Export thread

The last cable bill for the triple play bundle of TV/phone/internet plus HBO and sports pack was $245. I was just hit with a ~$320 estimate for a windshield replacement. I have to cut costs.

If it were just me, I'd pull the trigger right away, but with Mom in the house, and not terribly mobile, the TV is a little more of a necessity. Some of the network shows are long-time favorites, and she doesn't want to give them up. Especially the "dancing crap" of Dancing With the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance. Mad Men is off for a year, so that doesn't need an immediate replacement, but if she can't watch when it returns, it'll be ugly.

I'm looking at the Roku 3, simply for the sheer multitude of channels. We have iPhones and iTunes, so Apple TV is an option, but the small number of channels (which I haven't looked at yet) compared to the Roku loses it points. Amazon Fire and Chromecast don't really figure into the discussion right now. I have a Samsung Smart TV in the upstairs living room, but haven't used much of it's apps except for the onboard netflix.

So the big question is, what will keep Mom happy even though I'm taking the broadcast networks away?

We were looking at getting a Roku for a while, just because we had the subscription to Amazon Prime. Now that we have let it expire, it's less of an issue. Granted, in our case, we are a bit limited by not having a television that can do HDMI, so most of the solutions are off the table. Have you considered getting(/building?) your own HTPC? The cost will be higher, but the ability to play whatever you find on the Internet might make up for that.

--Patrick

I used to do all 3 and am down to just internet from my cable provider and have cell phones.

An antenna may be able to get the basics, plus with your Roku and/or subscriptions to either Hulu Plus, Netflix, and/or Amazon Prime, it should cover almost everything but live sports.

Netflix is currently $7.99/mo (streaming only - may be more for new), Hulu Plus is $7.99/mo (stream recent shows the day or so after normal air), and Amazon prime to catch what Netflix and Hulu don't cover is $99/year, or $8.25/mo would be about $25/mo.

Hulu and Amazon Prime both have either free sections or free trials, so it'd be worth checking them out to see if they'd cover things that'd be needed before cutting the cord.

The sports may be a problem, depending on what sports are watched. Some like MLB are streamed but I don't know the costs. I was a Nascar fan but have since found other stuff that I like watching more that are free (TUDOR Championship being an example).

HBO - I think you're screwed for being able to watch legally.

I currently do internet only through my cable provider (currently 30 meg down, but soon to be expanded to 60 - thank you Charter) with Netflix and rent movies/TV shows from the library, but am planning on expanding to Hulu relatively soon since my wife can no longer work for medical reasons and she likes to watch TV a lot.

** Edit **

I also have my TV hooked up to an Acer Revo HTPC - has an ION low power CPU and a couple of gigs of memory - when I bough them a couple of years ago, they were like $400. Here are the new ones.

DarkAudit said:

The last cable bill for the triple play bundle of TV/phone/internet plus HBO and sports pack was $245. I was just hit with a ~$320 estimate for a windshield replacement. I have to cut costs.

If it were just me, I'd pull the trigger right away, but with Mom in the house, and not terribly mobile, the TV is a little more of a necessity. Some of the network shows are long-time favorites, and she doesn't want to give them up. Especially the "dancing crap" of Dancing With the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance. Mad Men is off for a year, so that doesn't need an immediate replacement, but if she can't watch when it returns, it'll be ugly.

I'm looking at the Roku 3, simply for the sheer multitude of channels. We have iPhones and iTunes, so Apple TV is an option, but the small number of channels (which I haven't looked at yet) compared to the Roku loses it points. Amazon Fire and Chromecast don't really figure into the discussion right now. I have a Samsung Smart TV in the upstairs living room, but haven't used much of it's apps except for the onboard netflix.

So the big question is, what will keep Mom happy even though I'm taking the broadcast networks away?

Click to expand...

It looks like both Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance are available through Hulu.

Also, http://www.canistream.it/

Antennas here are not an option. According to the NAB and other sites, I'd need a tower hundreds of feet high to get line-of-sight to the closest stations... which are still 40 miles away. Not that their local content is worth watching in the first place.

I've had Netflix for over a decade now. I had Hulu Plus for about a year before we realized we weren't using it for anything. Let Prime lapse because other bills were taking precedence at renewal time.

My sister has the Roku Stick. I'm looking at the 3 so I can have the most options. She's canceling her cable TV tomorrow, keeping the internet.

stienman said:

Nearly $10 per day seems excessive for the list of shows she wants available.

Have you called the cable company and said, "here's what I need, what deal can you get me to convince me not to cut the cord?"

I would expect being able to pare things down to below $100 per month without a contract. Then when madmen starts up, add it back ot he lineup and drop something else, for instance.

It's a struggle trying to work with them to do alacarte pricing, but if you work through things you should be able to save $2,000 per year and still keep a lot of the things you can't easily and cheaply get online.

Click to expand...

This. It may not always work, but I have friends who managed this. Cable companies can be surprisingly malleable to keep you if you're a long-time subscriber who is thinking of leaving.

Between Hulu+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix you can get a surprising amount of shows, Keep in mind since you're cutting the cord that you'll be freeing up money that you can use to purchase what you can't get from places like Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play.

AppleTV vs Roku3 in terms of channels is largely irrelevant, unless you don't have an iPhone or iPad. The biggest thing missing from the AppleTV is Amazon Instant Video, which has an iOS app that you can use AirPlay video to the AppleTV. Nearly everything else (Netflix, Hulu Plus, MLB.tv, YouTube, etc.) worth your time is on both. Roku3 is not a bad choice at all.

For HBO see if your local cable provider has a basic+HBO plan. These generally run $20-30 a month and are pretty bare bones as channels, except for HBO.

@DarkAudit I know you're a Pirates fan, but don't know if you're in their market, (WV has got to be pretty close to it) but MLB.tv is a great deal especially if you don't have a cable bill. If the Pirates would be blacked out you can fix that pretty easily with a VPN service or something like Unblock-US.[DOUBLEPOST=1401807441,1401807377][/DOUBLEPOST]I cut cable when I realized the only thing I was watching that required cable was Monday Night Raw. If you have any questions continue to ask away, I've probably had to deal with it.

If your mom is anything like my parents she will hate it. We did away with cable tv and used our Xbox 360 to stream the shows we all like. When they came to visit they couldn't get the hang of how to use the Xbox controller, the apps, or the fact that they couldn't watch the news (local or national). I had the cable tv turned back on for their most recent visit so I didn't have to hear them complain.

I was at ~$175 / mo and called to cancel and they threw HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Encore at me and cut the bill in half with some promotion. Hail Satan.

I cut down to "Digital Starter" and dropped HBO because Mom didn't want to budge on keeping the Hallmark Channel. still cut over $40/mo off the bill.

Looking at the specs, I'm going with the Roku stick over the 3. Don't need what the 3 adds since the channel selection is the same. And since Mom will still have her TiVo and such, I can use the stick myself for a while as a test run.

More than $40. This month's bill is $100 less than last. Next month's will be slightly higher as the full cycle will be in effect.

Ah yes, they've hit the "Philip Morris" moment.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Cable TV Execs Move Past Denial Stage, Now Fully Expect A 'Cord Cutting' Bloodbath

For the better part of the last decade, cable and broadcast executives tried their hardest to pretend that their industry wasn’t facing a massive tectonic shift. First, they tried to insist t…

www.techdirt.com

Ah yes, they've hit the "Philip Morris" moment.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Burn the cable companies down... down to the gwound.

Better yet, turn 'em into regulated utilities. That's their worst nightmare.

--Patrick

Just got a notice that my hulu package is going up an extra $10 per month. So instead of just suspending it, I'm going to cancel outright.

With local channels, it was already more expensive than a comparable package from Spectrum. What do you do when cutting the cord costs you more than before? What do you do when internet with any reasonable speed is coming from the cord you are trying to cut?

I leech on other people 's Plex servers
Still need internet though.

DarkAudit said:

What do you do when internet with any reasonable speed is coming from the cord you are trying to cut?

Click to expand...

Lobby for it to be regulated and reclassified as the public utility it has become, of course.

—Patrick