Cut the cord, finally

[14Accent]

I've been considering cutting cable for a while, however it's always taken a back burner to something else. That changed today.

Something about turning 30 last Friday must have clicked, because I called Comcast today and downgraded to 60/5 internet only today for $50 a month. I was paying $137 for my previous TV/internet package. I'm not thrilled about the speed, as I can get Century Link 1 gig fiber for $65 a month, however in reality 60 meg is plenty for what I do. I don't want to have to deal with appointments, running wires, having a tech out, etc. just to change providers. I own my own modem and router, so I've now got NO outside equipment in my house! It feels a bit surreal...

I currently have Amazon Prime and Hulu ad-supported, so I decided to add Sling Blue for $25/mo. There are a few networks I enjoyed watching, and Sling Blue offered all but one. I also plan on signing up for HBO Now come June, when Ballers starts again. On top of that, I prepaid 2 months of Sling and got a free Roku Express as part of the deal.

Unfortunately, none of my streaming devices supported Sling, so I stopped by Micro Center to pick up a Roku on my way home. They ended up having the Roku Premier (necessary for 4k) on sale for $29.99, $10 off the street price. Score! That, plus the free Roku Express will cover my living room and bedroom set's. The Roku box is great. It's tiny, and runs off USB power. I have mine plugged into the USB port on my receiver, it's almost impossible to see short of a soft glow from a white LED.

All in all, I'm very satisfied. I've used Roku units before, so I was already familiar there, but I've never used a live TV service before. Here's a very loose set of numbers I put together, just to see how my cost broke down:

$137 vs. $75 for internet and TV ($50 Comcast, $25 Sling) = ($62)/mo

$30 Roku Premier + free Roku Express ($29.99 value) = $0

OTA antenna on Amazon = $30, next day delivery

All in all, for 30 minutes on the phone and some time at the store I'd say it's a good change. I'm still figuring out a few remote commands and what not but that only takes a few days. The future is amazing, if I do say so.

 

[Voleak]

Good job. I cut the cable back in early 2015.

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

I'll be getting rid of cable again since GOT is over.

 

[blupupher]

I have been cable free since 2005.
Used OTA and Netflix for my needs. Have a computer hooked up for recording and playing back TV.
I got a Roku a year or so ago, and my wife is happy since it gives her a few more channels to watch.

My mom just moved and I signed her up for Comcast, and I was a little sick at the price.
With taxes and fees ($10 for sports channels she will never use and $8 for "free" OTA channels!) it is $105/month for 140 channels and 100Mbps (she is coming from 0.75 Mbps, so way more speed than she needs).

 

[csandste]

Cut Dish about three years ago and haven't missed it at all. Roku gives me anything I want. Between Netflix, and Amazon I got all I need. I AM a news junkie but have that coming out of my ears as well. Pluto is there if I actually miss cable or satellite.

 

[Skippy722]

We cut DirectTV about a year ago. $90 a month for the base package, which doesn't have the science channel, is a joke. Then again, so is Comcast's 1Tb data limit.

 

[TOMJ]

We cut the cord about 9 years ago. OTA antenna running to five TVs with a Roku streaming Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Sling in living room and two bedrooms. We pay about $45.00 a month. That beats paying over $100.00 a month.
Don't miss Dish at all.

 

[alarmguy]

Congrats, we cut the cable when the trend started gosh, 7 years ago?

5 Roku players in the house, 5 TV's and all we pay for is Netflex and Hulu Plus, total bill less then or equal to $20 a month. (we also use our daughter Prime account sometimes. )

Big antenna in our attic, feeds our prewired home to all five TVs through existing coax. We get all majors, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS PLUS many others, total of about 25 channels all at no cost.
Being we are picky, the best part by far with the attic antenna is the superior picture quality over pay TV. More or less, the major TV channels are noticably less compressed watching through our antenna, then when we had those channels delivered over Spectrum/TWC.

SO with all the above said, its still all so stupid, we once again have WAY more TV then we can possibly watch but at least we are only paying $20 a month for it.
My wife and I laugh about it, we cant keep track of the things we want to watch but never get a chance to.

 

[AuthorEditor]

So what is everyone paying for Internet and to whom?

 

[Virtus_Probi]

Have never had cable unless it was provided in an apartment before I bought my first house 25 years ago.
Our landline phone is bundled in with our fiber to the home internet now, so it doesn't really make sense to dump that. I need to call the provider and check on getting a new plan, our present one is so old that I'd bet that we can upgrade to faster service than we have now for less money...don't know what we pay now, the wife handles that bill.
We do love our streaming services, Netflix is well work $16/month or whatever and we also get a lot of free content from my Amazon Prime membership...I find Prime worthwhile as I constantly ship stuff to my daughter at school, sometimes she will have a project due in a week and want a book to help with it and it's nice to know it will be there in 1-2 days. My wife and I are working our way through The Sopranos now, great show...also did Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul with her, have watched almost all the Twilight Zone originals on Netflix on my own as a trip down memory lane.

I guess I miss a lot of sporting events without cable now that fewer of them are broadcast for free...we also don't get Fox very well as we are in a sort of valley surrounded by big hills and that hurts for sports, comes in well some days and not at all on others. I might try a booster amp off my attic antenna this spring, although I messed with a cheap one years ago and I think it damaged my TV. I don't care so much about sports anymore unless my daughter is playing, but it would have been nice to watch the Cubs win the WS a few years ago rather than tracking it through gamecasts online.

 

[supton]

We cut back in 2005. For a few years I had an antenna up and could get one or two stations, but finally pulled that down. We like our Roku but the wife & I watch maybe two hours of TV a week, tops. I have been watching more youtube videos lately, their short duration fits my attention span.

We have DSL and I think we pay $75 for a landline & 5MB down / 0.5MB up. It's slow but good enough.

I can't wait to upgrade to fiber though. The single provider we have keeps insisting that their bundle plan (TV, internet, phone) is somehow cheaper at $100 per month than my $75 plan, and we keep telling them nope, it's basic math! I suspect we have to drop our landline so as to keep the cost low when we do switch, and then we'll have to get a cell phone repeater as our cells barely work where we live.

 

[JustN89]

We haven't had cable since we moved, so about a year and a half now. So far, we've been getting by with just internet and streaming Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Video, but I've been thinking about getting an antenna for local channels. The only reason I haven't is that I don't necessarily want to run a cord all the way outside from our TV and I can't seem to find one that has consistent reviews of working well inside.

 

[bubbatime]

I got rid of cable (finally!!) a few weeks ago. Centurylink internet and tv was jacked way up to $155 a month. Now just the internet is about $38 a month for 10mbps DSL. I hate the slow internet, but somehow its the only internet I can get, even though my neighbor 1000 feet away has Comcast 100mbps.

I just bought a new house and move in next month. That house has Comcast, so I will buy their $10 internet package, and just keep my Netlfix and Prime account. So going from $155/month to about $20 a month, works for us.

 

[Sierra048]

Originally Posted by AuthorEditor
So what is everyone paying for Internet and to whom?


Up here in the mountains we are held hostage by Windstream (now in Chapter 11) via DSL. 16 Mbps is what they say we get but if the online speed sites are correct, we average between 10 - 11 Mbps. All of this for $90/month. Our local power provider offers high speed fiber internet. They have the infrastructure already in place (sub duct to feed the terminals, and pre-buried fiber drops to the homes). At this time they have nothing in the works to make it happen.

We would gladly drop DirecTV and rely on streaming as our source of entertainment but with DSL, we're lucky to get one TV to work on a ROKU. I did cal DirecTV and threatened to cancel and they halved my bill for the year. If they don't carry that reduction over after this year, we will be dropping them and just doing the best we can with what we have left.

 

[alarmguy]

We pay Spectrum $65.00 a month for 100/12 speed. Lucky for us, my wifes company pays for it, price is a rip off.

GOOD NEWS IS )
Our Electric Co-op is running Fiber to all its customers and has been doing so for years now, due to get to us soon.
Price will be $49.00 a month for 100/100 service.

Since my wifes company pays the cost I dont care as much but Spectrum is a rip off and will be glad to switch, plus will be fun knowing my upload will be 10 times faster.

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted by alarmguy
We pay Spectrum $65.00 a month for 100/12 speed. Lucky for us, my wifes company pays for it, price is a rip off.

GOOD NEWS IS )
Our Electric Co-op is running Fiber to all its customers and has been doing so for years now, due to get to us soon.
Price will be $49.00 a month for 100/100 service.

Since my wifes company pays the cost I dont care as much but Spectrum is a rip off and will be glad to switch, plus will be fun knowing my upload will be 10 times faster.


Another aspect of pricing is uptime and ability to fix issues quickly. After three companies back on Xfinity internet only. I am lucky to share a pole/line with a business customer behind home who has guaranteed uptime.

 

[Schmoe]

Been reading this and other forums about cutting the cord. Now remember, I live in a small town in Oklahoma and have really one good internet provider, suddenlink. I'm paying 180 a month for land line ( I know), TV and internet. TV package is pretty loaded with just about everything except for those premium channels...HBO/MAX?SHO etc. etc. With the frequency of storms around here, getting internet is spotty. Currently rate that I'm paying is for 50MBS....but that's theory only...actuals are more like 10-15 MBS. Itemizing the bill, internet alone is about 65 a month. If you add Netflix/Hulu/Amazon etc. etc. services, which you have to pay for on top of that, sure you'll save some coin, but at least for me, it's not like your saving a boat load of money. Then when internet is down, you get nothing. Around here, we are glued to the TV during storm season, which seems to drag out for about 3 months of the year. I'm questioning is it really worth it to save a little money versus the reliability factor? Sure, some of ya'll in the bigger metro areas it may be beneficial, but out here, I don't think we're ready for that just yet.

 

[JTK]

Good for you on cuttin' it. I've been trying to get there, but haven't taken the leap. I recently mail ordered an inexpensive indoor antenna just to see what I could get.. I'm quite close to some local TV towers because I live in the hills, but my home is nestled in a valley. I was surprised that this Flatwave amped antenna still manages to get me about 16 stations.

Like many here, my basic internet and TV bundle is over $130/mo. Dropping down to interwebbs only would reduce this to $60-70/mo. Spectrum is my only choice aside from satellite. Cell signal is weak and sketchy at the house, so we rely on wifi calling for in home use.