A Year Without Cable TV - Page 3

We spend over $250/month on cable and I'd love to ditch it.

Occasionally I've toyed with the idea of cutting cable. It's hard to do when you have five in the household and three are kids. Too much variety in tastes. And my wife isn't very tech savvy so she doesn't like working the HTPC, even though it's simple.

So we continue on with cable.

I have been doing without any cable or pay satellite service for five years or so. I am one of the few relying on a big, motorized satellite dish.

You know, when I did have those pay services before, of the hundreds of stations, I found I was watching maybe ten with any regularity. Now I get more than enough choices, some premium channels (usually these are temporary) and plenty of HD.

There is no hacking going on with me. These stations are broadcast unencrypted. In those five years I have paid for equipment and some construction materials. I own everything, which I wouldn't if I subscribed. I have learned a hobby, which I wouldn't if I had subscribed, and I get more than enough stations.

I do get fewer local stations, so I have to rely on the internet for local news. That's a small downside.

I also get no satellite or cable bills every month. Once again, I am hacking nothing. It's all perfectly legal. Five years. I'm still happy.

Ok, I get it that everybody hates cable-me included. But other than getting everything OTA, people who talk about "streaming", do they have a a magical internet connection that I am unaware of. Because for me to maintain my internet thru the big "C", costs pretty close to the same with basic service, since it is bundled.
So, I do not understand everybody saying they are cutting the cable, yet are streaming-am I missing something?
Thanks

I would, if I had to, pay the same to stream my service than subscribe to a satellite or cable company again. I'd rather throw money at innovation. If I didn't have OTA as an option I'd subscribe to Hulu-Plus.

Kryspy

I have AT&T U-Verse. When I had U-Verse TV + Internet, it was costing me about $150/mo. When I cancelled the TV portion, it dropped to $38/mo.

Same here, I have Comcast. With TV, it was 148/month. With internet only, $44 (actually 43.89). So, a BIG savings - and we will ALWAYS have internet anyways, we use it too much, including doing a lot of work from home.

I went to OTA HDTV in 2009, after the digital switchover. While I had no analog reception, I had generally good digital reception with indoor rabbit ears. The biggest problem was weather disrupted the reception, and seemed to worsen the past 12 months.

Now I'm in an apartment with cable part of the lease, so now I've got a full digital cable selection for the first time in 7 years. There's probably no going back


Unless you have a Tivo, which doesn't work with ClearQAM stations on the $10/mo "Lifeline" cable.

My cable/sat Co:

1. Channel Master 7000 STB, basically the OTA section of a Dish VIP622 without the monthly fees.

1. 6 Winegard HD antennas in front of a parabolic all on a rotator, with dual passive and active amps (had to redo the attic insulation after the install).

3. Muxlab baluns splitting 1080p DD signal via ethernet to 4 TVs.

Now i get over 40 stations, mostly from the big cities 60and 90 miles away.

Dear sports fans,
Have you heard of the ESPN app on the Xbox 360 (with a Live account)?
I cut the cord 3 years ago and didn't know such an amazing thing existed until I bought an xbox 6 months ago.

The ESPN app shows every current live game that any ESPN channel is airing and holds 2 weeks of replays.

I'm not really a sports fan, so maybe I missed commercials for it, but I have to think this thing isn't better marketed. It's pretty amazing and does dual view mode where you can view 2 events side-by-side and switch audio.

You are right, they are not talking basic cable, people don't stream basic cables programs, they do movies, showtimes stuff.

But streaming is not for everybody. If you are interested you should try it out WHILE your regular cable still on, and if you like what u see online, pull out your calculator, then the numbers and your particular situation will tell u whether you want to cut the cable.

Unless you have Time Warner, Brighthouse or a couple other cable operators who refuse to allow you access to it.

I agree with that except for one channel. MeTV is a good classic TV channel and it available for free OTA with an antenna. Go to www.tvfool.com to see if MeTV and what other channels are in your area.

I pay $20 a month for AT&Ts 1.5 Mbps DSL. Only 20% of my viewing is streaming. I also have a bookcase full of DVDs. DVDs are my ala-carte pay programming. I can spend money on just stuff that I'm interested and not have to pay for repeats. But OTA and streaming with internet you would have anyway is free.

"If all you want is the local OTA channels sure this is the cheapest way to go. Don't forget to ground your antenna."

How does one go about grounding a large rooftop antenna?

Depending on your location, you don't even need a rooftop antenna. Check sites like TVFool and Antennaweb to see if you need an antenna on the rooftop. My antennas are in the attic and I'm able to easily lock all the channels I care about (mainly CBS and NBC) without a problem. And I'm on the Wisconsin/Illinois border!

It cost me a $1.98 to make my antenna and I get almost every channel.

Problem is, I need the big ten network this fall. I will probably get cable, then cancel as soon as the season is over. It's cheaper than viewing it in a bar. I just need the bare essential package.

The rest of the content...well, thank god for torrents is all I can say.

been 4 3/4 years for me and E* satellite service...don't miss it!

@Five28
It is a process, enough that I put my antenna in the attic where I'm 99% certain it's not going to hit by lightning. I'm 99% certain this means I'm not getting some channels, but in looking at my map, unless I put something high enough to hit the cities 2 hours away, there is nothing just barely out of reach that isn't just duplicate content.
But for REAL any outdoor antenna must be grounded.

I get 9 OTA channels, with one of the HD ones having some trouble, but a small antenna amp should do the trick.

Visit this site and scroll down to "The NEC Requirement"
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/basics.html

Grounding block on Amazon.com

I decided to have some of the work done for me for free by buying basic cable (70 SD channels) with free installation. I knew this would take care of how the cable entered the house, and would be "to code."

Now when I cancel cable after my 50% off promotion ends, I just need to mount the roof antenna and run cables to the cable junction box.

For me it was a no brainer. OTA, Boxee Box and Blu Ray provide all I need. With all the repositories out there for the Boxee, you can virtually watch any show, and any movie (even those still in the theater) for the one time price of the device. I tried Apple TV and Roku too, but not as good.

We dropped pay tv about 3 years ago. One unexpected benefit (and detriment - as I'll explain later) is control over the advertising my kids are exposed to. With almost all content being streamed from netflix or amazon, and all tv viewing DVR'ed with with WMC7, primarily off the local PBS affiliate for the kids, my kids see virtually no ads.

We realized this last Christmas when we missed recording 'Frosty the Snowman' and had to go to Hulu to watch it. 5 minutes in, the first commercial break appears - my 5 year old was upset - didn't understand why the movie "ended" so soon. Best of all, she actually thinks Justin Beiber is a carton Beaver... I know this all will change as she starts school and gets more exposure to other kids - but it's nice for now.

Downfall is most of the streaming stuff is dated. So when Christmas lists come up, it's filled with items that are now 'collector's items'. I had no idea vintage Strawberry Shortcake items were so expensive!

IDK how TWC does it, we pay $80 for internet and voip, when we try to lower the internet speed to save money and they won't let us. I bet they wouldn't let us cancel the phone to find something cheaper either, but at least it's not a bundle with TV (that would be really horrible wouldn't it?) Yes it would, we had it for about a month once before going back to D*

If the cable companies would ever offer a package that did not support sports coverage I would be willing to buy into it. I've read that the escalating price of cable product is largely due to the great costs of covering sporting events, not from other types of programming. Stop spreading those costs to people who don't watch sports.

In the mean time, my occasional t.v. viewing is handled nicely by my trusty old Zenith Silver Sensor in my attic.

What about me? I only want one station, and it happens to cover a local team. Yet I'm forced to pay for channels I don't want.

I want to say "Thank You!" to Bob Hetherington for sharing and Mark Anderson for the writing of such a simple and insightful article.

I'm kind of dumbfounded to read an article that seems to be tailored to exactly my needs and understanding of technology. This article was written exactly how I like to read tech info, thorough enough to set me on the same path. Maybe I'm reading too many tech blogs and news which are hideously bereft of proper writing skills.

I like how Anderson listed some points, and then scratched one out do to current tech available. I also liked how this was a pretty straight-forward "how to" that didn't leave me wondering how I would have to build some crazy linux contraption.

I love cable and would not be without it. Too much there that I and the family love to watch. It is probably the best bang for my entertainment dollar.

I have plenty of cash for lots of diversions and cable is probably the cheapest.

But if one is poor amd lower income and struggling then I understand that you gotta do what you gotta do.

The sad thing is a lot of these people stay on Cable for their "must have" channels. It's one thing to roll $150 a month when you're making six figures a year. It's another thing when you're making four.

This I agree with. I am very fortunate that cable is a luxury I can easily afford but if my family was struggling everything that would be considered 'nice to have' would be gone, especially cable.

Hmmm, what to do?
Send my kids to college while continuing to eat... or, pay the cable bill?

We've been without anything but OTA TV for almost 2 years now, and it is amazing how we still find enough junk to fill up a couple of HD-DVRs. And, shows we used to like watching such as Entourage, Burn Notice, Psych, etc... are now showing up on local OTA HD channels. Other shows usually seen on Discovery or other channels can be found online for free. Watched the entire 6 or so seasons of Air Crash Investigations in one week on YouTube.

The ONLY show I really miss watching is Monday Night Football on ESPN.

Yeah, live sports are the killer. If I want to (legally) watch the Flyers play, I would need to subscribe to Comcast's digital service and rent one of their boxes or buy a CableCard tuner. Luckily, I've found some streams of the games from a broadcaster in Sweden.

I'm waiting for Comcast to start streaming live sports on their website. They already have on-demand programming available there, and sports through ESPN3, but no NHL.

I love sports and it's one of the big reasons I pay for cable. I tried watching a streaming game and it was awful. I look at it this way: some women spend hundreds on shoes a month , some spend hundreds on clothes a month, I spend less than $150 a month for cable .