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Author Topic: Cutting the (cable) Cord  (Read 2329 times)

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Generic Eric

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Cutting the (cable) Cord
« on: December 29, 2011, 06:52:24 pm »
My wife and I were talking about trying to lower the price of our cable bill.

We have limited options here:
Over the Air. This would include Fox and ABC.
The local cable company
Direct TV
Dish
I have yet to compare numbers to see where we could save money for similar services to what we have now. Gotta find the bill for that.

I am interested to know about your attempts to Cut the Cord. My laptop has HDMI out that I would connect that to the TV if/until I built a HTPC.  I should mention that we have Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Samstag

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #1 on: December 29, 2011, 07:30:07 pm »
If you own your home, mounting an antenna on the roof or in the attic will improve your selection of over-the-air stations.

I cut the cord earlier this month and use a PC to capture/record.  Windows Media Center is really good as a DVR.  If you shop around you can find USB tuners for $20-30 each.  It's nice to have 2-3 in case you want to record multiple channels at the same time.

My current setup is a $30 passive antenna in the attic, a PC with 3 tuners which is also my primary desktop, and a couple of xbox 360s as windows media extenders.

Get an antenna, at least 1 cheap USB tuner, and a windows media remote (adds an infrared port to your laptop) and you won't miss the cable so much.  If there's a show from cable you absolutely have to have, buying the season ala carte on Amazon/Itunes/Zune is still a lot cheaper than paying the monthly cable bill.

BadMouth

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2011, 10:59:58 pm »
I have the cheapest basic cable and internet service offered by Comcast. ($16 and $27 respectively)
It was the same price as having internet only and I still get the networks in Hi Def and the Discovery Channel (not in Hi Def).
Don't have to mess with any cable boxes, just like the good old days.
I kinda miss DVR and On Demand, but didn't watch TV enough to justify the cost.

The "economy" internet service I have doesn't seem any different from the supposedly faster service I had before.
Also, own my own modem.  Not paying $7/mo to rent a crappy one. (I bought my own crappy one)

I picked up a Roku player during the Christmas sales.  It's much better than the old Seagate Free-Agent Theatre it replaced.
That being said, I'm still not impressed with the content offered for streaming by the major services.
I did a free trial of the Amazon Prime; pretty much the same tired content as netflix.

Now I'm doing a free month trial of Hulu plus. (the Roku only works with Hulu plus).
This looked good from a distance, but half the movies/shows I wanted to stream are licensed for "web only" and can't be played on other devices.
I ended up going through ALL their content and came up with around 30 movies that I might watch if I get bored enough
and a half dozen TV shows, only a few of which I'll actually watch on a regular basis. It looks like there is a lot of content there, but if you weed out the clips and redirects to network websites, there's really not.
 I'll be cancelling at the end of the free trial.

I have a TV folder in the bookmarks on my laptop.
ESPN360 is rocking for bowl season.  ;D

If I could do without internet service on my cell phone, I could save a bunch more.  :-\
« Last Edit: December 30, 2011, 09:10:46 am by BadMouth »

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2011, 11:51:01 pm »
We drop to super basic cable in the summer. In the winter, the wife has to have the Minnesota Wild hockey games. If you have an XBMC machine and Icefilms, you have almost anything you could want to watch. I bought an AppleTV last year and it works quite well after being jailbroken. We also have a Tivo HD which will do over the air HD. But with basic cable, we still get the local channels in HD so no problem there.

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BadMouth

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #4 on: December 30, 2011, 12:29:29 am »
We drop to super basic cable in the summer. In the winter, the wife has to have the Minnesota Wild hockey games.

hehe, for the three months of college football season, my cable/internet bill is $130/mo.
Then I return everything and go back to my $45/mo.   :lol
Most of the NFL games are on the local networks.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2011, 09:11:46 am by BadMouth »

eds1275

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2011, 04:35:09 pm »
I have netflix and an xbox 360. I don't miss cable, and I don't watch sports which is about the only reason I understand paying for cable with all the different online options.

wildclay

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2012, 01:54:01 am »
We too have the lowest Internet and cable TV possible from Comcast ($60/mo.) here in the twin cities (MN). I bought my wife a Roku and a $120 MLB.tv annual subscription for Christmas. Her love for baseball was the only reason we were considering additional cable channels, but the annual subscription is cheaper than a year's worth of extra cable charges and now she can watch any baseball game from any team any time she wants in HD and it looks great! MLB.tv also works on our Samsung SmartTV, which also has many free online content channels just like the Roku. Now we've got too rooms in which we an watch tons of good stuff online.

Silas (son of Silas)

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2012, 05:46:38 am »
About 7 years ago we had a cable package with more channels than I could shake a stick at.

One day I came home from work and my daughter said that the cable box had stopped working. I rebooted it a couple of times but it wouldn't kick into life. I called to my wife to ask if she knew the cable box was busted, to which she replied "yes... and it's been that way for three weeks"

Given that no one in the house had even noticed for three weeks we cancelled our cable there and then.

In the UK if you have the ability to receive TV in your house you have to pay a license which costs £145.50 a year, so I removed the TV aerial from in the loft, removed the loop antenna from a portable TV we had in the bedroom et Voilą...  We've been completely TV free for 7 years and no license fee to pay.

We didn't miss it at all. I built a media server (it's the PC in my arcade machine) that is in suspend mode all the time until I turn on a media player at one of the TV's, at which point a little script sends a WOL magic packet back to the server to wake it up, which it does in just under 6 seconds.

Another script on the server pings the media players at the TVs ever 5 minutes. If it gets no response it then checks to see if anyone is playing music (we use the arcade machine as a jukebox too), it then checks if anyone is playing an arcade game plus a few other things like ripping a DVD, running a disk check etc, then puts itself back to sleep, so it only runs when it needs to, thus saving power.

 I spent a few months transferring all my DVDs and CDs to it, packed the DVDs into the loft and flogged my DVD players for a few quid on ebay.

As a family we do a lot of stuff that keeps us entertained. My wife and I read a lot, go for walks with the dogs etc. My daughter and I play chess, backgammon, cards, cribbage etc. and of course I play on the arcade a fair bit.

No cable, no TV, no regrets.
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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #8 on: January 01, 2012, 11:09:59 am »
Our Sky television bill is about £70 a month and that includes telephone and Internet.  I get good speeds on the Internet and it is unlimited with Sky Player on the Xbox360.  The telephone service is very expensive, so VOIP is not a option but a necessity. 

Even though we have SKY PVRs in just about every room in the house, the product is watched 50% of the time. Myself I rarely watch it, except for the odd documentary and Al Jazeera for the news coverage. The rest is either Internet or a book.

I would love to get rid of Sky (might drop to basic) as their HD service is poor, and the content is marred by reruns.  Yes we get the HBO shows, but at £45 a month you should get something.  If I could stream everything like Lovefilm for a low monthly charge it would be much better.  We do not have cable, but there is a BT on demand service that could work, but would probably end up costing the same.  If we opt for Movies or Sports then the bill jumps to £100 a month, and we still get the adverts.  Plus add £100+ for a license fee and it can get quite expensive.

I like the idea of TV being a third option for entertainment, with the Internet first, and a good book second.  If we can get the whole bill down to £30 a month including incoming calls only, and use our mobiles for calling out we could reduce our spending and be more informed with what is REALLY going on in the world, without SKY spoon feeding us diatribe day after day.  £40 x 12 = nice holiday or a flight home in July.  ;D
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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #9 on: January 01, 2012, 10:34:26 pm »
I guess it depends on how much and what kind of tv you watch, and if you have a home that can put up an antenna...

I don't watch much sports (other than those really big games that are on the over the air channels).

We live in a house. So I bought the biggest fish bone type antenna and mounted it on my roof.
With a signal booster, even after splitting, I got about 30 channels...

good thing is, my dad loves soccer, and the Spanish channels will show them over the air, where normally, we'll need to get cable. don't really need to understand Spanish to watch soccer anyways...
So, I have been cable free for 5+ yrs.

I do have internet, and Netflix.  I don't mind waiting for the dvd to come out....
its usually out in 6 months....

and for most tv shows, you can now get it online from their official website anyways...
or if you're download savvy, easily get it online...

I don't really download much stuffs...
instead, once a long while, I'll just bring a 500G drive to my friends place who love to download, and ask him to fill it up with some recent stuffs...
then I watch and delete...



Another Brilliant mind ruined by education....  :p

knave

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Re: Cutting the (cable) Cord
« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2012, 01:10:49 pm »
You guys that can get Over the air signals are lucky. That's the only thing that I miss. I turned off my cable over 5 years ago, never looked back. Netflix meets my needs.

I'm really in the minority here. I went from using DVD's and/or downloading what I want to watch to just turning on a box and choosing something. This perspective makes me appreciate netflix, especialy when I watch something obscure that is really good. The whole reason I turned off cable in the first place is that my TV was never off...it was just too much. So I save money. Can watch a show if I want...and there's plenty of good stuff. My kids don't seem to have any trouble finding shows that they like...Meh...Whatever works.

Ok, I guess I also miss the discovery and history channel, just good timewasters. That's what I watch when I visit my family with Dish.
As it is I watch about one hour show every other day give or take. Is just the right amount. I'm too busy otherwise.