Cable TV sucks! And the damn bill goes up on a regular basis. I already prepped my household for the over-air switch soon. I'll keep high speed internet but I don't watch much of any tv and am tired of the bill.
@BillLehecka I have a friend who used to work for the cable company. When he left they thought they'd keep it; then they realized how much they'd be paying. When they went to cancel it they found out why so many people hate the cable company.
Not worth it at all. If there was some piecemeal package where I could get Food Network, History Channel, and A&E I might be interested for a deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep discount. Otherwise, cable tv would be (and is) a total waste to me.
@bluejester A La Carte would be a great thing, however channel providers don't want to do it. Sure, Food Network would have a huge following, but the lesser channels would have virtually no revenue stream. That's why you won't see a la carte.
@BillLehecka I think a lot of channels would outright die if things went á la carte. I'd still kind of like to see it, but the presumably higher price I'd have to pay per channel for the channels I want, and the number of channels I want, would probably wipe out any savings I might get. Still, if ESPN 3 let me pay directly for access I might drop cable entirely and stick with Over The Top services.
@bluedyn ESPN has the cable companies over a barrel. You try cutting ESPN to all your subscribers during football season or basketball season and see how long your cable company stays in operation. And because ESPN is part of Disney, they're able to leverage that into getting other Disney/ABC channels on your cable system as well.
I've always thought ESPN's strategy of tying the ESPN3/WatchESPN website/app to your cable/internet subscription was a stroke of vaguely-evil genius. I'd probably pay $10 a month for that service and cut cable, but how many people would actually do that? Instead, your cable and/or internet provider is paying for it whether you want it or not (if they're doing it at all). Of course, it works out for the cable companies, too. If you want that service, you have to go to them and buy some cable/internet bundle that costs you $80-100 every month ("but you need high-speed internet anyway, so you might as well...").
It's not worth it, but for some reason it's $10 cheaper to get internet and cable than to just get internet only. So we have a useless cable box sitting in the corner.
It would be so worth it IF they skipped those brain draining infomercials and network commercials.. I've always seen it as double dipping by the cable and satellite companies.. Before going digital we still had to endure commercials but the only thing it cost us out of pocket was the TV and the electricity to run it, now we're paying for those commercials as well. Sure you can go full premium but then you have to pay even more.
Nope. Antenna, internet, a WiFi router, and a Roku; Netflix and Amazon Prime. About the only thing I can't get is HBO until they start selling HBO Go separately from cable, but I can live with that. Local channels arriving over-the-air are all (non-compressed) HD, so they look better than they do on cable.
@rockblossom I've cut the cord. This is the hardest time for me, with football season. Live sports in general is the toughest spot. . I have a big fat cable internet connection, and that's all that Comcast gets me for. The HD antenna helps. I pay for the MLB package, a $5 VPN service so it looks like I live in Holland to avoid MLB blackout. Netflix password from my buddy who I swap with the Huluplus password that I pay for. Amazon Prime, my Brother's HBOGo login, and torrent. So, I'm a pirate, a mooch, and a merchant. But I save about $150 a month.
@shubydoo First and most important, BRAVO for spelling Buffett correctly! (Two "t"s, not one.) (And yup, I'm a Parrothead.) Second, are you thinking of Frank Sinatra: "I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king"?
I will be interested to see if google rolls out the same plan everywhere, but as long as they are my provider and giving me the rate they are, I will pay for cable without putting much thought into it.
@towit Well yeah, if it's Google I'd be all over it. Their internet/TV combo is 10 times faster than the best my cable co offers, while costing less than I currently pay for a much lower speed than the cable co's best. But Google isn't here, unfortunately.
@towit I didn't know about this until you mentioned it, but now that I do know, I hate the cities who're getting it. Fiends who meet Google's strict criteria!
@bluedyn My region made it on the short list, but not my little suburb. I'll be tempted to move if it comes and they don't reconsider us. I'm also tempted to send a letter to everyone in the town encouraging them to look at the Town's website and follow their suggestions for telling Google we want Fiber.
I wish I could receive over-the-air content but I live in a valley, my reception is terrible. I have not had the motivation to purchase one of those big on the roof type antennas and then get up the muster to climb on the roof and install it. So I begrudgingly pay the bill every month and hate myself and 'the pig' for it.
We cut the cable 9+ months ago, and it was hard and people were not happy.
To make the transition easier, we updated all the TVs with Chromecast, upgraded all the phones to MotoX on Republic Wireless, and subscribed to Netflix and Hulu Plus. No over-the-air because of the giant antenna I would need. (No one cares about sports in this house)
Fantastic news I bought the Chromecast to the hotel on a family trip. The TV was turned on and Glorious cable was on the TV. After channel surfing 3-4 times through the 80+ channels, my family soon asked if I could hook up the Chromecast. (I could not because they isolate the connections and require you to agree to terms). But they prefer Netflix and Hulu over cable. And now the remember what it was like to have cable\dish\DirectTV the way I remember it.
@caffeine_dude We want to switch to Republic so bad, but haven't come up with the money for the MotoX yet. There's always something else that money needs to go to. No cable here. We cut the cord over four years ago and just use Netflix. We recently added Hulu+ though.
@PurplePawprints They have the Moto G $100, I was telling this to a pal of mine. I told him to buy the Moto G if he was not sure, the amount of money he would save in 2 months would be enough to justify the cost. If you know someone with Republic, you can get some cash off your first bill.
@caffeine_dude I'm super picky about my phones and when we switch, I'll have to get the MotoX. We looked at both, but even the X they sell on their site doesn't have enough memory for me. I plan to buy one from Motorolla's site, and that costs a little more. Anyway, are you happy with the service? We know a few people who've switched who seem to like it.
@PurplePawprints Things may have changed but, you can only get the 16gb MotoX. You must buy the phone from them. Only 16 gb the web site said the moto maker is ending in a few days. It does not look like you can bump up the memory anyway. We lost our 'expensive' cell numbers, but my kids got to keep their cell numbers. We had a week of bad outside service in our area, we called support, support did the normal things. (it was the Sprint towers) Quality is good. You may want to check your internet speeds for voip, The $10 plan fit me like a glove, I waited for a decent phone and I am not disappointed.
@caffeine_dude When we were looking a few months ago, you could still get the 32 gb Moto X on Motorola's site and custom design it. I knew that the memory wasn't expandable and there's no way 16gb will be enough for me. I shall be sad indeed if that option is gone when we finally have the money to do it. As far as the VoIP, we have one of the higher speeds through Comcast, but that just means it's a little better than sluggish. I'm gonna poke around Republic's site sometime today and see if I can't figure out a way for us to go ahead and make the switch.
@PurplePawprints@caffeine_dude muis right, the Republic phones are proprietary and you can't just get a Moto anywhere and use it with them. I use dropbox to help me with memory, but I don;t use my phone for music or taking photos or all those things people use their phones for. I understand that it's a very clean version of Android (this is my first droid phone) but there's special innards to work with Republic's system.
@moondrake Yeah, you can design a moto x on Motorola's website that has the software Republic uses. I've been trying to order two phones for two days though and Motorola's site is so jacked up it won't go through. Phone support is less than helpful.
@moondrake Only until the 23rd though. They are getting ready to come out with 2nd generation moto x (no republic yet) and are only letting you design with what's left. So, color choices are becoming limited and there is no 32 gb option anymore.
@PurplePawprints I had an OG Moto Droid and then a Droid 3. Both got terrible as time went on and I've decided it'll be a really long time before I buy another Motorola phone, so I'm not surprised their phone support isn't very helpful.
@jqubed Considering I STILL can't get the order to go through, even after calling support three times (and being disconnected from the chat queue after waiting a half hour to be next in line twice) I have a feeling I'm not going to be a Motorola customer anytime soon. It's ridiculous. I'm trying to spend close to $800 on phones they're phasing out (they're only selling what's left and most people aren't buying it and are waiting on the next gen instead) and they still won't process my damn sale.
At one time we had multiple cable providers, each with their local monopolies and two satellite providers to keep prices in competition. We are down to one cable provider which is buying out its biggest competitor and no competition in satellite providers. And costs to us, the users, has tripled in the last decade. Bruce sang about 57 channels and nothing on, now we have 157 channels and still nothing on.
I cut cable about 2 years ago and have been very happy. I pay $50 for internet and have 2 Roku players for Netflix and Prime (From woot), a small window antenna that pulls in a dozen decent over the air channels including all 4 networks plus 20 or so crap channels and with that have more content than I know what to do with.
My over-the-air reception sucks (about eight to nine miles north of the antennas in downtown Chicago) but, I mean, it's just TV. I'd been paying RCN $250 a month for their lowest cable package and slowest Internet connection... now it's $90 for a mid-level Internet connection and $8 a month to Netflix. (And it's a good thing Netflix has Breaking Bad because there are maybe two or three movies a year worth seeing.)
@pitamuffin I think you'd need to include satellite service to get a true picture, though. Dish and DirectTV aren't very different from Time-Warner in my market.
Between Monday Night Football, the first few rounds of the NBA playoffs, certain March Madness games, and ESPN in general, I will continue to pay dish every month. I also like being able to flip around to find weird stuff I would never download/stream and have something on while working on my laptop.
@ScottN I don't watch sports, but the ability to flip on whatever while I'm doing other things is my motive, too. Anchorman came on last night. I'd probably never watch the DVD, but I'm happy to hear about his crotchal region while I'm cleaning house. Don't act like you're not impressed.
I live by my extensive DVD/Blu-Ray collection, Netflix and streaming from the network sites or You Tube. I live on the slope of the mountain beneath the TV and Radio antennas at the summit, so I don't get broadcast tv at all, it shoots right over my head.
I was looking for the answer "GOD NO." The prices are ridiculous and all it is is a mess of expensive premium channels surrounded by swarms of "lizard lick towing" and other bullshit shows about stupidasses repo'ing or pawning stuff from other stupidasses. I hope the cable channels know this is their day is coming. They will soon join blockbuster...
Roku's, PLEX, Netflix, Prime, a lovely Brother in Law who shared the HBOGO pw, and we're all set. We buy current shows that we want to watch as they come out, Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy, currently. We're lucky to get most local channels through our internet connection, (TWC hasn't separated them for some reason,) so we still get sports and local news.
I don't miss it. I also no longer feel the need to have the TV on as background noise. If it's on, there's a reason. I enjoy it more this way.
@Thumperchick I suppose they would have to put a physical filter on the cable coming into your home to keep you from receiving the analog/ClearQAM channels. I hadn't thought about that; that's good to know.
So do you pay for the internet connection from the cable provider? Or do you all have COMPETITION for high speed internet in your fair cities?? If I turned off the TV, I am still cutting a check to Comcast each month.
@Pamtha If you count DSL and Satellite, we have Cable, DSL, Satellite, AND a new fiber optic provider that just came to town. I have the cable option for 50mbps download for $50 a month. The only thing I don't like is the low upload speed. (5mbps at best)
@Pamtha Chicago has at least three cable providers (Comcast, RCN, and Wow) along with pretty decent DSL. That said, I dunno what it takes for an owner to switch from one cable company to another.
@Pamtha We're lucky in that my husband's work pays for our internet as part of his home office. If they didn't, we would be stuck with paying for TWC internet; since FIOS is still a few blocks from us.
I am so rural that we only have satellite as an option - LITERALLY, there is no cable available here. Only one internet provider, and it is our land-line phone provider. I decided to go "pay tv free" in February 2013 since I was paying 80.00/mo for phone and internet (I live in the mountains. Cell service is spotty at BEST - on a GOOD day. So everyone still has a land line for emergencies.), then another 130.00+ for the satellite subscription that I was too busy working to ever actually be home to watch in the first place.
Since dropping the satellite, I have gotten hooked on MORE TV shows from online sources than I ever watched when I had pay service, and I can watch whenever I want..... I am a football gal, so that does cramp my style every fall/winter (GO PACK GO!!!), but it seems there's always a way around that issue if you search enough online. I have two WDTV Live boxes and a Roku3, so I'm streaming video and audio all over the house, and - again, other than the football - I am well pleased.
We can't reliably get any over-the-air stations, so that's out. Our current Dish package comes to about $34 (with DVR) a month. We also have Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime streaming. We've seriously been considering dropping Dish altogether, but it's more convenient compared to streaming options. Not to mention we also have the Dish Anywhere which makes our live Dish channels and recorded shows streamable. I would miss that.
Hell fucking no. I dropped cable in 2007 and have never looked back. Anything I actually cared about is available through AppleTV (mostly Netflix, HBO Go [they encouraged sharing at one point] and a little Hulu, along with PBS, YouTube, even Yahoo and whatever we push up from our phones).
Those cable companies are worse than the mob. In fact it kinda chafes that I have to pay one or another of them to get broadband--for which they also overcharge. And the other day my son was watching some movie he'd got from a torrent site and apparently Verizon is watching and not pleased. Fuck you, Verizon.
And, no, we pretty much don't care for or miss the local stations that are too much of a hassle to tune. Like I said, PBS is in the Apple box.
Cable TV sucks! And the damn bill goes up on a regular basis. I already prepped my household for the over-air switch soon. I'll keep high speed internet but I don't watch much of any tv and am tired of the bill.
Cable TV is so worth the cost... Then again, I get it for free since I work for a major cable provider, so that's nice.
@BillLehecka I have a friend who used to work for the cable company. When he left they thought they'd keep it; then they realized how much they'd be paying. When they went to cancel it they found out why so many people hate the cable company.
@BillLehecka My husband is a cable guy. So yeah free, cable, internet and phone. So yes I still have a landline, because it's free.
Not worth it at all. If there was some piecemeal package where I could get Food Network, History Channel, and A&E I might be interested for a deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep discount. Otherwise, cable tv would be (and is) a total waste to me.
@bluejester A La Carte would be a great thing, however channel providers don't want to do it. Sure, Food Network would have a huge following, but the lesser channels would have virtually no revenue stream. That's why you won't see a la carte.
@BillLehecka I think a lot of channels would outright die if things went á la carte. I'd still kind of like to see it, but the presumably higher price I'd have to pay per channel for the channels I want, and the number of channels I want, would probably wipe out any savings I might get. Still, if ESPN 3 let me pay directly for access I might drop cable entirely and stick with Over The Top services.
@BillLehecka Here I thought it was to fund ESPN since individually that channel would cost a fortune. LOL
Here's a chart of current costs:
From http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/27/226499294/the-most-and-least-expensive-cable-channels-in-1-graph
Here's a newer chart:
From http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/how-much-cable-subscribers-pay-per-channel-1626/
@jqubed What the hell is going on over at ESPN? They expensing trips to the champagne room?
@bluedyn considering that I don't want any sports channel, cable would be so much cheaper for me if I could buy only what I want...
@Kidsandliz Hell yes! Let me trade those for HBO. It's shenanigans, I tell you!
@bluedyn ESPN has the cable companies over a barrel. You try cutting ESPN to all your subscribers during football season or basketball season and see how long your cable company stays in operation. And because ESPN is part of Disney, they're able to leverage that into getting other Disney/ABC channels on your cable system as well.
I've always thought ESPN's strategy of tying the ESPN3/WatchESPN website/app to your cable/internet subscription was a stroke of vaguely-evil genius. I'd probably pay $10 a month for that service and cut cable, but how many people would actually do that? Instead, your cable and/or internet provider is paying for it whether you want it or not (if they're doing it at all). Of course, it works out for the cable companies, too. If you want that service, you have to go to them and buy some cable/internet bundle that costs you $80-100 every month ("but you need high-speed internet anyway, so you might as well...").
I seriously hope you guys don't do this
It's not worth it, but for some reason it's $10 cheaper to get internet and cable than to just get internet only. So we have a useless cable box sitting in the corner.
It's only worth it to me because there's no other way to get what I want. I thought there were supposed to be rules to prevent monopolies.
Looks like the embed is not respecting the time I wanted to start at. Jump to 7:12 if you don't want to sit through the whole video.
It would be so worth it IF they skipped those brain draining infomercials and network commercials.. I've always seen it as double dipping by the cable and satellite companies.. Before going digital we still had to endure commercials but the only thing it cost us out of pocket was the TV and the electricity to run it, now we're paying for those commercials as well. Sure you can go full premium but then you have to pay even more.
Nope. Antenna, internet, a WiFi router, and a Roku; Netflix and Amazon Prime. About the only thing I can't get is HBO until they start selling HBO Go separately from cable, but I can live with that. Local channels arriving over-the-air are all (non-compressed) HD, so they look better than they do on cable.
@rockblossom I've cut the cord. This is the hardest time for me, with football season. Live sports in general is the toughest spot. . I have a big fat cable internet connection, and that's all that Comcast gets me for. The HD antenna helps. I pay for the MLB package, a $5 VPN service so it looks like I live in Holland to avoid MLB blackout. Netflix password from my buddy who I swap with the Huluplus password that I pay for. Amazon Prime, my Brother's HBOGo login, and torrent. So, I'm a pirate, a mooch, and a merchant. But I save about $150 a month.
@marklog Live sports is a problem like HBO. My internet provider gives us ESPN3 for free, but there are still some blackouts.
@marklog - "A pirate, a mooch, and a merchant"....wasn't that a big hit for Jimmy Buffett back in the late 70's??
@shubydoo First and most important, BRAVO for spelling Buffett correctly! (Two "t"s, not one.) (And yup, I'm a Parrothead.) Second, are you thinking of Frank Sinatra: "I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king"?
I will be interested to see if google rolls out the same plan everywhere, but as long as they are my provider and giving me the rate they are, I will pay for cable without putting much thought into it.
@towit Well yeah, if it's Google I'd be all over it. Their internet/TV combo is 10 times faster than the best my cable co offers, while costing less than I currently pay for a much lower speed than the cable co's best. But Google isn't here, unfortunately.
@towit I didn't know about this until you mentioned it, but now that I do know, I hate the cities who're getting it. Fiends who meet Google's strict criteria!
@bluedyn My region made it on the short list, but not my little suburb. I'll be tempted to move if it comes and they don't reconsider us. I'm also tempted to send a letter to everyone in the town encouraging them to look at the Town's website and follow their suggestions for telling Google we want Fiber.
@jqubed I wish you well in your quest. While also hating your region.
I wish I could receive over-the-air content but I live in a valley, my reception is terrible. I have not had the motivation to purchase one of those big on the roof type antennas and then get up the muster to climb on the roof and install it. So I begrudgingly pay the bill every month and hate myself and 'the pig' for it.
We cut the cable 9+ months ago, and it was hard and people were not happy.
To make the transition easier, we updated all the TVs with Chromecast, upgraded all the phones to MotoX on Republic Wireless, and subscribed to Netflix and Hulu Plus. No over-the-air because of the giant antenna I would need. (No one cares about sports in this house)
Fantastic news I bought the Chromecast to the hotel on a family trip. The TV was turned on and Glorious cable was on the TV. After channel surfing 3-4 times through the 80+ channels, my family soon asked if I could hook up the Chromecast.
(I could not because they isolate the connections and require you to agree to terms).
But they prefer Netflix and Hulu over cable.
And now the remember what it was like to have cable\dish\DirectTV the way I remember it.
@caffeine_dude We want to switch to Republic so bad, but haven't come up with the money for the MotoX yet. There's always something else that money needs to go to. No cable here. We cut the cord over four years ago and just use Netflix. We recently added Hulu+ though.
@PurplePawprints They have the Moto G $100, I was telling this to a pal of mine. I told him to buy the Moto G if he was not sure, the amount of money he would save in 2 months would be enough to justify the cost. If you know someone with Republic, you can get some cash off your first bill.
@caffeine_dude I'm super picky about my phones and when we switch, I'll have to get the MotoX. We looked at both, but even the X they sell on their site doesn't have enough memory for me. I plan to buy one from Motorolla's site, and that costs a little more. Anyway, are you happy with the service? We know a few people who've switched who seem to like it.
@PurplePawprints Things may have changed but, you can only get the 16gb MotoX. You must buy the phone from them. Only 16 gb the web site said the moto maker is ending in a few days. It does not look like you can bump up the memory anyway. We lost our 'expensive' cell numbers, but my kids got to keep their cell numbers. We had a week of bad outside service in our area, we called support, support did the normal things. (it was the Sprint towers) Quality is good. You may want to check your internet speeds for voip, The $10 plan fit me like a glove, I waited for a decent phone and I am not disappointed.
@caffeine_dude When we were looking a few months ago, you could still get the 32 gb Moto X on Motorola's site and custom design it. I knew that the memory wasn't expandable and there's no way 16gb will be enough for me. I shall be sad indeed if that option is gone when we finally have the money to do it. As far as the VoIP, we have one of the higher speeds through Comcast, but that just means it's a little better than sluggish. I'm gonna poke around Republic's site sometime today and see if I can't figure out a way for us to go ahead and make the switch.
@PurplePawprints @caffeine_dude muis right, the Republic phones are proprietary and you can't just get a Moto anywhere and use it with them. I use dropbox to help me with memory, but I don;t use my phone for music or taking photos or all those things people use their phones for. I understand that it's a very clean version of Android (this is my first droid phone) but there's special innards to work with Republic's system.
@moondrake Yeah, you can design a moto x on Motorola's website that has the software Republic uses. I've been trying to order two phones for two days though and Motorola's site is so jacked up it won't go through. Phone support is less than helpful.
@PurplePawprints Ah, good to know!
@moondrake Only until the 23rd though. They are getting ready to come out with 2nd generation moto x (no republic yet) and are only letting you design with what's left. So, color choices are becoming limited and there is no 32 gb option anymore.
@PurplePawprints I had an OG Moto Droid and then a Droid 3. Both got terrible as time went on and I've decided it'll be a really long time before I buy another Motorola phone, so I'm not surprised their phone support isn't very helpful.
@jqubed Considering I STILL can't get the order to go through, even after calling support three times (and being disconnected from the chat queue after waiting a half hour to be next in line twice) I have a feeling I'm not going to be a Motorola customer anytime soon. It's ridiculous. I'm trying to spend close to $800 on phones they're phasing out (they're only selling what's left and most people aren't buying it and are waiting on the next gen instead) and they still won't process my damn sale.
At one time we had multiple cable providers, each with their local monopolies and two satellite providers to keep prices in competition. We are down to one cable provider which is buying out its biggest competitor and no competition in satellite providers. And costs to us, the users, has tripled in the last decade. Bruce sang about 57 channels and nothing on, now we have 157 channels and still nothing on.
Just can't bring myself to cut the cord so I unhappily pay $193 a month to Comcast for Cable, Internets, and Phone.
I cut cable about 2 years ago and have been very happy. I pay $50 for internet and have 2 Roku players for Netflix and Prime (From woot), a small window antenna that pulls in a dozen decent over the air channels including all 4 networks plus 20 or so crap channels and with that have more content than I know what to do with.
My over-the-air reception sucks (about eight to nine miles north of the antennas in downtown Chicago) but, I mean, it's just TV. I'd been paying RCN $250 a month for their lowest cable package and slowest Internet connection... now it's $90 for a mid-level Internet connection and $8 a month to Netflix. (And it's a good thing Netflix has Breaking Bad because there are maybe two or three movies a year worth seeing.)
Look at those poll results. Take that, cable companies!
@pitamuffin I think you'd need to include satellite service to get a true picture, though. Dish and DirectTV aren't very different from Time-Warner in my market.
I actually do consider them the same. It didn't even occur to me not to.
Between Monday Night Football, the first few rounds of the NBA playoffs, certain March Madness games, and ESPN in general, I will continue to pay dish every month. I also like being able to flip around to find weird stuff I would never download/stream and have something on while working on my laptop.
@ScottN I don't watch sports, but the ability to flip on whatever while I'm doing other things is my motive, too. Anchorman came on last night. I'd probably never watch the DVD, but I'm happy to hear about his crotchal region while I'm cleaning house.
Don't act like you're not impressed.
I live by my extensive DVD/Blu-Ray collection, Netflix and streaming from the network sites or You Tube. I live on the slope of the mountain beneath the TV and Radio antennas at the summit, so I don't get broadcast tv at all, it shoots right over my head.
I was looking for the answer "GOD NO." The prices are ridiculous and all it is is a mess of expensive premium channels surrounded by swarms of "lizard lick towing" and other bullshit shows about stupidasses repo'ing or pawning stuff from other stupidasses. I hope the cable channels know this is their day is coming. They will soon join blockbuster...
I love sports so I have no choice but to pay. And full HD on a big screen is really the only way to watch
Roku's, PLEX, Netflix, Prime, a lovely Brother in Law who shared the HBOGO pw, and we're all set. We buy current shows that we want to watch as they come out, Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy, currently. We're lucky to get most local channels through our internet connection, (TWC hasn't separated them for some reason,) so we still get sports and local news.
I don't miss it. I also no longer feel the need to have the TV on as background noise. If it's on, there's a reason. I enjoy it more this way.
Cord free since Jan 2013.
@Thumperchick I suppose they would have to put a physical filter on the cable coming into your home to keep you from receiving the analog/ClearQAM channels. I hadn't thought about that; that's good to know.
So do you pay for the internet connection from the cable provider? Or do you all have COMPETITION for high speed internet in your fair cities?? If I turned off the TV, I am still cutting a check to Comcast each month.
@Pamtha If you count DSL and Satellite, we have Cable, DSL, Satellite, AND a new fiber optic provider that just came to town. I have the cable option for 50mbps download for $50 a month. The only thing I don't like is the low upload speed. (5mbps at best)
@Pamtha Chicago has at least three cable providers (Comcast, RCN, and Wow) along with pretty decent DSL. That said, I dunno what it takes for an owner to switch from one cable company to another.
@Pamtha We're lucky in that my husband's work pays for our internet as part of his home office. If they didn't, we would be stuck with paying for TWC internet; since FIOS is still a few blocks from us.
I am so rural that we only have satellite as an option - LITERALLY, there is no cable available here. Only one internet provider, and it is our land-line phone provider. I decided to go "pay tv free" in February 2013 since I was paying 80.00/mo for phone and internet (I live in the mountains. Cell service is spotty at BEST - on a GOOD day. So everyone still has a land line for emergencies.), then another 130.00+ for the satellite subscription that I was too busy working to ever actually be home to watch in the first place.
Since dropping the satellite, I have gotten hooked on MORE TV shows from online sources than I ever watched when I had pay service, and I can watch whenever I want..... I am a football gal, so that does cramp my style every fall/winter (GO PACK GO!!!), but it seems there's always a way around that issue if you search enough online. I have two WDTV Live boxes and a Roku3, so I'm streaming video and audio all over the house, and - again, other than the football - I am well pleased.
We can't reliably get any over-the-air stations, so that's out. Our current Dish package comes to about $34 (with DVR) a month. We also have Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime streaming. We've seriously been considering dropping Dish altogether, but it's more convenient compared to streaming options. Not to mention we also have the Dish Anywhere which makes our live Dish channels and recorded shows streamable. I would miss that.
Usually we pay $190 a month for just TV. Now we're paying $250 for just TV. Three words: NFL Sunday Ticket.
Is it worth it? meh
Hell fucking no. I dropped cable in 2007 and have never looked back. Anything I actually cared about is available through AppleTV (mostly Netflix, HBO Go [they encouraged sharing at one point] and a little Hulu, along with PBS, YouTube, even Yahoo and whatever we push up from our phones).
Those cable companies are worse than the mob. In fact it kinda chafes that I have to pay one or another of them to get broadband--for which they also overcharge. And the other day my son was watching some movie he'd got from a torrent site and apparently Verizon is watching and not pleased. Fuck you, Verizon.
And, no, we pretty much don't care for or miss the local stations that are too much of a hassle to tune. Like I said, PBS is in the Apple box.