14,xxx feet from the DSL XO. If any other high-performance internet access appears, we'll kill off TWC too, as they're not a nice company. Til then, we deal.
 
Hulu Netflix only

That said, I never watched TV so it was painless.
We have a theater for movies and a TV downstairs where the kids stream dora etc.

only downside s when tornados come through I have to get my weather from people on facebook and twitter. That is actually faster than weather apps.
 
Cut the cord 16 years ago, before there was much video on the internet. Much better now with netflix etc, but like Captain I miss big events. Public TVs in GA airport pilots lounges are actually helpful for that.
 
Thinking about it here soon. Would miss being able to watch sports games when I want, but that's mainly because I refuse to pay the rates the major sports leagues want for their streaming services.

Right now we have a Chromecast hooked up to the TV and have used it for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and have all my DVDs ripped to a server and use Plex to stream them. TV has an Amazon Video app on it so we can use my wife's Amazon Prime account.

Only problem with Amazon Prime is it doesn't go through the surround sound system because I never hooked up an audio output cable from the TV to the receiver.
 
15 years; no TV. Have not filled the void with net-based products either.
It was rotting my brain. Putting me in an awful mood. Wanted to shoot the bouncing, shrieking box in the corner of the living room.
Peace reigns in my quiet household, I am a much more happy & tolerable person.
Actually have a large LCD TV, but only use it to put up trip slideshows, occasional YT vid.
I think it was probably 40$/mo x 12 = 500$/mo x 15yrs = enough for some decent flying.
 
Roughly 10 years for me.

I never made a conscious decision to cut the cable so much as it just sort of happened. I was moving from one place to another in Queens and gave the TV to a neighbor rather than move it. I was planning on buying a new one for the new place. I just never got around to it.

I have Netflix running from my Blu-Ray player into a wide-screen HD monitor with no tuner and a set of computer speakers. That wasn't so much a plan as it was what I had handy when I moved up here. It works.

I doubt I'll ever bother with cable TV as long as they're going to force me into a bundle. Come out with an a'la carte option and I might consider it.

Rich
 
Iceman21 said:
Who has cut the cord to their cable or satellite provider?

How have you done it? Savings per month?
Click to expand...

Decades ago, when home I just use Clear Wireless, unlimited data for $50 a month, $8 a month for Netflix. That's my entertainment bill.
 
Now to get rid of the smartphone.....
That is an expensive time waster.
 
I cut cable and went to OTA about 2008. I've been running some form of DVR since about 2001, so lots of little diy projects as standards changed, but I'm happy.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Now to get rid of the smartphone.....
That is an expensive time waster.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the one I can't cut, but T-Mo has such a good international plan, and they are the only US carrier that supports wifi calling. When they added unlimited international data roaming that great, because data roaming used to kill. Now I can use my Nav program anywhere without it costing $300 a day.:yikes:
 
Iceman21 said:
Who has cut the cord to their cable or satellite provider?



How have you done it? Savings per month?
Click to expand...


Been about six or seven years. Thousands and thousands of dollars.

Amplified rabbit ears, Apple TV, an online only Netflix subscription, and though we don't use it as much as we should, Amazon Prime Video.

We kept a very high speed cable internet connection at the city house and when we moved to the boonies we went with as fast as we could get, a fixed wireless company using Motorola Canopy gear.

What's interesting is, we really weren't intending to be "cable cutters". I had been a happy low tier Dish customer from all the way back to the early TiVo days. At least a decade (more actually) of being a customer and even did their DishMover thing leaving old antennas and LNAs behind at our condo when we bought our city house.

Liked their tech back then, and better pricing over DirecTV. In fact, as mentioned when Comcast came a-calling with blazing fast Internet we bought that but kept our Dish.

The epitome of a happy loyal customer. Until...

The thing that did it for me was hearing Dish's commercials that they'd do a whole house DVR install for new customers for $99. I needed some cables run anyway, and had spare TVs for the guest room and basement workshop, so I called them up.

They unzipped their fly and took a leak in my face -- saying that only new customers qualified. I said that after ten plus years of service, that seemed counter to the idea of good customers service.

I mean, I know Charlie Ergen is a self-absorbed prick, but I had supported Dish partly because they're a Colorado company, etc... even after knowing many employees personally, who did their time in the hell hole known as Dish customer service or worse, their IT department, and GTFO.

They're well known for being a crap hole sweatshop, to all but the engineering departments, and the fact that even in the worst parts of any recession they never stop advertising for labor, proves it. Revolving door. IT people get six months to a year in for experience early career, and bail for greener pastures -- and sanity.

Anyway... I asked the CSR how long I had to not be a customer to get the deal and they said six months. I said, fine. Cancel service.

They sounded shocked, sent me to their "retention" people, where I made the offer: "Give me the deal new customers get after over ten years of being a solid customer."

They said "we can't". I said, "cancel service". We're done here.

At that point the intent was to return in six months and/or shop the best deal between the already installed cable, Dish, and DirecTV.

As six months went by I noticed a few things:

- I only missed a few shows.

- I didn't miss watching TV all the damn time. I did other stuff.

- I had more money in my bank account every month.

- Rabbit ears are a pain in the ass, but an uncompressed HD broadcast looks better than the compressed crap through the Dish local network rebroadcasts. (They still hasn't launched the bird that then had a staging issue and had to take a creative lap around the moon to park it properly, their available bandwidth sucked then and DirecTV was solidly kicking their ass on picture quality.)

- Your view of news and other events is generally better if you're not paying people to pipe propaganda into your home.

- There were a lot of really great shows in re-runs I'd never watched, that became favorites -- and a few that we simply watched a year later than original broadcast date.

(Nobody stands around the office water cooler and talks about what everyone watched on one of the big three broadcast networks last night anymore. Who cares?)


- Stuff I really wanted to watch nearly as soon as broadcast -- is available at unholy high prices via Apple TV. You just have to keep it to a FEW or you're paying as much as full service TV DVR. You get priorities straight quickly, and buy two or three shows a year.

- Netflix upped the ante with their own shows. House of Cards kicked most other show's asses around here for actually looking forward to a TV show. Releasing an entire season at once was awesome. Set aside a couple of Saturdays and, done.

Never bothered to turn it back on.

This year, and around this time of year every year, I think about ordering up DirecTV for NFL Sunday Ticket -- but doing the math on their "deals" where they subsidize year 1 with year 2 to make the monthly costs look better...

, I haven't done it yet. Plus all their little BS equipment fees, taxes, etc...

Once you calculate what you'll really be paying annually... Hell, my high end gun club styled after a country club feel and all the ammo for plenty of shooting at the range, costs less than a simple multi-room DVR package with the little Genie things. I'd rather just go to the range. Or flying. Or even just poking at PoA from an iPad, than watch TV.

I think they're up to CSI: Des Moines, and NCIS: Guam by now, right? Law and Order: Parking Enforcement? LOL. Oh goodie.

When we RV we are couch potatoes at night and I think about putting an automatic antenna on the roof for either Dish or DirecTV just to ease setup, or a tripod mount, but that feeling usually passes quickly too. The trailer has an amplified antenna on the roof and usually it's fun to catch a cheesy middle of nowhere local news and see what is important stuff to the locals, or just nab a PBS re-run of Red Green while enjoying a margarita.

(Dish has the far better deal there in that they allow RVers to turn service on and off on a monthly basis. DirecTV really should do that.)
 
Henning said:
Yeah, that's the one I can't cut, but T-Mo has such a good international plan, and they are the only US carrier that supports wifi calling.
Click to expand...


That's not true. I have AT&T international on two phones, and I use Skype, WhatsApp, and a few other wifi calling apps. Works very well.
 
Republic Wireless defaults to wifi calling as well.
 
Iceman21 said:
Who has cut the cord to their cable or satellite provider?

How have you done it? Savings per month?
Click to expand...

Almost two years ago. Got rid of basic DishNetwork at around $32/month.

Miss the timeliness of live news and the occasional NFL game, but via our AppleTV and NetFlix, Hulu+, YouTube and Amazon Prime, we are never without something decent to watch.

BTW, the news is gradually catching up, with Apps on the AppleTV for ABC and CBS news and SkyNews from Britain. The apps still kind of suck, but they're gradually getting better.

For anyone new to the concept, search for the video podcast "CordKillers" - this is exactly their purview.
 
I was paying about $120 per month for DirecTV. I bought an OTA antenna and so I receive ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and PBS over the air in HD for free. I have a Linux machine running MythTV that acts as my DVR and movie library. We also have Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm looking forward to HBO Go.

The only "cheating" we do is my wife "borrows" her mom's Comcast login to watch some streaming for channels we don't get...I think Bravo mainly.
 
My house in NC has no cable (not available) and no satellite (too cheap to buy a dish for the part time use it gets). I have a little nice box that receives the OTA signals and repeats them over my wifi. Other than that, we watch a lot of Amazon Prime Video. We're working through our backlog of Downton Abbeys. Sometimes we watch DVDs.

It's amazing what is available for streaming. The last few olympics have had all kinds of stuff available in its entirety, not just the "cut down for primetime" stuff that was available for TV. You could watch all 24 or whatever figure skaters including their warm ups etc...
 
I cut 14 months ago.

The best move ever. Cable (Charter) keep ripping me off with crappy programming and moving 'decent' channels to more costly packages. The last straw was when they switched to all digital and required those boxes at every TV in the house at $7 each per month.
Good Bye
Hello internet TV.

I still get all the local (8-9) channels digitally via air antenna.
 
About 4 years ago, I realized with the little amount of TV I watch, I was paying something like $10 per hour of TV when you figure my cable bill! Didn't seem worth it to me, so we canceled cable service, and use Netflix etc exclusively, as well as an antenna for the few things we might want to watch.

About that antenna - we had been using rabbit ears for each TV, which was less-than optimum. So I put a larger antenna that I got from Walmart up in the attic. I connected that to the splitter that the cable TV had previously been connected to, so now that antenna feeds all the cable outlets in the house. Which is simpler, neater, and since the antenna is higher, the signal is better too.

Since we do still have cable internet, I did have to separate that feed cable and connect it to the room with the modem, but that's okay since I don't have a TV in that room anyway.
 
Brian (6PC), what internet provider are you using to get a large bandwidth?

Now that I have the various streaming services, I too might cut the cable. But currently have internet tied in with it (Verizon FiOS).

What's a good choice in our area for internet only?
 
I've never done cable to begin with, does that count?
 
schmookeeg said:
We chucked DTV a few years ago. I don't think the savings were huge (60, 70, 80?/mo), but DTV screwed up our bill and weren't very nice about it,
.
Click to expand...


You too?

Yeah, they are also famous for just happening to add services (+ the charge) that you never approved of or were consulted about --- and give you the third degree when you tell them to remove it (they want you to justify YOUR decision, since they know what you need and are too stupid to know better) and reverse the charges.

BTDT
 
For all of you who have cut your TV/cable whatever, what's your social life like? Oh, you have a spouse, kids, and a bunch of friends you get together with to pass the time? How wonderful for you.

I'd be so utterly bored without TV I would go bonkers. 5:15pm till 11pm M-F and 9am-11pm on Saturday and Sunday it's on.

The life of a social pariah.
 
schmookeeg said:
Our internet is TWC Cable @ 100/3. No other credible offerings here. FIOS is literally across the street, but they won't come here. :( We're 14,xxx feet from the DSL XO. If any other high-performance internet access appears, we'll kill off TWC too, as they're not a nice company. Til then, we deal.
Click to expand...

Mike:

Make a deal with the neighbor across the street - get a FIOS connection, put up a wifi bridge with a couple of patch antennae, ba da boom, you're fast.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Brian (6PC), what internet provider are you using to get a large bandwidth?

Now that I have the various streaming services, I too might cut the cable. But currently have internet tied in with it (Verizon FiOS).

What's a good choice in our area for internet only?
Click to expand...

I live in a weird spot.
All neighborhoods in my area have Fios.
It is not available in my subdivision

Literally just upgraded form DSL last month I was paying 90/ month for flippin DSL. It was horrible.

I have charter internet now which is faster for $40/ month.

Before I moved here, I had Fios and loved it.
 
EdFred said:
For all of you who have cut your TV/cable whatever, what's your social life like? Oh, you have a spouse, kids, and a bunch of friends you get together with to pass the time? How wonderful for you.

I'd be so utterly bored without TV I would go bonkers. 5:15pm till 11pm M-F and 9am-11pm on Saturday and Sunday it's on.

The life of a social pariah.
Click to expand...

Yeah, have some kids. TV, social life, and a bunch of other things vanish (not complaining. I wouldn't trade it for the world). With a 5 and 7 year old I get about 2 hours in the evening of downtime. I used to watch TV and go to bed but I realized I have a lot of projects that are unfinished.

And weekends :rofl: No such thing anymore.
Having kids makes getting rid of TV pretty easy.
 
TheTraveler said:
That's not true. I have AT&T international on two phones, and I use Skype, WhatsApp, and a few other wifi calling apps. Works very well.
Click to expand...

You don't understand, this VoIPs using my T-Mo number. I can be in the middle of the ocean with VSat service piped wifi through the boat, and if someone calls the number on my card, it rings through. There are no extra costs involved, my phone bill and our broadband bill, and it doesn't incur VSats VoIP fee, it falls under our unlimited data package so it doesn't add to the owners bill. While AT&T offers international roaming at a premium, there is no premium with the T-Mo international plan. You get throttled service which you can pay a premium to upgrade, but the throttled service is good enough to run Google Navigator, do web searches for businesses, and even read these forums. It's not quite fast enough to stream video without significant buffer delays though. Thing is, no matter how much I use the data, my bill does not change, I also get free international texting. Voice is 20¢ a minute.

If you can find me a plan that does better, especially internationally, please, let me know. T-Mo's customer service is also the best in the industry.
 
EdFred said:
For all of you who have cut your TV/cable whatever, what's your social life like? Oh, you have a spouse, kids, and a bunch of friends you get together with to pass the time? How wonderful for you.

I'd be so utterly bored without TV I would go bonkers. 5:15pm till 11pm M-F and 9am-11pm on Saturday and Sunday it's on.

The life of a social pariah.
Click to expand...

I have none of those things, yet I don't get bored and can't remember the last time I was. Heh... :dunno:
 
I love my kids but I do often wonder if I didn't have them what year Mirage I would be flying. :)
 
JoeSelch said:
I have none of those things, yet I don't get bored and can't remember the last time I was. Heh... :dunno:
Click to expand...

Yeah, you but you find running for 24 hours straight exciting.
 
SCCutler said:
Mike:

Make a deal with the neighbor across the street - get a FIOS connection, put up a wifi bridge with a couple of patch antennae, ba da boom, you're fast.
Click to expand...

I've thought about it. :D I can't find a wifi bridge that exceeds the TWC 100mbps rate.

plus we're in condos -- and mine faces the water at an angle that makes it real hard to point to the fios, which is northeast of us.

I did think about just doing a cat5 run, but... I think someone would notice. :D
 
I suppose I DO have cable TV in a sense. About the only time I watch TV is in the morning at the gym when I'm on the cardio machine. Those are on cable, so I guess I'm indirectly paying for cable. That's where I catch up on the news. I almost never watch TV during the week, just don't have time. When I get home it's seven or eight, I'm dead tired, and I just eat, shave, pack my gym bag for the morning and go to sleep.

On the weekends I might watch some TV while I'm chilling out, but the broadcast stations are adequate for my needs. Football game. Nascar. Some stupid show with a tall thin retentive clean freak dude, and Indian and some other people.
 
Henning said:
If you spend that much of your life doing something that doesn't excite you, I feel sorry for you.
Click to expand...

One often spends a good portion of the day doing unexciting things. And if you think about it, masturbation for five straight hours can be taxing if anything.
 
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