Cut the cable?

If you lived in Buffalo like me, no cable is the best option to be happy during football season.

 

The streaming market is becoming more and more fragmented.

 

The streaming market will become as expensive as cable soon.

 

Disney’s new streaming service will be the only way to stream their content. That includes the Marvel franchises.

 

We cancelled cable tv almost 4 years ago. I’m a news junkie and thought I had made a serious mistake BUT, to get the channels I wanted, AT&T, Comcast, even WOW was averaging about $170.00 a month. And that was in 2015. That monthly charge didn’t even include any premium movie channels, sports, or watchable feature stuff.

We have existed on only internet, a Roku Player, a subscription to Amazon Prime, and one other news channel that none of the ‘big’ named cable providers carried. Our total cost is about $85.00 a month. Substantial savings of dollars and time.

I do miss the plopping down & tuning in to some random programming that I always watched just to relax; the 73rd time viewing The Godfather, or some other classic movies or sitcoms. But, we got over that fairly quickly.

Regarding value and content, the cost for basic cable or paying additional monies to ‘upgrade’ for watchable cable tv, adding time & cost vs quality of content, as a family, we judged it a loser. Cancelling was done without regret.

 

I went from full DirecTV at $228.00 to antenna TV w/ HBO, Showtime, Netflix, & Hulu and saved $160.00 per month.

 

73rd time viewing The Godfather...LOL.
Never seen it. Always tell people, we lived it - don't need to see it. My mom always tells me to keep my mouth shut.

Once we cut the cord, channel surfing was history. That took about a month to get over. No regrets here, either.
Right now, I'm on an OTA channel (CHARGE!) watching Valkyrie for the 39th time.

 

I really lean hard toward new content like original shows produced by Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and AMC. I'm impatient about waiting a year or longer for some of this stuff to come out on DVD (yes I'm still a subscriber to Netflix DVD rentals). I'm not interested in watching free oldies loaded with commercials that I can't skip.

A couple years ago I dumped Comcast and went with PS Vue. It had constant problems streaming live content, and they raised the price within a month of me subscribing. I went back to Comcast and got them to do a "reset" on my account to get me in at the new subscriber rate for a year. Currently I'm paying $150/mo for combined broadband and TV. Comcast is the only choice here for broadband so I have to stay with Comcast.

 

Michigan too! Detroit is extremely predictable, usually.

 

Do you REALLY think they are going to give away all that income? Just like premium cable channels originally were commercial free...

The more we depend upon the internet, the more people will find ways to monetize it.

 

I didn't cut the cable because I haven't owned a cable in many years. I do use YouTube TV which is fabulous except they keep raising the price. I love the way the channel guide is layed out. All the local channels first, then all the sports channels, then the movie channels, etc. There are no stupid channels. Like when I am in a motel and it has cable tv with 1000 channels. 950 of those channels are stupid. Either the Home Shopping network, sports you can't watch without paying extra for, premium movies that cost money or religious idiots begging for money. What you get is like 70 channels that you would actually watch and they are easy to find.

 

I guess I'm too old for new tricks. I DESPISE fishing around for content. I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, and (I think) Hulu*. I also have cable. I find myself watching baseball via the MLB website, and quickly checking out the cable guide and picking something to watch that is "already on".

I tried searching through the streaming stuff and it drove me nuts.

*I have "sharing" (read stealing) deals with several friends. I give them my MLB or Amazon login and they give me one of theirs. As such, I have about half a dozen streaming services..... and despise all of them.

My kids watch Boss Baby on (I think) Netflix and the Kung Fu Panda series on (I think) Amazon.

My wife DVRs all the talent shows and Grey's Anatomy** on cable.

**THE most depressing show ever on TV.

All that being said, I rarely have time for just sitting and watching TV anyway. I have baseball on most evenings and "swing by" to get the score from time to time. And I tend to watch band/artist documentaries while I work out. That's about it.