Cutting the cable TV cord

denverd1 said:
I'd like to know of a few other good Kodi apps/whatever as well. Use Exodus for everything but dont want to depend on one developer.

Been using Netflix for years as an addition to Direct tv. With YouTubes new deal I'm just about ready to cut the cord. My only concern is live sports. Its debatable how much of it I'd actually "miss"... definitly could do without a lot of it and the games I want to watch are rarely on.

Super Bowl I'll want to watch. How are you guys watching sports??

I'd love to cut the cord for good. Can I buy an airplane with $150 per month?

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Hulu Live has the full complement of ESPN and Fox Sports plus local network feeds.
 
EppyGA said:
Hulu Live has the full complement of ESPN and Fox Sports plus local network feeds.
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Ok. Tried streaming football game and was concerned if I lost access to paid TV, I'd lose access to ESPN, NFL, etc

Is Hulu a monthly fee or per show?

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denverd1 said:
Ok. Tried streaming football game and was concerned if I lost access to paid TV, I'd lose access to ESPN, NFL, etc

Is Hulu a monthly fee or per show?

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Hulu Live is a paid service $39.99 per month which includes the standard Hulu stuff as well.

Watching the National Championship game now.
 
Watching GA/AL now on ESPN via its app on our AppleTV.

For some reason, in spite of a measured 40mbps speed, we’re getting random pixelating and freezing.

But Go Dawgs regardless.
 
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SoonerAviator said:
It's just the wife and I at the moment (17-month old hasn't asked for a tablet yet, lol), and we generally aren't streaming to more than one device at a time anyway. I'm sure if she were streaming to her tablet, I was downloading updated sectional charts on mine, streaming an HD movie, and downloading music on the computer we'd have an issue.
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I have the cheap 20mb, also I go through a VPN, and I can have YouTube playing music or a Netflix movie going, playing a first person shooter, foreflight churning on charts, and a chick snap chatting or whatever, and nothing is lagging on YouTube, and the gamer kids arnt whining about my ping.
 
EppyGA said:
Hulu Live is a paid service $39.99 per month which includes the standard Hulu stuff as well.

Watching the National Championship game now.
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I hope it comes with more than that for $40. $20/month for a Sling package leaves room for Amazon and Netflix, too. I’ll have to look into it.


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EppyGA said:
Hulu Live is a paid service $39.99 per month which includes the standard Hulu stuff as well.
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SoonerAviator said:
I hope it comes with more than that for $40. $20/month for a Sling package leaves room for Amazon and Netflix, too. I’ll have to look into it.


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Fifty-six channels. They offer a free trial
 
I’ve tried Play Station Vue, Hulu TV, and Sling TV. All are about the same thing and all have the same weaknesses. Local channels might work in your area. There’s a good chance they won’t. If they don’t, you don’t get live sports that are aired on the big 4 networks. None of the apps allows much coverage when outside your registered area, either. When traveling most of the channels I wanted were blocked. I stuck with Dish. I can watch any channel or anything recorded on the DVR on any device I choose from anywhere I go, and since I split time between two homes this allows one TV subscription. On saturday I was at my daughter’s house and they couldn’t get the football playoff game on PS Vue. I opened it up on my iPhone with the Dish app and mirrored it on her Apple TV. I had tried the NFL anywhere app first and it blocked mirroring.
 
AggieMike88 said:
I have discovered that the various mainline streams (like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and AppleTV and others) are offering enough decent content that I find myself watching those more frequently than the Cable TV channels. I rarely watch first run episodes when they are initially broadcast, instead watching what my DVR captured.

So I'm considering cutting the cord, and keeping my Frontier FiOS (formerly Verizon FiOS) for home internet only.

My questions: I know many on PoA have cut the cable cord. For those folk,
  1. Can you provide some information on how much you are saving?
  2. Are you purchasing seasons of favorite programs/shows to watch?
  3. What is your before/after spending on TV entertainment?
  4. Do you miss having cable TV service or regret your choice of sending them packing?
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I cut it and then un-cut it when the cable provider pointed out that I was paying more to not have TV than it would cost me to have the basic package, due to an additional line fee for accounts that don't have the TV service. So really, I didn't save anything compared to basic cable. I suppose I saved about $70.00 / month compared to a more all-inclusive package.

I also found that with a TV that has a QAM tuner directly hooked up to the service (without a "box"), I get a few more channels than what are advertised for the basic service. Nothing to write home about, mind you, but there are a few Easter eggs.

I'm really not a TV watcher. Never have been. I watch the news and some sporting events, but not much else. So no, I don't miss it because I never really cared for it anyway. I also canceled my Netflix subscription because I got tired of the price going up while the catalog keeps shrinking. If I want to watch the next season of some Netflix-original series, I'll reactivate it for a month, watch the whole season, and cancel it again.

I do have Amazon Prime, whose movie catalog tends to be more along the lines of my personal tastes. Prime would be worth it for me even without the video service because of the free shipping, so it's like a bonus. But I do prefer their choice of movies over those of Netflix, and some of their original stuff isn't horrid.

One warning about Amazon Video: It consume huge amounts of bandwidth, even if the connected TV isn't capable of making use of the quality being sent. I use DD-WRT to throttle them down to about 3 M/s with no noticeable (to me, at least) loss of quality on either my 1080p or 720p televisions. Without the throttling, it uses crazy bandwidth. Apparently everyone gets UHD / 4K whether they can make use of it or not.

Either Gargoyle Router (for which device support is getting rather thin), or DD-WRT (whose device support is slightly better), enable bandwidth capping by device. I think LEDE does as well, but haven't tried it. Tomato I'm not sure about. I'm currently using DD-WRT on a TP-LINK Archer C7 to throttle the Roku box by its MAC, and so far it seems to be working.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I cut it and then un-cut it when the cable provider pointed out that I was paying more to not have TV than it would cost me to have the basic package, due to an additional line fee for accounts that don't have the TV service. So really, I didn't save anything compared to basic cable. I suppose I saved about $70.00 / month compared to a more all-inclusive package.

I also found that with a TV that has a QAM tuner directly hooked up to the service (without a "box"), I get a few more channels than what are advertised for the basic service. Nothing to write home about, mind you, but there are a few Easter eggs.

I'm really not a TV watcher. Never have been. I watch the news and some sporting events, but not much else. So no, I don't miss it because I never really cared for it anyway. I also canceled my Netflix subscription because I got tired of the price going up while the catalog keeps shrinking. If I want to watch the next season of some Netflix-original series, I'll reactivate it for a month, watch the whole season, and cancel it again.

I do have Amazon Prime, whose movie catalog tends to be more along the lines of my personal tastes. Prime would be worth it for me even without the video service because of the free shipping, so it's like a bonus. But I do prefer their choice of movies over those of Netflix, and some of their original stuff isn't horrid.

One warning about Amazon Video: It consume huge amounts of bandwidth, even if the connected TV isn't capable of making use of the quality being sent. I use DD-WRT to throttle them down to about 3 M/s with no noticeable (to me, at least) loss of quality on either my 1080p or 720p televisions. Without the throttling, it uses crazy bandwidth. Apparently everyone gets UHD / 4K whether they can make use of it or not.

Either Gargoyle Router (for which device support is getting rather thin), or DD-WRT (whose device support is slightly better), enable bandwidth capping by device. I think LEDE does as well, but haven't tried it. Tomato I'm not sure about. I'm currently using DD-WRT on a TP-LINK Archer C7 to throttle the Roku box by its MAC, and so far it seems to be working.

Rich
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Exactly what I'm concerned with. Apple tv is not quite mediocre for live news, I keep CNBC on in my office and for a few hours when I get home. Then it's a movie after dinner. The exceptions are football game like last night.

I'm using Kodi for movies. Haven't looked for CNBC on Kodi but that's probably my next step.

Anyone checked out YouTubes programming?

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Jealous! I'd love to go the internet / OTA route (big antenna in the attic can get both Washington and Baltimore channels), but all I have is DSL @ 3.0 Mbps, and that needs to be supplemented with a phone hotspot just to browse when the millenials are home. Cable internet in the neighborhood, but we built after they came through so now they want $6k to run a line to the house.
 
denverd1 said:
Apple tv is not quite mediocre for live news, I keep CNBC on in my office and for a few hours when I get home.
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CBS News Live isn’t bad. CNNgo is pretty horrible in its execution.

A large part of the reason I pay for CBS All Access is for the Nightly News - I’m of the generation that still finds comfort in that format.
 
cut-cable.png


Made the call today to change service after getting the latest bill in email.

Old Cable Bill Jan 10 2018.PNG

There was a reasonable wait on hold until I was connected to a live agent. I knew I got a good one when she laughed at my answer to "How are you doing" and I said "I'm getting a workout dancing to the on hold music".

The process to make the change was simpler than I thought with Frontier Communications... no drawn out customer retention script or connecting me to a different CSR to strong arm me. 10 minutes providing the information she needed to made the change happen, her explaining the process to return the set top box and cable cards, and me confirming all of the information.

"New" service is internet only with 50 megabits down and 50 up. which so far has been just fine for streaming and some PS4 online gaming. Price before fees is $57.00. A substantial savings over the old bill.
 
We canceled the TV portion of our Verizon FIOS in July. We kept the land line since it works out less then dropping it. I had an old Series3 Tivo with lifetime service in the closet, so I threw that in the AV rack in place of the FIOS DVR and put a small antenna off my back deck for OTA. Lucky here being so close to Washington D.C. and a bit elevated such that it didn't have to go on the roof or in the attic.

We also have Netflix and Prime. I had intended to sign up for Playstation Vue, Hulu Live, or similar and use the Tivo only for CBS which none of the services offer here, but since we aren't big sports watchers, we've been using the Tivo OTA exclusively.

The few times a big game was on ESPN only, we went over to our friends who live 1 block over with a full Directv package.

Like Mike above, the base package costs were bad enough, but the additional fees and extras just put me over the top. One of the last straws was having to pay the multi-room DVR rate even though we have just the singe DVR...since the unit that has more than 2 tuners and more storage is the one that supports multi-room.
 
Sports blackouts are a downside for cord cutting. I'm happy to pay to view my team, but the leagues don't make it easy.

Here's a workaround I used successfully with MLB TV last season. It has three elements:

  • VPN (virtual private network)
  • Prepaid VISA card for the sports subscription. Choose one that is reloadable (even if you do not intend to reload it), and does not require your true zip code to register (e.g., My VanillaCard, purchased in a drug store).
  • An address located in a distant sports-blackout-area for a team that will never play yours. It doesn't need to be a place where you can actually collect mail. For example, I arbitrarily chose the address of a donut shop in the territory of a bad team (can't go to world series) that was not scheduled to play mine.
 
I’m also going to see if my electric bill dips a bit because the big consumer is left in the off position
 
We cut. I was happy. Wife was not. I want an airplane. Uncut to keep wife happy.

Seriously, we explored all the streaming services available to us. It was a lot of work to keep this service or that service streaming, and by the time we found all the channels we both wanted there were very little savings. One good satellite package fixed it all, at least for now. Netflix stayed, and we find HBO Now and Starz direct subscriptions to be more cost-effective than having them as premium satellite add-ons.
 
We pay maybe $100/mo to Directv, most of it in receiver fees. I'd have dropped it years ago but dad likes it. I haven't watched live tv in years. Everything is from the DVR so I can watch at my convenience. It's odd that Netflix is ten percent of the price of directv but offers more shows that I like. But I'm finicky so there aren't too many new shows to watch. The Crown is spectacular. I've watched Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Walking Dead all the way through a few times. The only down side is that at times I've found myself wanting in on the drug trade, and at other times wanting to start an MC. I've been prepared for the apocalypse for years already.
 
I don't really watch much TV (any kind) except a few programs now and then. Wife said NBC and Hallmark channels were requirements. So... I dropped the $250 "triple play" package from Comca$t and upgraded to a local fiber to the house provider. I got 3 times the bandwidth down, more than double the bandwidth up, and voice service and it cost $200 less a month. Then I purchased a $15 OTA antenna and a $100 Tablo box to get and record the OTA channels (NBC covered) and grabbed a $25 a month Sling account (Hallmark). Happy wife, happy life..... and way less monthly recurring expense per month.
 
We have DirecTV, only because it’s included in our condo HOA fee, and it includes NFL Sunday Ticket. All we pay out of pocket is $7.60/mo for a second HD box. We watch almost zero TV other than sports. I’m about a 3.5 on a 0-10 scale as an NFL fan. But Mrs. P is about a 15, so we have to have it. :cool:
 
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