My Conversation with Comcast ….
Me: I’d like to know what my cable price would be without cable tv
Her: You don’t need to cancel tv, I can lower your cable bill.
Me: How much would it be without cable tv?
Her: Well if you cancel cable tv you’ll have to pay retail for internet.
Me: How much would that be?
Her: That would be $75. But I can lower your cable bill. There’s no reason to cancel.
Me: Can you lower it to $75 ?
Her: No I can’t lower it that much, but I can lower it.
Me: What can you lower it to.
Her: $105
Yeah, so not worth it. Even less worth it once I figured out just how easy the switch could really be.
I have been throwing around the idea of kicking cable for a while, but it wasn’t until hubby read an article about things you shouldn’t be paying for in 2014 and saw cable on the list that his accountant brain finally kicked in and jumped on board. I’ll be honest, even though it was my idea initially when kicking cable finally became a reality I was a little lost. What about those few shows that I really like and want to see when they air (or soon after). I haven’t watched live TV on purpose in over a decade thanks to Tivo. So, I had to do a little research to figure out how we were going to make this switch as painless as possible. Here’s what I found.
HDTV Antenna – When I was a kid we never had cable, we were lucky if we had a tv. When we did I do recall standing in front of it adjusting the rabbit ears to try to get the best picture. It sucked. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible to get the basic channels anymore without cable thanks to HD tv and all that. So, when I read about HDTV antenna’s I was a little skeptical. However, when I saw one at CostCo for $40 I figured I’d take the risk (after all it was CostCo so I knew taking it back would be as easy as buying it). I took it home and hooked it up to the tv per instructions and ran the channel scan and boom I had about 15 channels just like that. Then it hit me, could I plug this directly into my tivo and still record on those channels? So, I tried it. Yes. Yes, I could. I ran a few tests to make sure it would work and was amazed at just how clear the recordings were.
Netflix – I’ve been a Netflix customer since long before they offered streaming. A few years ago when they split streaming from DVD I dropped the DVD option and stuck with streaming. The ability to stream through our smart tv or smart dvd meant that we watched as much (or more) on Netflix as we did on regular tv. So many television shows are now putting last season on Netflix before the new season airs. If you don’t mind waiting a little bit, it actually makes watching even better because you can binge on a show rather than having to wait till next week.
Amazon Prime – I’ve been an Amazon Prime member for a few years, but mostly only used it for the 2 day shipping. The streaming has been there but I found their “watchlist” clunky, as I did finding new shows to watch. That all changed when I sat down to watch “Downton Abbey”. Amazon Prime was the only place to watch it and I binged. Then I started on “Mr. Selfridge” and last night we discovered “Ugly Americans”. As I learn my way around and now that we’ve dropped cable, we’ll likely use Amazon as much as we do Netflix.
Amazon Streaming – Even if it’s not on prime, you can stream the latest episodes of many shows through Amazon for between $2 and $4/episode (higher price for HD). Since we really only have one show that we really care about seeing right after it airs that isn’t on network tv (Walking Dead, in case you were curious) this may be how we do it. At $2/episode for the non-HD version we can stream an entire season of the show for less than half a month of the savings we get by cancelling cable. (16 episodes @ $2/ep = $32 vs $65 decrease in cable bill).
Hulu Plus – I’ve been back and forth on Hulu for a while. I signed up when we got our smart tv because it came with 3 months free. I think I watched it twice. However, since we cancelled cable I signed back up. Hulu Plus does provide easy access to the most recent episodes of a lot of top shows, so I figured we’d give it another try and see if we use it. At $8 a month it’s worth it to try for a bit and see if we’ll use it. If we don’t we’ll cancel it with nothing lost. Unlike Amazon and Netflix you are subject to commercials with Hulu.
Crackle – Unlike the other services this one is free. The content availability isn’t as broad as with the other services, but it changes regularly. They also have some pretty good original programming like “Chosen”, which I’m currently binge-watching despite the knowledge that hubby would totally love this show. I should stop and wait, I know I should but I can’t.
ChromeCast – A friend told me about this device. I’d seen it mentioned elsewhere but didn’t really grasp what it did. Basically, you can hook it into the HDMI of any HD tv and then stream from your computer to your tv. So anything you can watch on Chrome can then be streamed to your tv. It does have a few limitations like Amazon Streaming doesn’t work. The device is pretty cheap at only $35.
HDMI Cable – If you don’t mind wires you can just hook a computer directly to your tv and use the tv as a giant monitor to watch anything that you can view on your computer (even Amazon streaming). This is an option for us for shows like Walking Dead since the show is available to watch for free on the AMC website. Most network websites offer many (if not all) of their current (and often past) programming for viewing on their website for free. There are also a handful of websites out there that act as a portal to help you easily find your favorite shows and movies.
As the number of ways to watch programming continue to grow the need for cable will continue to diminish. In my opinion, until the cable companies wise up and start offering A la Carte services they will continue to be obsolete. Sure they can jack up our internet rate to attempt to make up for losing us as cable tv subscribers, but I can almost guarantee that if we call and complain and/or tell them we are changing providers they’ll lower it back down.
Leave a Reply