We had a full cable package, all the channels, including movies channels. It was probably close to $200 per month.

And we also had all the streaming options; Netflix, Prime, Disney+, EPSN+, Hulu, Paramount, Peacock and Max.

One day I realized the only thing I really used cable for was when I was flipping channels, wasting time. And whenever I truly wanted to watch something I went to the streaming services. So I cut the cord and cancelled cable completely. That was over 6 months ago.

I have realized I do miss cable for a few things. With Peacock, I can see all NBC stuff. With Paramount, I can see most CBS stuff. But ABC and Fox are kind of left out in the cold. I would like to see some sports (baseball and football) on those channels.

I have realized the ESPN+ is basically a waste. None of the good stuff shown on ESPN is available on ESPN+. Most notably for me, F1 practice, qualifying and sprint races. I can normally catch the main race, but the last one wasn't shown.

So, I would like the local channels, plus ESPN. I am sure there are a few more channels I could make use of.

Spectrum cable is $59.99. AT&T is $74.99. YouTube TV is $72.99.

I would love to get this stuff for $40-$50 per month. I suppose I'll pay $60, which has me leaning towards Spectrum. Once I cross that threshold, I am out and I'll continue to live without a cord.

What are you using and what is my best option?

I use Fubo but it’s over your price range. I’d suggest checking Hulu plus tv (it’s called something like that). It’s Hulu but adds live tv. Maybe that combination would be cost effective since you already have Hulu.

I initially tried to cut the cable for years, when streaming was hitting its stride. The (now ex) wife refused for several years, so we continued to pay $200+ per month for cable TV that was used for little more than background noise and the occasional football game.

Finally, she relented. And found that she didn't miss cable at all. Wish she had let me do it sooner, as we could have saved literally thousands of dollars.

Nowadays, I still don't have any TV service at all. Only streaming. I subscribe to a couple services year-round, and mix in a month or two of different services at a time, when there's something specific that I want to watch on that service.


The only value I see in having TV nowadays is if you are a die-hard sports fan, and your sports/teams of choice aren't 100% available on a streaming service. (And even then, there are internet TV options out there that are cheaper than traditional cable/satellite.)

Otherwise, why pay more just to watch what someone else decided you should watch at that time, with interspersed commercials? You can pay less, and watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it, with no commercials, via streaming.

We canceled Comcast over a year ago and went with YouTubeTV and really like it. It's got a ton of channels including all the local ones. Lots of sports channels including ESPN. Also works flawlessly right on our iPhones.

IMO it's worth the price. We pay $77 for that and $40 for 500 Mbps fiber and that's way better than Comcast.

You will need something like a Roku streaming stick or TV to be able to use YTTV, we have a Roku TV now.

We have Hulu + with the local channels and a Roku receiver. There's no cable TV provider in my area either, so it's dish only. I live in a very mountainous area so I can't get the local channels on an Over The Air (OTA) antenna. If I could I'd go with regular Hulu and an OTA antenna. There's a big price difference between regular Hulu and Hulu +. Hulu+ is alright, but certain things piss me off. Not sure if it's the Hulu or the Roku. I usually watch all the Broncos games. Back when we had dish I used to be able to pause the game right when it started, go and do shit for an hour, then come pack, un-pause and fast forward through the commercials. I can't remember which it is (Hulu or the Roku), but it's not really possible with the Hulu+ and Roku.

Also, many times I can't back up the game to watch a play over again. The Roku interface sucks, but we just deal with it. If it wasn't for my wife I'd ditch the entire setup and have nothing.

quote:

With Paramount, I can see most CBS stuff. But ABC and Fox are kind of left out in the cold

You can always hook up an OTA antenna to solve that problem.

One of the benefits of a cable lineup is that everything is in one place, easier to get to also handy if you DVR.

However, YouTubeTV or Hula would be my Internet choice.

All the other you can buy ala carte and get what you want, Prime and Netflix covers a lot of ground.

Don't think there is much savings anymore to cutting the cord unless you are judicious about only subscribing to what you really watch.

$74,217.65.

That's $100 a month saved on cable television over the past 20 years of my life (giving up cable when I was 21), compounded monthly at 9.75 percent (average rate of return over the past 20 years in the market).

Further extrapolate that out until retirement age, that number jumps to $591,079.

Over the remainder of my lifetime and assuming I die at 85 years, I will have accumulated nearly 7 MILLION DOLLARS because I stopped paying for cable television.

quote:

Originally posted by 1967Goat:
The Roku interface sucks, but we just deal with it. If it wasn't for my wife I'd ditch the entire setup and have nothing.

Wow really?

I love the Roku setup. Everything is a tile on my Roku TV, all the streaming apps, the DVD player, the Nintendo Switch. There’s no having to press an input button on the remote, just navigate to a tile and press enter. I wish everything could be that intuitive and simple. My Dad has a Vizio “smart” TV and the thing is a horror.

I finally got rid of my cable TV and all those monthly rentals for the cable boxes. I still have two phone lines and 1 Gig internet. Everything I had was costing me $350 per month. Now I pay $109.00 per month.

To get Faux News and many other channels I have had to add sling TV ($40.00) Plus Paramount and Peacock totaling ($15.00). So by cutting the TV Cable I am saving approximately $200.00 monthly.

Any regrets , hell no, it has been far better. If you are going to cut TV cable out of your life be ready for multiple trips to the Cable Store. Be prepared for multiple phone calls to billing and about three months of watching your bill to ensure that they are doing what you expected and to ensure that they don't continue to bill you for returned equipment and cable TV service that was cancelled.

Cable can be pricey, and it’s frustrating when you only use it for a few things. When I cut the cord, I leaned more on streaming services but ran into the same issue with missing specific channels or sports.

For local channels and sports, YouTube TV is solid, but the price might push you over your budget. You could try a digital antenna for local channels—it’s a one-time purchase and works great for ABC, Fox, and CBS. If you’re okay without live TV, I usually watch movies and shows for free on 123moviesfree.net. It’s super convenient and has a wide range of options.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hpopa89,

Why aren't you considering using an antenna? I find that satisfies all my TV needs and I haven't even looked at all the available channels just Fox and CBS for football. Other than that I typically watch unpaid YouTube or Amazon.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
$74,217.65.

That's $100 a month saved on cable television over the past 20 years of my life (giving up cable when I was 21), compounded monthly at 9.75 percent (average rate of return over the past 20 years in the market).

Further extrapolate that out until retirement age, that number jumps to $591,079.

Over the remainder of my lifetime and assuming I die at 85 years, I will have accumulated nearly 7 MILLION DOLLARS because I stopped paying for cable television.

That’s a sobering figure!

The TV App it's free. 118 live channels plus all your major league sports, ppv's and more. Don't ask me how it works but it does. You can upgrade with a subscription but they only take Bit Coin as payment. The subscription connects you to better servers supposedly for smoother streaming. I watched the Winnipeg Jets and Buffalo Sabres on it last night. It's not 100% as I get some buffering now and again. If a live sports event is on ESPN you might need a VPN to watch it.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Why aren't you considering using an antenna? I find that satisfies all my TV needs and I haven't even looked at all the available channels just Fox and CBS for football. Other than that I typically watch unpaid YouTube or Amazon.

It's not always feasible.

If you live far away from digital broadcasters it can be tough with a weak signal.

Terrain can be an issue also, since digital signals are line of sight.
This keeps me from getting an antenna. I'm surrounded by hills that block the signals.

I live where there are not any OTA channels available, cable is nice to have and I don't mind paying, $130 a month for Direct TV and internet, Watch baseball, Nascar, cable news, when it's freezing, too cold to do anything outside. It's a luxury that I find value in.

We cut cable 13 or so years ago.
We have Netflix, Disney+, Prime, and Max (comes with our phone package so we don’t pay for that).
I also use PlutoTv and Tubi while they have commercials there is a ton to watch but no monthly subscription.

Max and Prime are adding a lot of sports. Max tends to have a lot of the qualifying F1 stuff but very few main races.

I am not huge into sports so I have not really missed anything aside from being able to watch the Reds.
My boys are getting older and want to watch more sports so I am looking at options.

YouTube TV seems to be the best streaming cable option from my reading and talking to folks that have it but $75 a month is not something I am
Willing to pay.
I have been told that YouTube TV allows you to share your subscription with two other people.
So I know a number of people who share it and split the monthly bill making it $25 a persona month which is palatable for me. So looking into this a bit more here soon.

I cut cable a little over 2 years ago when we moved, because even bundled with internet, it was around $250 per month.

Fortunately we now live on a hill, in an suburban area that has decent OTA channels, about 30-40, depending on which TV I use. I have 4 TVs, each with its own antenna and Roku device, so I can watch OTA or streaming. Internet is $80 per month, and I only subscribe to Netflix for paid streaming.

quote:

Originally posted by WaterburyBob:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Why aren't you considering using an antenna? I find that satisfies all my TV needs and I haven't even looked at all the available channels just Fox and CBS for football. Other than that I typically watch unpaid YouTube or Amazon.

It's not always feasible.

If you live far away from digital broadcasters it can be tough with a weak signal.

Terrain can be an issue also, since digital signals are line of sight.
This keeps me from getting an antenna. I'm surrounded by hills that block the signals.

I was going by listed location of Orlando, I assume that they have their own broadcast and it's relatively flat land. I'm 25mi away from DC and get DC channels plus a few surrounding ones. The antennas theses days are pretty good. I spent approx $50 and am very pleased, especially for as far out as I live. I don't even have any foil on my antenna or have to move it.

We were doing YouTubeTV pretty early on, I mostly took it up since it had all the ESPN channels for F1 coverage.

It kept going up, bit by bit, until I realized that for what 1 month of YTTV costs, I get a full year of F1TV.
So we dropped YTTV, which was being used for F1, and casual channel flipping [we do miss using The Office as white noise].
Biggest loss there is MLB & not getting Astros coverage.

F1TV is great, never have to worry about missing a race for a channel swap or timing issues. And with the F1 archive, I've watched every season from 1970-2000 & am currently watching 2001.
I started watching again in 2014, so I have a bit more to go until I've seen it all

I still miss my satellite service (DISH). I had the lowest, basic, cable service they offered + every movie channel they offered. About 50 movie channels or something. I would have to call them every 3-4 months as I tried to keep every movie channel package on promotional offer. If something dropped off promotion the bill would go up. But I was pretty effective at this for many many years. 4k DVR + 3 4k set top boxes. It would always be around $75 a month at lowest to $95. For that $ amount, I was content. It was not a waste of money for me. I used it and I liked the film rotation. HBO, SHO, etc, had the good series, etc. But Dish started increasing the price on the basic programming package, a requirement for their service. For about a year they gave me a discount to offset the new basic programming price but after that expired they refused to deal any longer and it ended up with a bill over $100 and I had to draws the line. I rarely watched any of that super basic shit. Local news if there was storms, hail, tornadoes, and maybe football playoffs. I do miss that DVR, starting a game, hitting pause, and getting to skip all commercials. Under $100 a month I’m good. I save money in so many other areas like not wasting money going out to eat, no bars, no sports seats/tickets. I no longer go to the theater (phones). But 4k content was limited on satellite and once it crossed that benny threshold, it was time to cut the cord, even though I didn’t want to.

Now? Max is free due to my ISP giving me it. I pay for Paramount just to get Showtime. MGM+, Apple+, Netflix 4k. I had STARZ but their content sucks, and cancelled it. Netflix doesn’t offer a 4k, 1 tv plan. They have the 4k tier rolled up into their max deal with 4 tv’s at once, but I use one panel at a time so my patience is thin with them. They are next on the chopping block. Apple+ I thought I’d use for 3 months and cancel but a lot of directors and film makers have pivoted to them. Then I’ve had a MotoGP subscription for 20 years.

Beyond that, OTA, and mine has a mind of its own. It’s on the roof, where the Dish satellite was but I need to have a company really dial in the angle better than myself with an app and I need a db booster in the attic to make the most of it. I loathe commercials so terrestrial television is low on my totem pole. I also rent 4k discs through a service but I’m going to cut them too in favor of a newer service that is more friendly on the wallet.

Streaming, IMO, is a giant pain in the ass. It’s more hassle than it’s worth. I’ll deal with it for now but once I move to my rural land, I’ll just pay the blood money for satellite service again. I want it back. smschulz nailed it above, centralized location, DVR, all your shit in a simple menu. NOT having to open and close this app, dumpster digging for x, y, and z. It’s not like these premium 4k streaming services I’m subscribed to now offer full audio. They do a decent job with the 4k compression on video but the audio is fucking awful, it’s complete shit. Physical media I’m going to continue using it all I can until it’s complete death because it’s far superior. It’s night and day watching a good film on disc vs. steaming on any streaming service. Streaming is like a child’s big wheel on your lawn vs. physical media which is like you know, a real fucking car that you can take on the highway, etc.