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Cutting the Cord of Cable TV
Today Mr. Rand and I have made the jump. Cut the cord. Dispensed with the services of the local monopoly. Boldly gone where more and more TV watchers are going. We have fired the evil and hated Comcast and decided to rely on a panoply of streaming services which, even collectively, will cost us far less than our ever-growing Comcast bills.
“When in the course of human events” – as they say – something about “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” etc., etc.
So here’s our thinking.
We’ve had Netflix since it was a service that mailed you DVDs, and Amazon Prime since Amazon invented Prime. Though we watch them more and more, and cable less and less, it never before felt quite possible to just do without. There’s live news. There’s sports. There’s a dozen or so channels carried on our cable system that we watch with some regularity. Netflix and Amazon don’t seem to replace all that. Or don’t replace it adequately. So what happened?
The final straw. The coup de grace. The killing shot, was our discovery of Sling TV as an option on our Roku box. A little research showed that it appears to have nearly everything we want from cable, at far less cost. As second homeowners, all the more so. One Sling subscription should theoretically – this is all new to us so that qualifier is important – work at both homes, work on computers and tablets, work on phones, etc. In short, one subscription, for a measly $45/mo. (for one of their most comprehensive packages), should work for both of us, almost anywhere.
No more shelling out $10/mo. per box for the rest of our lives to “rent” each of multiple cable boxes (which must cost about $50/ea. to manufacture). On the box concession alone Comcast has gouged us blind for the last 20 years. We have one old box that’s been sitting here for 13 years. (13 x 12 x $9.95 = $1,552.20. Do you think they made a profit?)
No more opening the cable bill in trepidation wondering whether this is the month they’ll decide to just randomly jack up the bill by 30 bucks. No more calling and pleading for a less extortionate package every three, six, or 12 months. And frankly, no more equipment to break, and need repair, by a guy who gives you a four-hour window to sit at home and wait and then he doesn’t show up until three hours after the window closed (if at all).
It’s a brave new world and we’re diving in. We’ll see how it goes, but it’s hard to imagine the frustrations will be enough to drive us back to where we’ve been. Anybody else cut the cord? What are your experiences?
Published in General
Verizon FIOS is interesting. You can select packages of what you want, and exclude things you don’t want. I have no interest in sports, so I don’t pay for ESPN (or pay the extortionate regional sports fee.) Not perfect, but a step in the right direction.
The guide is an interesting point. Certainly something I’m used to. Not sure if I’ll miss it after a while or not. As I think about it — it’s usually just something I scroll through to confirm that there’s nothing but crap on — so probably not.
My lovely wife Amanda and I cut the cord about two and a half years ago. Now I miss my Food Network because I kinda enjoyed it, but I find I don’t miss it that much. We’re using Netflix, Hulu+, and Amazon Prime for the most part.
For a while, I sort of missed Fox News. Then 2016 happened.
So I say Kudos to you! Cable television was a great innovation, but it’s going the way of the dodo. Its wounds are self-inflicted. They managed to create little monopolies in the various cities and suburban areas they built in, and are finding out that consumers won’t tolerate that long if they don’t have to.
Do you have last mile fiber with that Basil? I know FIOS does in some places. That just sounds like paradise to me.
From one cord-cutter to another: “Welcome to the party, pal!”
Not only are we saving $130/mo, but the satisfaction we derive from sticking it to ESPN, MSNBC, CNN, etc. is immeasurable!
Sling has the Food Network as part of a package as low as $20/mo. Doesn’t have Fox News. Playstation Vue (a Sling like service I haven’t researched extensively) appears to have both Food Network and Fox News in a package that costs $29.99/mo.
My parents live in the country, and communications are insanely annoying. They cannot seem to keep a stable connection working, no matter what they do.
I have come to conclude that broadband, which paradoxically is supposed to bring everyone together, has become something which brings together those who have superb bandwidth (city-dwellers), and has seriously disadvantaged people who live more rural lives.
For all the differences between Baltimore and rural America (and all the disadvantages of a failed Blue City), it is broadband access in Baltimore that makes the single biggest measurable difference in daily Quality of Life between the two. And it really matters. Incredible.
Yep. Fiber to the side of the house. They used existing poles and ate the old cable company’s lunch. It’s nice.
I was shocked how easy it went when I brought my equipment in to disconnect TWC a few months ago. They didn’t even ask me why, or anything. Just “Ok, thank you, here’s your receipt for the hardware”. They even worked with me to keep a low-cost roadrunner account open for me so I wouldn’t lose an email address that I’m locked into until the end of September.
If you want to create your own, fee-free TIVO for broadcast TV, don’t upgrade to Windows 10. Windows 8.1 and earlier has Windows Media Center, which works with a tuner to determine what signals are available in your area, and then downloads free guide listings automatically. It has the look and feel of a cable guide. Digital broadcasts generally include info; running times, cast, plot description.
Most people will make the internet the center of their cable cutting, but don’t neglect broadcast. Most cable networks have free over the air equivalents/imitators. BET has Bounce; Sci Fi has Comet; the Movie Channel has The Movies; and MeTV, AntennaTV, Laff, Tuff, Icons and Heroes, The Works, Cozi, ThisTV, retroTV, GeTV, ION are the counterparts to TNT, TBS, Nick at Nite, and Spike. No, they aren’t going to be showing first run. But there’s a lot to choose from.
I’d suggest keeping an eye for discounts and promos in unexpected places. I get a 30% Sling TV discount for being a T-Mobile customer and my brother gets Hulu Plus free through Bing rewards.
I didn’t know about the Sling discount with T-Mobile. I just added my T-Mobile number to my Sling account. Thanks!
We canceled our DirecTV subscription last fall and haven’t missed it. Sling gives us the channels we actually watch, and the new Blue tier added NBC Sports, NFL Network, and the ability to stream to multiple devices simultaneously. I’m a pretty happy camper, even though I have to get creative at times to watch the Steelers and the Lobos. ;)
All this work and money to watch TV?
You can almost taste Rob’s delicious bitterness here.
You are exactly right.
It’s not nearly as bad in the mainland UK as it is here, mainly because it’s such a tiny area. So even if you’re rural, you have good access. Three years ago, though, my sister and her husband moved to the Isle of Skye, off the coast of Scotland, and ever since then, she’s had exactly the same sort of issues as we do. (Secretly, I’m enjoying her frustration a bit . . . ).
It seems like it should be a solvable problem, but I’m not holding my breath.
If no one has mentioned it yet, I just discovered Playstation Vue. If you’re worried about losing your live TV channels, you can get most of them over streaming at $30 per month.
I think the problem is surprisingly simple to understand. It just costs a lot of money to run a wire underground. If you can run one a short way and share the cost among a lot of people (as in a city) it gets done. If you have to run one a long way and only have a few people to share the cost (as in a rural area), it’s harder. We had the same issue with electricity. In the ’30s, the government stepped in to help with “rural electrification” because it just wasn’t economical. There was no way to recover the capital costs. So private providers wouldn’t do it. For good or ill, that will probably happen with broadband. Probably during the (Chelsea) Clinton administration.
I found that today after signing up for 3 months of Sling. The Sony/Playstation offering actually looks pretty good too. Maybe even better. We’ll see how we like Sling, but might end up switching.
Warning though — it looks to me like PS Vue won’t play on Roku. So if you’ve got a bunch of Roku boxes (as we do), Sling might be your option. If you’re buying the streaming devices though, it looks like they both run on Chromecast.
Without cable what can you do for local news?
Amazon’s studio arm released pilots for three new shows this week. The Tick is great and Jean-Claude Van Johnson is pretty funny too. There’s a path to made-for-streaming TV shows, though I don’t know how much profit is in it.
Broadcast TV. You don’t need a special antenna for HDTV/digital; the “H” on the roof from 1954 will do very nicely. If you’re inside a city, less than 20 or so miles from the transmitter, old fashioned rabbit ears will do.
About a year ago a construction accident severed my cable. Instead of upset, I decided to go with the flow. It’s been great. There are fewer people “in my house” whom I genuinely dislike, telling me things I don’t want to hear, while generally insulting the country I kinda like a lot.
A break through. Hang in Cato Rand. You will no doubt survive.
I nearly cut the cord this summer when my 2-year agreement price disappeared. I talked Comcast into a lower rate that was worth not giving it up for now. But, a year from now when that price shoots back up again I’m hoping streaming services have figured out how deliver sports to consumers.
Look at Sling and PS Vue. I think you’ll be surprised by how much sports content there is. Not sure what you’re looking for so not sure it will be enough. But I bet it’s more than you think.
Just threw up my coffee. “Oh, Bozia Bozia,” as we say around here (Polish for “God,” not spelled like that but that’s how it sounds).
Yes, I get the difficulties of a hard wired solution in areas of low-population density. I would have thought that wireless, satellite, or some other clever solution would have come along further than it has, though. But they still are all very problematic, as I am sure the providers are waiting for the federal cash cow to start dispensing dollars before they do anything meaningful.
We (the American tax- and bill- payers) already pay all sorts of ‘fees,’ here and there, that are supposed to assist with ‘rural broadband’ expenses, and some folks can get credits on their (very expensive) bills for things like satellite connections. Even that is misleading, though, as there are many areas like mine that are considered ‘metropolitan’ (on these maps, we are part of ‘metropolitan Pittsburgh,’ which is about 40 miles away), although if you go through the checklist for qualification for the ‘rural broadband subsidy,’ we meet every one and then some. However, plug in our zip code, which is the first question asked, and the answer comes back immediately–“You’re not worthy.”
And because of that, I expect people like us will be the last to get any sort of upgrade, because we keep falling through the cracks.
My one hope is that the telephone exchange which is a chewing gum and baler twine affair, will have to be upgraded sometime. And that perhaps the wire will finally give out during one of the energetic gym classes the squirrels hold on it periodically, and have to be replaced, maybe with something useful.
Ultimately the solution to rural broadband is probably 5G wireless from cell towers. AT&T is experimenting in some markets. This requires a small antenna on the roof.
You’re still not talking about multiple stream strength, though.
Thanks! As I said, I used to miss Fox News. Now I don’t. Soon after we cut the cord, I realized I was only getting Red Eye on our DVR and not watching anything else beyond the news on occasion. I suspect I couldn’t watch the network without reaching through the tv to punch someone nowadays.
I’ll look into those options anyhow. Since our little girl was born we haven’t had time or energy to experiment in the kitchen as much. So we don’t miss Food Network as much as we used to (also, there’s only so much “Chopped” we can watch.)
Isn’t EPL on NBCSN? That is included in the highest Sling package.
Sounds like a great move and something I’ve been entertaining for awhile. My problem at this point is we DVR so many shows. I wonder if there is a DiY DVR option.