Cutting the Cord (Cable TV)

Personal Finances Building / Maintaining a Home
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After our ATT bill for CATV & internet skyrocketed yet again, I began seriously following the “Cutting the Cord” group on Facebook. Folks there suggested I use this site to find out which internet TV best met our needs.

The winner was YouTubeTV (YTTV) as it covered nearly all the channels we wanted, has unlimited cloud DVR capability, can be watched on just about any device that can connect to the internet, etc. We tried it for a week and were very happy so it was adios to ATT’s Uverse service. They (of course) then really jacked up our internet rate, so off I went to shop.

Spectrum offered 500mps service (vs. a limit of 100mps with ATT) and at a lower price point. So we axed ATT entirely and have cut our total TV and internet costs almost exactly in HALF. Oh yeah – and we also don’t have to rent equipment. [I just hooked the Spectrum modem up to our hubs and router and we didn’t have to change anything.]

Hope this helps others!

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Nice!!

We cut the cord almost a century ago… Well, it seems that long ago.

One of the happiest days of my life was bringing in an armload of various cable boxes, remotes and cable modem into the Comcast office when we cut the cord. They asked if we were moving, and I told them, Yep - sure am. I’m moving to streaming!!! Adios amigo!!!

We’ve tried Sling, YouTube TV, and others and have settled (for now) on YTTV as well.

I just checked - that was 2016. I recall posting on Facebook that we had converted and I have sent the instructions and links of how I did it to many folks since then. I also think that I have posted them on the old FooI site as well. All in hopes to help others cut the cord!

'38Packard
→ not sure how many thousands of dollars we’ve saved since then…

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I’ve had Sling, Hulu and now YoutubeTV. I like the sports on youtube the best so I stayed with it. Pricewise they all are about the same…doc

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My daughter, who lives on the other side of town, dropped cable too. I don’t know what she has now.

I pay a freaking fortune for cable and internet. Internet promises me 500 mbps, but delivers 600. The phone company keeps sending me flyers for their fiber optic service, new to the area.

Cable gets me almost everything there is, including all sorts of movie channels. I hate commercials. I hid most channels with commercials from view. Jeopardy is the only such program I always watch, and I record that and fast forward through the advertising. I have a bunch of things set to record, some of which I never get around to watching. I’d hate to think what my cable bill divided by my modest TV viewing hours comes to as a rate.

No question, I’m wasting money. Why? Because I have everything I want, and it is all so easy to use. I just can’t get up any enthusiasm for the hassle of starting over with new sources. And I can afford it. There is a thread about splurging a bit over on another board that applies to that.

But my hat’s off to all you adventurous folks doing it better!

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That is our problem. We are a one horse town basically. Other than Starlink, it’s Comcast or nothing else. Century Link has no interest in laying the cable for our little area. I’ve looked at the cost of Comcast internet alone plus Youtube TV and it’s more expensive. Guess I will have to wait until Starlink drops to a more reasonable rate.

Lakedog

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That is the issue here, with Comcast/Xfinity: you can pay $140 a month for a triple play including tv, landline phone & internet, or you can pay $90 a month for internet only +YTTV at $70 is actually more.

And YTTV has stopped carrying local sports (NESN), so… the heck with them too.

Rapacious.

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We too were comcast hostages, until a neighbor suggested T-Moble. We called and didn’t like the heavy amount of documentation they wanted, (Equifax has already put my info on the dark web so not looking for another to do so,) but we used the info to get Comcast to meet their price. It’s possibly another option for you. Reliable 5G Home Internet service | T-Mobile 5G Home Internet

IP

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My only option is Cox. ATT has 18 MB DSL lines here. I get targeted Facebook ads for ATT fiber, but there’s no ATT fiber here. Can’t get Verizon or T Mobile home internet either. Cox doesn’t have any deals on it’s TV - you can pay $56/mo for OTA channels + TBS, the CSPAN’s and some music channels or $100/mo for TV. “Double play” and “Triple Play” are a thing of the past.

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Late reply (sorry).

Our only option is CenturyLink DSL. But it proves adequate. We cut the cable a few years ago, and I don’t regret it a bit. We subscribe to what we want, we have the Google TV device (similar to a Roku, which we had previously). Works great. Save lots of money. We had subs for Netflix and HBO (Max now), and you can watch a lot of content with ads for free (the ad-free subs cost money, but we don’t watch them enough to pay for it). All we have to do is pay for the internet connection, and the subs we want. Probably a third the price of a premium cable subscription that includes HBO and Netflix.

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If you don’t need live sports, then an over-the-air dvr device works great. The new Tablo TV device picked up 72 channels at Mom’s in Indianapolis this week…I culled most of them (the last thing she needs is lots of Home Shopping Networks) but it’s quite slick to set up and also includes streaming of Scripps channels and a DVR with expandable storage. You can watch it with an app on a ROKU and the other devices.

I have an older generation Tablo and am grandfathered in to their deprecated commercial skip feature which is great or I might switch to the new generation.

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We went to Roku in 2014 and have never looked back.
We began our ‘Cable-like’ programmed TV streaming subscription with Playstation Vu. Nope! Switched to YouTube TV. Its spendy as ‘cable’ streaming goes at now $65/mo, but great coverage of sports and unlimited DVR.

I recommend the Roku Ultra with all-in-one remote that is rechargable and takes voice commands, so you can find it when the grandchildren visit. I also recommend running an ethernet cable from your router to your Roku if close enough, to cut out wireless.

I’d rather go ala carte and subscribe to separate streaming services, such as news, sports, movies and then topics of interest. Currently we subscribe to Disney+, share a stream with out daughter for HBO, Curiosity Stream, Prime Video and Great Courses (available thru Roku channel) and pay $9/mo, $0/mo, $20/yr, $139/yr (Amazon Prime) and $8/mo, respectively.

Movies we watch on either HBO or Prime for most recent releases, but lots of free movies, with our favorite streaming service being Tubi, Pluto and FreeVee, although ‘free’ here = ads. The best ‘free’ movie streaming offer the best management of ads, and we think Tubi is the best at it, plus they have a good selection of movies.

Another great free movie option is using Hoopla or Kanope which stream thru your local library, so you’ll need a library card. But there are no ads. My sister discovered ‘OverDrive’ also available thru your library, but I have no experience with it.

The streaming choices are being added to almost daily so hard to keep up.

Finally, just plain YouTube is offering more interesting streaming titles either with ads or for a small monthly charge, ad free.

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How much do you pay for internet-only service, and to whom?

I would love to dump Comcast, but dread the conversation about are you sure? are you sure? are you sure? only to find out that the base internet only option for decent-speed internet is $100/mo, before adding in streaming options.

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With Roku or Apple TV, choice is the name of the game. These little boxes are really little PCs with but one purpose: to go out on the internet and stream back to the TV your video choices. The install consists of the little box, a power cord, an HDMI cable and for some, an ethernet slot and cable for connecting directly from the box to the router (for Roku, this is their Ultra box). The box comes with its own remote. Once you’ve installed it (you have to go thru an install procedure with Roku to hook up your wireless, add a credit card if you wish and so forth. Not sure how Apple TV installs but I’d guess the same way), then you need to decide what channels you wish to have on your main home screen which you can easily load from the Roku library or remove from your screen, and there are literally thousands of them today. I group the channel choices into 3 groups:

  1. Choose the ‘cable surrogate’ channel you wish to make your primary. The number of programs will vary depending on the streaming service, but run from 35 or so to over 100 programs. Like cable, this is all programmed with commercials, so certain shows come on at certain times, such as local news, sporting events, entertainment programs, etc and the programs are the typicals, like Discovery, PBS stuff, Hallmark, CSI, etc, etc. The most popular here is YouTube TV, Fubo, Sling (least expensive), hulu, peacock, etc. Prices vary per month from around $25 to over $100, depending on what you want: sports, local news, entertainment, movies…and the DVR, for which YouTube TV is generally recognized as the best. PC Mag and others have good analysis of these ‘cable like’ channels.
  2. Ala-carte subscription channels. These are specialty channels that you prefer. Examples are movie channels like HBO or Netflix or Disney+, sports channels, Documentary channels like Curiosity Stream, market/investment channels like CNBC or Bloomberg, music channels like Pandora and so on. These are usually commercial free and run from $5/mo to $30/mo. We subscribe here to Curiosity Stream ($20/yr), Great Courses ($8/mo and available thru the Roku Channel only), HBO and Prime Video (via Amazon membership).
  3. Free streaming. This makes up most of the channels you can get. This includes movies, news, sports, weather, games, classic tv and cartoons, and lots of other topics. The name of the game here is commercial management, as all will have commercials with the exception of Hoopla and Kanope which are commercial free available thru your library with a valid library card. These channels are added to daily and there are hundreds of them thru the Roku store and I’m sure also thru Apple store. PC magazine routinely reviews streaming channel choices and which offer the best content and best commercial management.

As to download speed, we have Comcast medium speed which has never been a problem.

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