The Official "I dont have dish or cable" anymore thread - Page 53

I'm not arguing that point - I'm just tired of hearing about a certain DVD and VHS tape collection in the HD forum.

No doubt, I could buy a lot more movies if I didn't spend the money on satellite. However, I really don't want to own most of what I come across on TV and I would miss quite a few rare gems if I didn't have have channels like HDNet Movies or even the psuedo-HD Turner Classic Movies. A lot of stuff on those channels isn't out on home video period - unless you want to buy them on Warner's "DVD On Demand" titles, which essentially sells you a DVD-R in DVD packaging.

However, there's no way I'm watching "Lawrence of Arabia" in any form other than the best available, which is not cable TV.

Best Buy has a $7 Blu-ray bin right next to the $5 DVD bin.

Blu-Rays are often more expensive than DVDs. Also, I'm not going to shell out my hard-earned money to purchase a show if I already have a perfectly-good DVD. Every now and then, someone will place a Blu-Ray show for sale that's less then its DVD counterpart. When this happens I will get the Blu-Ray. Last Year "The Big River" Had the Blu-Ray Version Star Trek (The Original Series) on sale for about 50 bux LESS than the DVD (Which didn't have the enhanced Special Effects). Since the Blu-Ray was cheaper than the DVD, and you got to watch the show with original and enhanced effects, I wasted no time in snatching it up. Look around, and when you see this happening, Git em while the gittin's good!

Roughly 250 Blu-ray titles $5 and less... large chunk at $2.50. I will saying walking down the aisle I was shocked by the number of bad movies. Fry's is one heck of a store... :)

 

http://www.frys.com/search?query_string=&cat=-68984&pType=pDisplay&fq=100730%20Blu__Ray&rows=50&sort=price%20asc&start=0&cat=-68984&from=0&to=24

 

This week is a little better than their typical weekly sale... not that much however. If you want to go all the way up to $7 they have another (much better) bunch...

 

http://www.frys.com/search?plusearch=7291163%207290603%207291183%207291263%207290523%207289313%207288603%207289003%207289453%207288723%207289433%207288563%207289373%207290943%207289393%207289483%207290363%207289873%207290393%207290913%207290003%207289983%207290013

 

Including The Dark Knight, Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc.

Edited by Charles R - 1/20/13 at 11:36am

We have Rasputin's which went in where Tower Records was. They put a canvas sign over the Tower Records and Books but it fell down and I guess the slackers that run the store don't have enough energy to resurrect it again. Anyway I was there yesterday and they now have rows of $5-6 used Blurays.

I wonder this too. It is the only thing keeping me from cutting the cord.

I used to have Dish too,and i also paid $96 per month. But in July i bought myself a Roku 2XS streaming media player,compared what i normally watch with Dish to what i get with my Roku,and after one month of comparing i dumped Dish and bought a small antenna that i put in my window. Now i get most of what i want with the Roku,and use my antenna for local news. I get my local weather forecasts primarily from my Roku. The only thing i really miss by not having Dish is TCM,other than that, i'm not missin' a thing by dropping Dish....except the high $96 bill. Now i pay a whopping $16 per mo. for Netflix and Hulu plus($8 bucks apiece),everything else is free. unless i rent a movie from Vudu or Amazon.
Edited by greaser - 1/20/13 at 2:47pm

Why is this question keeping you from cutting the cord? There is no law that states that you can't get Internet only from your tv provider. Will it be more than the bundled price? Probably, but it will be cheaper than the full bundle.

I dropped fios TV 2 years ago, went OTA and kept fios Internet. Lowered it to the lowest tier which is 15 down and 5 up for $55. That's plenty of bandwidth for multiple streams.

I'm actually paying LESS for internet now than I was back when I had a bundle. When I had Uverse, my internet was running $48/mo for 12 mbps, but after I cancelled TV I was able to call retentions and get the same deal new customers get. 12 mbps for $24.95/mo.

Same Here!

 

I see you amended your post for a little honesty and transparency there.

 

That's good - it saved me the trouble of pointing out and detailing those things myself.

 

Also, how many TV's did you go down to having service to from that one, indoor antenna? Do you need other antennas at other TV's now? How about additional Roku's? Replaced any DVR's with your own (I could be mistaken, but from the DVD Recorder forum, I believe you have at least one Magnavox HDD/DVD recorder you're using as a DVR - that's a couple hundred or so bucks right there, Also, that Magnavox's tuner happens to only output in SD, and SD isn't really a valid alternative for an "HDTV Programming"  forum, whether OTA, DVD or streaming)?

Edited by Rammitinski - 1/20/13 at 5:54pm

First of all i haven't been dishonest about anything.I live alone and I only ever needed 1 tv and 1 antenna.No additional Roku's either. No DVR's, but i do own 4 DVDR's,they were each a one time charge,they are several yrs.old and can't be counted as part of a Monthly tv viewing bill because there is no monthly charge for using them unlike a monthly sat.bill or my monthly Netflix/Hulu+ bill. And that's what i'm talking about.....a monthly tv viewing bill,which i reduced from $96 bucks mo. to $16 bucks mo.There's no dishonesty there. If you want to count the cost of my DVDR's as part of a monthly charge,then i can make the case that paying my apartment rent each mo. is also part of my monthly tv viewing bill.....my groceries too,throw in a few other necessities and it could be said that i pay well over a thousand dollars a month...... just to watch tv!
I don't use any of my DVDR's tuners to watch OTA tv. I use HDTV's tuner.

I also own four HDD/DVD recorders, along with a Sony DHG-HDD500 and a TiVoHD.

 

I'm only using one HDD/DVD recorder and the TiVo HD in my setup right now, but I consider that part of the overall costs - since I have always (not strictly, but mostly) used the HDD/DVD recorders for time-shifting television.

 

Sorry for assuming you were intentionally obscufating and denying, like a lot of the pay TV service-bashing agenda crowd around here has a habit of doing.

Edited by Rammitinski - 1/20/13 at 10:09pm

I use AT&T's DSL 1.5 Mbps internet for $20 a month. My two main sources of TV is from OTA HD and DVD.

I'm back to cutting the cord going on a month now.  Back 3 years ago I had DirecTV for 15 years but got laid off so I built an HTPC to use for OTA and streaming.  That worked great for a year and a half.  I had Uverse for Internet and they sucked me into signing up for TV as a trial when they basically paid me $250 to try TV.  I ended up keeping it.  But a couple months ago I see I'm paying nearly $100 a month for about 5 channels I don't get OTA.  What am I doing?  So I dumped the TV part of Uverse again and went back to my HTPC.

 

So now we get most of our shows for free OTA and pay $8 for Hulu Plus which nets me most of the "cable" shows we watch from the likes of USA and SyFy.  RedBox for BluRays at $1.50 each (with lots of coupon codes for free movies too).  So gone from $100 a month to $8 and a couple bucks for current movies.  Not a bad savings I say.  We had Netflix but honestly been pretty disappointed lately with what's available.  I'll sign up again a few months from now if enough new stuff has been added we'd watch.

 

Only thing we'll miss will be TNT shows which do not allow you to watch streaming unless you subscribe to a pay TV service.  Even though I still have Uverse for Internet I'm not blocked out of streaming.  Oh well, if they don't want me to watch their commercials (which I can't skip by the way) that's their choice.  And I refuse to buy at $3 per episode, that's just crazy.  So we'll wait 6-9 months for it to hit Netflix and sign up for the month to watch the season then cancel Netflix again until another season of something is available.

 

All in all works great.

 

As noted by others, why would you need to drop TW for your Internet?  Doesn't make much sense.  Their Internet and TV services aren't tied at the hip despite their sales pitches.  With Uverse I still have them for Internet because they are the best available to me (Charter Internet *sucks*).  No need to drop Internet just because you no longer use the TV service.

Thanks for the heads up, I just completed the Harry Potter series for my girls.

I don't have to drop TW roadrunner but wanted to see what others were doing. I guess I'm simply trying to get as much information as possible on options before making the move.

I dropped the cable TV off TW and kept phone and Internet.

 

Got it.  What options are available to you will be just whats available in your town.  Is DSL available from a phone company?  Is a telco like AT&T Uverse or Verizon FIOS available?  Is another cable company available (rare, but does happen)?  Probably the last option might be if a WiMax type service is available or even going thru your cell phone provider.

 

List out what is all available, speeds and costs along with common pros and cons.  Should help you make a decision.

 

For example my options for Internet are Charter cable, AT&T Uverse, DSL and satellite.

Charter sucks really bad, DSL is expensive and slow around here and satellite of course is a non-starter.  Really leave Uverse as the only good option with Charter a distant second.

Unless you factor in the cost for the high speed internet that provides you Hulu Plus streaming it's not an accurate cost breakdown comparison.

How many people don't have high-speed internet anyway, regardless of their TV choices?

I have DirecTV, Antenna AND high-speed internet, so dropping D* would be no problem and the internet would not be a cost factor. I already stream Pac-12 games on the internet since D* doesn't carry them anyway.

When talking about the cost of cable, I always separate it from the cost of internet. Depending on the discount you get for a bundle (in some cases, may be non-existent), the internet will be a static price regardless of tv service.

 

Sure it is.  I'm of course going to have high speed Internet anyway.  Who wouldn't?  Costs the same too with TV or not (for me).  

I think the only way internet cost is a factor to consider is if you upgrade your speed specifically so you can have a better streaming experience or you previously only had dial-up or a wireless plan for internet.

It's also a consideration if you were hoping to downgrade your service to save money, but can't if you want to watch streaming video.

 

Yep.  I will say though in my experience just 6 meg is plenty for streaming in HD.  With 6 meg I can stream two HD Netflix streams and one Hulu HD at once with no issue with plenty left for web surfing.  12 meg will give you a bit more room if you have a gamer or really need to stream more then that.  Some people think you need 50 meg or something to stream and that's just not true.  Although I'm sure how crappy your Internet provider is will make a difference.

It depends.

Some services give you a constant speed closer to the maximum than others. I'd rather have a constant 4-5 on a 6Mb/s connection than the same on a 10Mb/s package. The problem is, the service that offers the latter probably skims a 6Mb/s connection down to a contant 3Mb/s, so you have to upgrade just to get what you need to do anything.

It used to be that DSL was a lot more constant and more likely to give you a speed closer to the max for the connection, even if it didn't hit the peaks that cable did. Cable, on the other hand, used to swing widly up and down during peak and non-peak periods. Now, cable seems to have stabilized and left DSL in the dust as just being slow. FIOS and U-Verse have made up for that, but, for most people, the line for cable is already there with no major installation needed.

I think the main reason cable has come out shooting as much as they have is to ward off the defection to telco or wireless-based services that was taking place several years back. Now, the wireless services have made themselves unappealing for anything but useage where there is no other conenction to the internet available with all their caps and speed limits. WiFi has become a valuable feature in phones in the last few years so you can use the bigger pipe of home broadband.

I finally cut my cable, Time Warner NYC, about three weeks ago. I've gone through a couple of antennas and am getting the best results from an HD-Blade on the wall right inside my window. Since I work till 10pm all week, I missed a lot of TV anyway and I really couldn't justify anymore paying $126 a month - eventually to increase with the Showtime they added to my building's service without our permission - so now my latest bill is only $40 for internet only and the TW standard is fine for Roku, where I do all my streaming - there are plenty of older/classic/unusual films you can watch there for not much cost, besides Netflix.

I do miss the idea of watching the major tennis events but the finals are usually on the networks (though Wimbledon went to ESPN, still ABC repeated a lot of it later that day last year). However it almost feels like a relief not to be bombarded by shows I have no interest in. The digital picture makes a huge difference of course. I still remember when I moved to New York and couldn't believe how bad the reception was in the old days.
Edited by roseha - 4/11/13 at 9:05pm

I went to get groceries at the grocery store that is 5 minutes from my house and rented two new release movies out of a redbox for $1.20 each. I was thinking to get these movies on cable I would be paying $100 a month plus $6 each to rent them on PPV. Pay TV is way overpriced.

Yep, I pay $8 a month for Hulu Plus and that's it.  Far cry from $110+ a month and I don't really miss anything, especially since it seems every channel now is becoming a reality channel of some kind.

 

Redbox tip:  Sign up for their email and also for their text deals.  Every week you'll get coupon codes in email and text for at least 50 cents off a rental, sometimes rent one get one free and stuff like that.  Makes it even cheaper.

 

With Redbox my totally monthly outlay is about $10 a month for OTA HD, streaming and Redbox for latest movies.  Can't really beat that.

 

The only thing I'll miss is Red Zone channel during NFL season.  But a trip to the local pub with Sunday Ticket a couple times a month (which I would do anyway) will make up for that.  :)