How To Not Get Ripped Off From Basic Cable
 

by Porsche-O-Phile - -
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You have the floor, sir. ;)

My personal way:

Apple TV (Roku is another option)
On-demand programming only (pay for the shows you want, no commercials, no BS)
Netflix subscription ($7 a month). I believe Hulu is comparable. Amazon Prime members (if you happen to be one) can get extra / premium content on their service I believe too. You can buy additional premium networks / channels as well if you want them (but I don't bother).

If I watch 2-3 shows a week (which is what I do at most) it averages out to about $20 to $25 a month (including an occasional movie purchase) above and beyond Netflix. That's a total monthly nut of around $27-$32. Not bad.

Upsides:

Only get what you want
No commercials
Get it WHEN you want it (not beholden to someone else's schedule)
All HD
You can effectively* re-watch the content whenever you want
You can watch on any device - home TV or mobile (iPad, phone, laptop, whatever)
You can save stuff to your devices (Apple TV content anyway) in case you find yourself without an Internet connection somewhere
No ugly cable boxes or satellite dishes - no stooge contractors cutting holes in your house as part of their "professional installation" (another rant for another time - these monkeys recently did thousands of dollars in damage to a relative's house with their half-assed install job)
Pick and choose premium content (HBO, Disney, etc. rather than get stuck with "bundling" deliberately designed to inflate costs and bury desired content in hundreds of worthless channels.
Did I mention no commercials? Zip. Nada. Not a one.



* you do not actually OWN the content for an Apple TV purchase - theoretically Apple could pull content per the TOU I believe but I've never experienced this with any media (music, show, movie, whatever nor have I heard if it ever happening). Netflix is known to mess with offerings so something they had last month might eventually be "NLA" if you want to go back to it - rare but occasionally happens...

Downsides:

Automated recurring payments required for both Netflix & Hulu (I frikkin hate this but it's a condition of membership and I haven't figured out a way around it yet)
No local TV news (I was actually going to put this in the "pros" column since I can't stand it but some people would have disagreed...
No pro sports programming - with some exceptions (same with the above - I personally could care less but some folks might). You can always buy NFL TV or MLB TV or whatever and stream it - extra cost). It's easy enough to fool the silly "in market blackout" censoring nonsense if you want, btw.
Can't necessarily find EVERY show / movie (but this is a challenge even with premium cable so what's the difference?)

Experiences by others out there? I personally think the Con-casts and Time-Warners of the world are dead men walking. On demand digital direct content is absolutely the way to go and I see more and more people starting to embrace it.

Roku box with Netflix streaming subscription
Netflix DVD subscription (more choices not found on streaming)
Over-the-air TV reception using a Mohu Leaf antenna
Only get Internet service from the cable provider

Just say no to "cable TV"

I got rid of cable and home phone about two years ago, only pay for internet. Payment for internet only is $41 a month. Have an old style antenna in the attic and get about 25 over the air channels, and have Netflix, Then stream any show off the net that I want to watch with no commercials. TV is way better without cable!

We don't have an antenna for digital broadcast, but if you do, you get a bunch of channels. It's not unusual to get 3 or 4 different versions of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc...

We have Netflix streaming and an Apple TV, and that's it for the past year. There's a lot that we can't watch since we've ditched cable, but that's OK with us both due to the $avings and because it's easy to find yourself watching lots of TV.

Hulu has freak'n annoying commercials.

We have internet, Roku, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, OTA antenna. Works very well. I occasionally watch TV when I'm in a hotel, and am always appalled at how bad the content is and how many commercials there are.

The only aspect of TV that I miss is sports. However, I get most of my sports fix via EuroSport Player and a VPN, and more via the OTA antenna. I could subscribe to more streaming services if I wanted to.

If you learn your way around the torrent sites, and are okay with using them, then you can watch pretty much anything for free. Just ask your college kid, they have it all dialed in.

We ditched satellite several years ago. Kids have a large DVD collection and our public library has an extensive DVD collection for free.
Blue Jays are doing good this year so I'm missing that, but I'm not usually into spectator sports so it's not that big of a deal. If they make it to the WS I might do something to watch it.
I've offered the wife to put up an antenna, but she's not into it. News and all that I get of the net. I watch a couple movies each week but I'm just not into TV at all.
But then I live in the country, large heated shop, I prefer doing rather than watching.

https://torrentbutler.eu/

or

https://premium.rpnet.biz/

Plus

Movies

Simple.

Don't purchase it.

We have a grandfathered Dishnetwork plan at $25/month that has local channels plus enough others that covers 90% of anything we'd likely watch. We also have Netflix and Amazon Prime. The prime is mostly for the free shipping, but the videos and music are a nice bonus.

I don't watch TV. But my local cable provider forces me to pay $54 month for 10mbps down Internet. Fooking monopolies!

This is the right answer.

I have not paid for Cable/Satelite for over 25 years. We get local staions OTA, and Amazon and Netflix via an Xbox. The OTA picture is really stunning, I don't know the specifics, but it looks like they are sending out a Blueray quality signal.

One month of U-verse for 4 rooms costs me less than an hour's wages.
I figure that's a very good value from what I get from it.

Can you spell "oligopoly". It is brutal here north of the 49th. Here's something that has been around for a while now:

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ilMx7k7mso" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Language content warning!

Cheers
JB

Well, I clearly make a lot less than you.

What one months cable/internet costs the Saucy's...has been re-allocated into having a cleaning lady come 2x per month.

Much greater value than garbage cable...IMHO, of course ;)

Holy Balls!!!
I see a major educational venture in my future...be careful of what you ask for, eh? ;)
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Thanks POP for firing this off and for playing along...and thanks to all you gents who participated.
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Here's my deal. I don't watch movies...I like news and documentaries.
I do have an HD antenna on my roof - was here when I bought and it pulls in a ton of channels but I used to only watch local news on them prior to my getting DTV.
I totally agree, cable/satellite is a rip off.
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Anyway, thanks again - and thanks for the links.
OK, off to school I go. SmileWavy

Frighteningly true!!! :eek:

Round these parts a cleaning lady 2x a month would be in the $120 range.

I pay less than half that for basic cable.

Why is it when you guys throw these numbers around you never quote how much you are paying for internet?

Live streaming is great... I'm thinking of doing it when my dish network contract is up.

But...

Currently paying $58 for HD content with a DVR on dish.

Lowest price for internet in my area is $60 then add fees for whatever streaming service you want.

Not only annoying but waaaay too frequent. I gave up Hulu because of it.

Straight-up ballin', yo!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1441913006.jpg

The cleaning lady is not allowed to use the internet until she gets done cleannig.

I've done the no cable thing. It's a lot of work to watch current shows. Fine if you are only watching last season's shows.

I must be spend my money really foolishly. I have Comcast cable w/dvr on 4 TVs, 80mbps Internet and a cleaning lady.

I ditched Dish a couple years ago because F1 and Grand Am were the only thing I watched and they dumped Speed channel. I have OTA antenna but get 57 channels with nothing on. Content quality is approaching zero these days IMO. Now if I could find decent internet for less than $65/mo life would be grand.

I think most people would buy Internet service regardless of whether or not they depend on it for TV / movie streaming. A more accurate analysis would involve determining the cost difference between faster, higher bandwidth Internet service versus a more basic option (because people need the extra capacity to support such streaming).

Using myself as an example, I pay $40 per month for high-speed Internet. I might still opt for the same package even if I didn't stream videos like I do, but for sake of argument let's assume that I would go with the most basic package otherwise. The cost of that is roughly $25 per month, meeting at differential of $15 per month. Factoring that into my earlier calculations means that the total net cost comes in around $50 per month - still considerably better than cable especially when considering (1) no commercials, (2) portability of content across devices and (3) the added bonus of having home Internet service available for non-video use.

Internet service is competitive as well - you do not need to get it from your local cable company. I happen to get mine through the phone company serving this area ("dry line" - I don't bother with a home phone, I don't need it). I looked at a few other options with local ISPs as well, also satellite Internet and cable-based Internet. I experimented briefly with cable-based Internet and got transfer speeds of 12 to 15 Mbps (pretty good). The phone line setup (ADSL) I finally settled on is less than half the cost per month and still gives me 8 to 10 Mbps. It costs less than half the cost of the cable-based service I tested out and still gives me more than adequate bandwidth for HD. Best of all it means I don't have any relationship whatsoever with Comcast - I'm not their customer and won't ever need to be their customer (unless I really, really want faster speeds - and there are other options for that too - like an in-home T1, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion).

The whole point of this of course is to say people should realize that they have options to get the programs they want - probably a better way than they're used to - and that it's well worth doing one's homework to avoid getting ripped off by companies who seem to be going the same way as Blockbuster Video (they even follow a similar, monopolistic, "screw-the-customer" model - and we all know how THEY ended up...)

But we are not most people :D we use 4G and smart phones at home... I have internet at work and my wife can take the laptop to starbucks for free.

Pics of the cleaning lady or it didn't happen, Does she so roofs too? :)

Cable TV was pretty useless for me without a DVR. I had TiVo, that was another $20/month or so, plus the cost of buying the TiVo box, and about $15/month for the multiple Cablecards.

I would use OTA if they made a decent OTA compatible PVR...everything I've seen is crap or super-expensive.

Dang...round these parts a cleaning lady 2x/mo is $200. LOL

Our cable bill went from $99/mo to $260, changed providers and a year later we were back in the same boat, so we ditched.

I tried to cut to cord a while back, but in typical Comcast form, they couldn't even do that correctly.

I called and said I wanted only internet, and the lady said it would be $61/month...or I could get faster internet and economy cable (~60 channels) for $49.99/month forever (no special)

Um, ok?

Send them a letter at least 30 days in advance saying your last day of service will be "x" and you will stop making payments for any service remaining past that date - anything still active is deemed to be free.

Somehow, magically, they seem to get the disconnection right after that. I had a friend of mine go through exactly that with Con-cast.