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Cord-Cutting Still Doesn't Beat the Cable Bundle (wired.com)
I'd like to cut the cord, writes Brian Barrett for Wired, then, the very instant I allow myself to picture what life looks like after that figurative snip, my reverie comes crashing down. From an article: Cutting the cord is absolutely right for some people. Lots of people, maybe. But it's not that cheap, and it's not that easy, and there's not much hope of improvement on either front any time soon. Not to turn this into a math experiment, but let's consider cost. Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether, you're going to need a service that bundles together a handful of channels and blips them to your house over the internet. The cheapest way you can accomplish this is to pay Sling TV $20 per month, for which you get 29 channels. That sounds not so bad, and certainly less than your cable bill. But! Sling Orange limits you to a single stream. If you're in a household with others, you'll probably want Sling Blue, which offers multiple streams and 43 channels for $25 per month. But! Sling Orange and Sling Blue have different channel lineups (ESPN is on Orange, not Blue, while Orange lacks FX, Bravo and any locals). For full coverage, you can subscribe to both for $40. But! Have kids? You'll want the Kids Extra package for another $5 per month. Love ESPNU? Grab that $5 per month sports package. HBO? $15 per month, please. Presto, you're up to $65 per month. But! Don't forget the extra $5 for a cloud-based DVR. Plus the high-speed internet service that you need to keep your stream from buffering, which, by the way, it'll do anyway. That's not to pick on Sling TV, specifically. But paying $70 to quit cable feels like smoking a pack of Parliaments to quit Marlboro Lights. You run into similar situations across the board, whether it's a higher base rate, or a limited premium selection, or the absence of local programming altogether. It turns out, oddly enough, that things cost money, whether you access those things through traditional cable packages or through a modem provided to you by a traditional cable operator.
For between $20-$50 up front, plus maybe a $20-$50 tuner, you can get several channels at no additional cost!
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Seriously, the majority of people cutting the cord aren't looking to ensure a 1:1 replacement of all channels they may or may not have been watching previously, and the industry damn well knows it. A lot of people are perfectly happy with general internet news, available content on youtube, and maybe 1 or 2 streaming services (netflix, hulu, hbo go, amazon, etc).
Given that people are unlikely to subscribe to cable but not internet, the cost of internet is a non-factor making cord cutting very reasonable to a huge number of people.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Bad assumption.
We bought cable as part of a bundle with Internet access when we moved two years ago. We've never used it - not even once. Next house we won't bother, no matter how cheap it is. Lifestyles change.
Broadcast TV was always annoying, and gradually better forms of entertainment have emerged.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
>> looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether, you're going to need a service that bundles together a handful of channels
What you're looking for is free, digital over-the-air broadcasts, which are available using inexpensive, one-time-purchase antennas. Way back when I was a TV newbie like the author of the article, I got started on this because the local cable channel actually wanted extra money to send me HD signals.
If you want specific shows, movies or sporting events, I'd suggest pirate streams through proxies. Otherwise, there's Netflix which has fair-to-good versions of the various TV programs you'd normally have on in the background in your lonely little life.
Right now, you can still bundle Netflix with Amazon Prime and an HBO subscription to get a good bit of the market for a reasonable monthly outlay, but as industry watchdogs have suggested, Netflix only works if there aren't too many Netflix-type providers bidding for content.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That looks like Cable Company Math, talking about the number of channels per dollar.
That doesn't at all reflect what I've observed people doing when they cut the cord. Most of the time, they realize that they may have a hundred channels for their money, but they only watch two or three of them (and usually only a couple of shows on each).
On a per show cost, for those people, cable is crazy expensive, and it's really easy to bring that number down.
"Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether ..."
How'd we go from a title that talks about cord-cutting, to one about replacing the cable with just another form of getting the same crap?
DaveyJJ
Check with your local library.
Do you really need all of those channels? When I canceled my cable, I switched to over-the-air networks (for free), and Netflix + Amazon Prime (which is effectively free since I'd have prime even without the streaming).
If you want the same set of channels you had with cable, it stands to reason that it's not going to be cheaper.
I've found more than enough to distract me without cable, I don't need to replicate it with streaming.
People keep thinking cord cutting is about price but actually cable, satellite and broadcast are just so saturated with commercials and advertisement that it's unbearable, even if it was free.
download caps and high cost of internet only.
ATT gives you the unlimited add on for free if you take u verse tv or directv.
Comcast.
$50/month for internet plus $50/month for basic TV.
Or...
$100/month for internet only.
They're not going to let you play the game.
You could, you know, just watch what's on the antenna for free? The only thing I normally watch that isn't on the antenna is current anime from Japan. (The current season is actually one of the best in years. It's just not big enough of a business for anyone to care about people torrenting that shit.)
Really, the only good reason to still have cable is because of live sports, which some of us can live without.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Now everything's splitting off into factions and you need multiple subscriptions and apps to get something comparable. Each with their own UI :( bad experience
I guess I'll stick with trawling bargain bins for what I want. Picked up a few 10 season shows for about $20 each. Not bad!
Twinstiq, game news
Picture if you will a large antenna, and it pipes out a digital signal that can be picked up by smaller antennas, and turned into a picture and sound...
Like some sort of broadcast TV...
Of course, there is such a thing, and since we are all paying for the internet anyhow...
And since that $70 worth of products you are buying is keeping you from a ~$120 cable bill... saving $50 a month isn't chump change... that's $600 a year...
But no I'm sure you did the math badly then assumed that you are no good at math, and then gave up on math and just assumed whatever choice you've already made was the right one financially....
"Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether"
This is why it is still expensive.
...I can get ESPN, Starz, MTV Live, etc with just an antenna, and I'll drop Spectrum right now.
Share wifi Google fiber with neighbors, cut the cord, and experience the bajillions of movies and TV shows from yesteryear, including all the foreign stuff.
I just don't see the point. There are lifetimes worth of media to watch now... plus hobbies and exercise. And work.
-
I think this whole article misses the point that many cord cutters enjoy saving money, but more importantly they enjoy minimizing dealing with cable companies. Sometimes it is not about just money.
Just stop watching TV and you save the full bill. Seriously, cable cutters aren't doing it because they are getting an equivalent service for cheaper - they are opting out of some or all of the service because they don't see value in it. In fact, I would say cable provides negative value for many people, because it's time that could be better spent doing something a lot more rewarding. Seriously, when was the last time that you spent an evening flipping through channels on cable and felt like it was a worthwhile use of time?
Having a lot of mind rotting time filling trash in easy reach leads to compulsive rather then deliberative TV watching. Pay as you go has the important psychological benefit of me thinking to myself do I really want to pay $4.99 to watch that movie? This brings to mind that I'm also paying with my lost time. Sometimes the answer is yes but sometimes it's no. And it's often "No" in cases where had I already paid to see (via the cable bill) I probably would have just tried to get my money's worth rather than go outside and listen to the birds and stare at trees.
It's like if soda's were free and plumbed to your house and all the junk food machines were free too. How often would you skip going to the corner store for some veggies and just take the free corn syrup.
Cord cutting leads to consuming better not just replacing one bundle with another. It isn't about saving money and the fact that it costs "more" ends up costing you less of your time wasted.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The problem depicted in this post is that some people consider having so many channels like a need.
Netflix OR HBO OR [put any other service here] has plenty of content by itself, especially in the US.
As a bonus some of these services do not infect your mind with advertising (one could consider this an aggression)
There is not enough time on a day to watch everything except of course if one has nothing better to do all day.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
WTF are these things TFS calls 'channels'?
When you cut the cord, you dispense with channels and pay for some combination of Netflix, Hulu, Acorn or other on demand, over the internet providers of content and watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I still pay $90 a month for my 150mbit connection, but I have the satisfaction of knowing Comcast can't count me as a subscriber for the purposes of ad sales.
Us cord cutters aren't looking to retain all the crap we weren't watching anyway, so the article seems kinda moot.
To those of you thinking about cutting the cord, let me give you some advice; you don't need to waste your days glued to the TV. You can actually, you know, go outside if you're bored.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's this argument again.
...the internet has better porn and you can block the ads?
The author is clearly missing the point of cutting the cord. He wants to replace his huge cable bundle with an identical streaming bundle. No wonder he isn't saving any money.
Successful cord cutters look at their viewing differently. Instead of, "The entertainment giants are willing to show me these programs right now, I'd better pay for a giant bundle of channels and hope there is something that I sort of want to watch." It becomes, "What programming that I have access to do I want to watch right now." It is a subtle distinction, but it can be huge. For people like me, it becomes the difference between a $70-$100 cable bill where there was often nothing the I wanted to watch, and a $10 Netflix bill where there is always something worth watching.
Cord works well for a lot of people, though often not for sports junkies.
------- Mark
Agreed. Our internet provider (Shaw Canada) has been shamelessly begging for us to bundle cable with our internet for years now. They finally promised to quintuple our internet speed if we'd just try it free for two months. We're on our second month now, and never use it. It's just the same ad-ridden low quality garbage that it's always been. Even the movie channels are full of ads, and I assume they still snip out pieces of the movie to make room for more ads? Can't be bothered to find out.
Even if you assume a full replacement, many of the over the internet TV options do not require any rented hardware, and do not have additional fees. So my Playstation Vue costs $55/month, but it's really $55/month. It includes DVR functionality merged nicely with the on-demand offerings from the various channels. No feeds. Runs on devices I already owned. And I was going to pay for high speed Internet anyway. In fact, I've calculated my return on investment (I purchased a Tivo + antenna, and a Amazon Fire TV) at about 1 year based on what I was paying Comcast for TV alone. I don't feel like I've given up anything. Still cheeper. And way easier to manage since Vue is month to month and I can change packages or discontinue easily on their website.
Well, duh.
I had the triple play, and It was getting ridiculous with the add-on fees (taxes, rentals) that made it ridiculous. After several calls, got a 50 Mbps service that works for me. My phone has been moved to a low-cost VOIP. My TV source is now antenna attached to a lifetime-subcription HD3 TiVo ($0/month), BluRay player for Amazon Prime (we also use the shipping benefit, but $99/year), and AppleTV for NetFlix (which is temporary), Hulu ($12/month) and CBS All Access ($6/month). Once NetFlix is cancelled, the monthly TV price is $26.25... I'm saving about $65/month.
For me, cutting the cord isn't about finding a company to replace Comcast. It's about not giving a shit about television or cable or any other programs at all. 99% of what I watch (or listen to) anymore are videos on youtube. That's it. I couldn't even tell you 2 movies that are in theatres. I don't watch Netflix or Prime Video. The last time I tried watching a show I was so bored I couldn't force myself to pay attention. I am usually ahead of the curve so I could see this becoming a trend, but maybe I'm wrong as there are plenty of people still addicted to watching videos.
Sling can add up, sure, but Hulu Live is in beta and looks to provide a better package.
And both Sling and Hulu offer
free trials so you can see whether it works out for you, and
no contracts, so you can start and quit whenever you want, and
no cable box rental fees - just use your PC, phone, or get a Roku-type for your TV.
Cable TV still seems lousy to me.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Have/how many people have become 'anime cutters'?
I was just over at the local electronics store perusing the latest anime releases. Almost all of them were either 20-30 dollars for two episodes, or 55+ dollars for a single 13 episode season. Additionally, to motivate some of us to want to buy them even less, a number of them were listing big american video companies as financial backing/producers on the series, something that I personally won't tolerate paying more to support. Animes once niche demographics have become fully mainstream, with the way comic/anime conventions have spread like a plague country-wide, only instead of it leading to cheaper prices thanks to mass adoption, we've seen the prices raise and supply remain artificially low, along with migrating from small domestic importers/publishers to the same large conglomerates some of us moved to anime as a fresh breath of air getting away from.
I bought a directional HDTV antenna for $50 and I get 2-3 channels for each - both of the PBS stations has three channels, and so does the local Telemundo - your TV has the ability to display a second language as part of the digital channel, so I can watch a Spanish broadcast of a soccer game with that turned on, and the sound is in English or you can display subtitles in English.
In most major cities this will give you around 50 channels, most of which are higher quality signals than your local cable provider.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How about the alternative: stop rotting your brain and just reading a book?
Shocking, I know.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I simply quit watching TV entirely. Not because of cost really, but when you hate all the shows on all the channels, the decision is easy.
Some people actually recommend using an antenna to watch broadcast HDTV, but that's like the worst of the worst. Maybe a step up from watching QVC, but barely.
and laugh all the way to the bank...
nothing to see here - move along
who was this written by? the ex CEO of comcast?
What TFA left out was cable companies playing with the numbers to make their TV look cheaper. Want fast internet? That's $90. But for only $30 more you can have 50 channels!
Pretty slick deal. By lowering TV, and raising internet, they keep their profits the same but make it financially impractical to go outside for your TV.
As a cord-cutter who has quite happily used an internet-only service provider, alongside a standard antenna for access to broadcast television... I would absolutely never consider a fully blown out cable package for my own use. I mean, sure... the author's math sounds mildly interesting and all, but let's glance at the math required to replicate something like my own setup, for comparison:
* Antenna in the attic or on the roof - one time cost of $30 to $100 or so
* A couple of Hauppauge USB television tuners - one time cost of $50 to $150 or so each
* A home theater computer capable of recording shows from those tuners - one time cost of $400 to $3000 or so (it's a computer... you can pretty much pick your price)
* Your preferred media streaming receiver(s), to allow you to stream from your HTPC out to any other TVs in your house over your LAN - one time cost of $40 to $200 or so each
Are you sensing the theme here? No matter how cheap your cable subscription is, it's only a matter of time before my own one time cost setup -- much of which I'd have bought anyway -- saves me money.
"But it's not one-to-one! You're missing out on sports channels and HBO and SyFy!"
Yup: all true. And honestly, I'm no worse off for it, either.
How come every idiot that writes these articles thinks that a cord-cutter is trying to replace every single cable channel?
I got the VPN+uTorrent bundle and I'm OK.
I'll perhaps go legit when it gets just as easy.
not only cheaper, but more productive
living vicariously sucks
I was only worried about losing access to my local news channel (OTA is impossible for me), but after I discovered that my local news streams on their web site, I don't even need Sling. And I just dropped Comcast for a cheaper and less greasy vendor. I think this author assumes most of us want a 1:1 replacement for cable, which I'm not I would agree. There's very little I miss from cable that I don't get from Hulu or Netflix.
I put up an antennae and I get all the major networks and then some (29 channels in all). I added HDHomeRun to it and can now stream to all computers and Smart TVs in the House. Added MythTV and can also record.
Now the basic setup is about $100. the additional features added another another $500. I was paying over $110 a month. I buy the movies I want, which I already did before so that's not an added cost.
The first year I saved about $700 and today my plan would have cost me over $120 a month. So if you are going to cut the cable cord to save, you are looking at it the wrong way.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Cut the cable get a fast internet connection, Amazon Prime which I already have, and Netflix. For the difference in price I can rent a few movies a month and buy the occasional movie on Amazon and still come out way ahead,
Personally I have little time for TV, so sitting around surfing channels (and nothing is on) is something I stopped doing 20 years ago.
Missing "exclusive" shows on cable channels....well they can kiss my ass. Sooner or later they'll end up on Netflix or Prime or will be in the bargain bin on Amazon. If not, then no great loss.
This article is ridiculous, as many others have pointed out, cable cutting does not mean replacing the lineup exactly. My wife watches TV and it wasn't an option to entirely get rid of it, so we have DirectTV Now and for $35/mo get all the channels we need + HBO. Toss in our $35/mo cable bill and we are at $70/mo compared to the "bundle" package we had before that was $140/mo. Win in my book.
with the exception of one TV show that pre-dated my cord cutting. South Park. Long story short if you give up watching TV cord cutting is effective.
The only streaming service I had for quite a while was Amazon, not that I used it often, but because it came with Prime which I had for shipping. Technically during that era I had a dozen or so TV channels with the absolute bare minimum cable that came with the Internet connection, but considering I didn't even have the cable box plugged in most of the I didn't count it. I think half of those channels were in languages I didn't speak.
Then I got married. My wife brought her Netflix account along and South Park now requires Hulu to watch properly, all in all I've given a lot of time to evaluating the various streaming services over the past few years. That, and I'm watching TV shows again. My findings:
1. Netflix is where it is at. The best software for game consoles, the best interface, the best in reliability, and a great selection and the best originals.
2. Hulu is a reasonable substitute with a few alright original shows. They pissed me off early on because nearly everything I wanted to watch gave me a message about not being able to use my TV to watch it and they had commercials even if you paid. Those issues are a thing of the past, but I actually canceled my free trial account early over those issues early on. Again, my wife brought along an account so I gave it another shot. We got the more expensive no commercials tier which is now available and it's better than it was. We have problems with it dropping out occasionally like it just can't make due to lack of bandwidth. She likes to have Hulu around because apparently the best yoga videos are on there. We aren't paying for it right now - I think the plan is to pay for it during South Park season and let it go otherwise.
3. Amazon Prime. The interface is crappy - it's written for a 1080p widescreen and even if you're using an original Wii that didn't do 1080 or you're using a Playstation 3 in SD mode it is hard-coded to wide screen. You can't read hardly any of the text on an SD screen due to the crappy interface. Even when using a 1080 screen the interface - regardless of console - feels constrained and a little unintuitive. They have some reasonably good shows, not that I watch them. My coworkers have raved about how great The Man in the High Castle is. I'll go ahead and believe them, I don't have time for another show. That being said I'm going to make sure I watch The Tick. Their selection is reasonable at times, but feels lacking most of the time. The poor arrangement of their interface and their tactics of only giving one season free etc... Is all geared around getting you to shell out extra money. Used to all the Prime stuff was in one bucket, but they're beginning to introduce new buckets. Almost like they're cable and they want you to pay for the Horror channel now. I know for a fact some of the shows that were in the general bucket in the past were pulled out and put into the new specialized buckets. The juries still out on this being a good idea or not. I'm not messing with it for one, I can't stand using their software on my consoles because it's so crappy, I can't bring myself to care about their add-on buckets.
So, even though I don't give a rats ass about live TV at all I have lots of family that really wants local channels and channels in general. I've given a serious look at Playstation Vue but haven't subscribed, because as I said, I don't care about channels. I think if I were to have either of my parents/either of my parent in laws, or my grandmother move into me for whatever reason I would seriously consider at least giving Playstation Vue a go. It's cheaper than cable.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Show me how I can get non-network channels with an antennae, and I'll not only drop cable, I'll not even look at streaming.
Same here. We still have cable, the basic package (which is pretty comprehensive) comes pretty much for free with our Internet subscription. The only reason we got it is so my mother in law could watch Eastenders on the BBC when she visited, and I still haven't gotten around to putting up the FreeSat dish to get BBC for, well, free.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You might be paying $70/month for all that getup. But keep in mind, you're not paying the $10/month HD fee. The $10/month DVR fee. The $10/month cable box fee for other TVs. The $10/month router fee so all the hardware works.
That saves you just $600 in a year alone. Sure, it still sucks but it's a little more palatable.
Beyond the obvious greed, I'm not really sure why everyone's so gungho to split into their own services. People only have so much free time and so much disposable cash. Setting up a service is a huge investment so you'd have to look at your entire library to think whether or not your stuff is gotta have. I can't think of anyone outside of Disney or HBO that could pull it off by going on their own rather than just work with Netflix or Amazon.
The concept of the channel dates back to the time when you had to receive a broadcast on a single frequency. The internet has made that whole concept obsolete. I cut the cord a long time ago, with no channels at all- just content bundles (Netflix, Amazon Prime, with a Youtube supplement). Those services are plenty for me, and cost me a total of $11/month (not counting Prime, which I mostly have for the free shipping).
Trying to replicate cable channels over the internet is like trying to motorize your horse drawn carriage instead of just buying a car, then complaining that the car is more expensive after paying for the care and feeding of your horses.
Yes, I know many live broadcasts (like sports) haven't yet moved outside the channel concept, but that is starting to change. Sports nuts may need to stay corded for a while.
If what you want is cable, get cable. Don't expect to be able to replace cable with "internet" cable and save money.
You cut the cable when you are no longer interested in very many TV shows, and cable no longer fits with your media consumption habits.
If you watch regular TV shows all the time, like ESPN, Bravo, FX, HBO, etc., then what you want is a cable package. That's what they excel at. Get a whole bunch of shows produced for the masses*, you're just not going to beat the mass market model that is cable TV.
However a lot of people no longer fit that mold. In my case for example, I have a ~$60 cable package for literally one show that my roommate likes to watch. He's moving out, so I'm dropping cable completely, because 99% of my media consumption has nothing at all to do with Hollywood. I'm only interested in a handful of shows, and I'm more likely to look up sports clips than I am to sit down and watch ESPN, so I can drop the $60 a month cable bill and just spend $100 a year on full seasons of shows I like instead. There just aren't that many of them.
But if my nightly habit were to sit down in front of a TV and watch a couple hours of TV, then cutting cable is almost certainly not going to be better in almost any way.
*I'm not disparaging shows produced for the masses. That's how they can afford to create large amounts of high quality content. It's just economics.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
As soon as he says that, then finally all the other weird shit he's saying starts to at least be explainable, even if it's still fucking crazy. But at least that part shows how he's trying to make it as hard and expensive as possible (I assume he works for Comcast marketing), so then you realize why his solution was so hard and expensive.
I haven't paid for cable TV in YEARS (we're talking 8+ years here). Netflix works just fine for me. People need to find more hobbies and worry about other crap than just TV.
What about the software that conveniently scraps TV shows off the newsgroups and then conveniently places them into your Plex streaming folders for playback? Not exactly 100% legit, but still cannot be discounted. Unless you need to see something Live as its aired; such as a sports game, needing to vote for your next favorite washed-up american idol, or whatever, a DVR setup + antenna + Plex + these scraping tools cut the cost down to $5/mo for Plex.
I still keep a basic cable package for local news and some add-on sports channels; stuff it makes sense to watch in real time, which most content is not.
Honestly, I still end up time shifting a lot of the real time stuff too, but the live option is still there.
I want entertainment out of my TV. I don't want "live streamed bundled channels of recorded content". The author seems to be stuck on this idea of someone providing live streamed TV to you 24/7. If that's what you want, you're going to be at the mercy of the old world content producers and the bundled services that come with high prices. Cord cutting is far more than simply which wire your content comes in on. Cord cutting is about ditching the broadcast world for an on-demand world.
I cut the cord in 2011. I was curious at first if I'd miss live TV/Cable. I don't. Not at all. Looking back, waiting around for content to come to me is a very strange idea now. We don't do that with anything else. Unless you're in a hospital, you don't wait around for food. You don't wait around for a book to be delivered, nor do you wait around for a newspaper. Scheduled TV/Cable is a bit of a strange idea that's an artifact of the delivery model, not because people actually like it.
Broadcasting anything but a live event is just silly, and a waste of broadcast medium. In the not too distant future I suspect the only thing that people will watch on live TV/Cable is sports, and possibly breaking news events.
People stream news channels live on YouTube and YouTube monetizes those streams?
YouTube Red and a 300 Mbps connection w/a copy of Transmission do me just fine.
Who watches HBO all the time? Wait for season to be over, purchase for one month, watch all season episodes of favorite HBO shows, done, wait for next year.
Same for other services.
Sports? Meh, if sports are your thing, yeah, you're gonna pay through the nose.
Those that could care less about sports, can get by on about $25.00 a month for all the television they can stand.
So go get a job at one and get the discounted TV/Internet employees get. Problem solved.
All the plugs for bullshit streaming services finally concluding that there is no way to legally economically replicate the 300 channels of stupid shit you get from cable.
Which is totally untrue, There is an unlimited pool of shitty content available for free on the internet and places are few and far between that you couldn't augment that with a tv antenna.
The other benefit of cutting the cord is not cluttering up your life with a bunch of "must see tv"
I'm so happy I didn't waste a week of my life watching lost. I know that deadwood, breaking bad, walking dead... and countless other shows that the rest of humanity have shit-tested for me are ready for me to watch whenever I'm bored. Thank god I didn't waste a week of my life to learn that everyone on lost is dead something most people might have guessed the very first episode but the weasel lying producers denied up until the end.
Cut the cord years ago. We use an antenna and receive about 60 channels. It was a $10 one-time investment. We recently discovered (a probably still ongoing) coupon code on Slick Deals last week for one month trial (auto-renew of course) DirectTV streaming service. We now have 70 live channels on that Roku app. We've watched it maybe three times in the week and just get entirely overwhelmed. Granted, we live in a large metropolitan area with lots of stations broadcasting nearby, and we only really watch the stations that play the "classic" TV shows (oldies and ones running during fellow Gen-Xers' childhoods) and mostly watch one of 5 PBS stations anyway. But still, looking at all these channels and knowing you can only watch one at a time seems like such a huge waste. This package would be like $80/month or so - no way we're going to let it auto-renew.
Fuck Ajit Pai
You are correct the manufacturer can't call them a TV BUT Vizio has taken to selling "Theater Displays" which don't have a tuner, a fact that Vizio does not go to great lengths to let you know and everybody knows that Vizio makes TVs, right.
because I had no reason to watch cable tv anymore and had no desire to watch commercials. I've been on and off Netflix for a few years but even that I've watch all that I wanted to watch and haven't used Netflix for weeks. Do I pirate? Sure as hell do but I spend most of my time on my desktop when I can get instant news, play games, run my game server, do some web development.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Nice shilling there Wired. I cut the cord because I was forced, for years, to take a bunch of things I did not want. I didn't need to replace everything I had with cable when I cut the cord. It was so easy to give up live TV and other things like that. I save a lot of money and the best part is that I no longer support the cable company that used its monopoly power to charge too much.
I haven't have a cable sub for over 10 years. Currently there's no show, event, or news I can't get live or with a 15 minute delay on the stream, without commercials, without ANY subscriptions. The first few years it was a little difficult, but today is click and point for anyone with any research ability. It's child's work to watch any content today without subscription (regardless of how many times addons/plugins/protocols/services) are "shut down").
But, when Joe Sixpack finds this out, we all find another route, as we did with guntella, supernova, mininova, TPB... and countless other swarms, clients or services. Until the distributors play nice, there's no other viable route.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Internet connectivity is the only thing I care to pay for. I have no problem for the news (such as the CBC, Microsoft and proprietary formats excluded) being paid for with tax dollars. Like paved roads, certain things are good for the whole of society.
Ideally one would pay a relatively fixed, close to lowest possible price, for pure non-corrupted internet connectivity. Geeks would hook up their IP phones at will and the free market would just make it easy to do the same. Crave-TV, Netflix and the likes of them can take care of the rest.
IMHO, ISPs would be better off easing into that model rather than fight it. Unfortunately, all they have demonstrated so far is to think short term and squeeze as much of their customers as if they were cattle.
As long as internet only is $1 cheaper than internet plus cable then why bundle in a service you're not using?
We already have protection against this. It's called piracy. Anyone who wants me to run their software instead of an application that I get independently which supports standards (e.g. mpv) gets $0. I just pirate their shows instead.
We will never have multiple UIs, where you have hunt for the show by first guessing which app plays it. Not gonna happen. Piracy will prevent that from happening.
No standards? No revenue! Maybe the producers don't have standards, but the viewers do.
It's an interesting situation: the harder the TV producers try to make things suck, the cheaper it gets for the consumer, since we get their shows for free (and then also avoid the suckage). It's only going to get "expensive" after standards are adopted to make piracy unnecessary/obsolete, and even then, no it won't be as expensive as cable was.
Remember, you can always get it for free, have the widest selection and the best experience. That's a powerful veto to any bullshit. If they bundle or pull any other crap that makes things harder for you, you can just say no. Walk away. Get standard files from pirates. It's TV, for fuck's sake, so convenience and vegging out are the whole point. They know this, but are hoping you have forgotten that you have all the power.
Just try following a popular NHL team on their streaming service. All games designated as "national" are not available live on the streaming app, national games include all games on NBC, NBCSN and NHL Network. Last year 25 of the Blackhawks 40 home games were designated as "national". Plus look at the ridiculous size of the blackout areas for teams. The Minnesota Wild is blacked out for Iowa, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Minnesota and most of Wisconsin. Tough cookies if your a Wild fan in any of those states. Blackout areas on the NHL service are designed to protect the Regional Sports Networks (RSNs).
Also no playoffs on the streaming service.
The point of cutting the cord it to get rid of it. This isn't switching to directv, or netflix.
The point of cutting the cord is to no longer be bound to buying things you are not watching or did not want in the first place.
99% of what you want can be streamed from network sites online for free 100% legally. I'm not talking about piracy. This is straight from the main feeds. I have been doing this for a good 15 years now. Seven years ago it was only possible to steam a couple stations. Now all the networks do it. Fuck netflix. Don't even bother. what a waste. like shopping at dollar tree,
Layer that in with a ppv/subscription off itunes and you are good to go. Add in Prime which you probably already have but don't use, and you are golden.
Trade off for you(not for me) little no no live tv(do not want) no sports(Do not want). The best part is when ever march madness comes around, you don't even notice!!! You could always get an antenna... but that would be a step backwards for me. I want to watch WHEN not what WHAT.
The Wired writer is doing it wrong. He doesn't understand why cord cutters do what they do.
As a cord cutter myself, I can tell you why I did it. I was tired of paying an expensive bill for a lot of stuff I never used. No kids at home, wife and I didn't watch much TV. I hated paying for all those channels I never watched. History channel? Home and Garden channel? Food Network? And yes, ESPN? Really, I only miss ESPN (a little) for the NCAA basketball, and that's only three months a year really. For the next nine months, ESPN is a completely dead weight. I could go on, but you get the idea. And I never subscribed to HBO then, and I don't now.
Got a free OTA antenna from a local TV station during the "digital changeover" and have been using that since 2009. I'm in a smallish market and still get way more channels than I'll ever watch. But at least they aren't costing me anything extra. And that's the point.
I do have an internet feed (have to for wife's business). So in addition to the OTA antenna, I also pay the monthly fee to Netflix for streaming. That's basically all I need, and all I want. And it's like 10% of my previous cable TV bill.
IMHO *that* is why people are cord cutters. Because cable TV is a really bad deal for those people. Bundled services (channels) are an old and unwieldy business model that doesn't have a path forward.
I remember when paying for cable, even if I was on unemployment, was a must; it was what kept me sane, and I couldn't imagine not having it.
But that was then, and this is now. I thought a good long time about it before giving Comcast the boot, and while there were two or three channels available only on cable I initially felt a sense of loss about, in the long run I don't really miss them enough to be bothered. There are a plethora of OTA broadcast stations where I and many others live, and I am here to tell you: You'll find you have more than enough to watch, and that's with only OTA broadcast television. Most of you are going to have Netflix or some other streaming service for some of what you watch -- and again, you'll have more than enough. So don't fret about dumping cable; really, it's not worth what you're paying for it. Just look at all the garbage channels on cable you have zero (or less than zero) interest in; you're paying for those, too, whether you want them or not. Also there's the Dirty Little Secret about cable: Recompression. You may be technically getting 1080 resolution, but pixels are only part of the story, they're recompressing the video to fit more channels in the available bandwidth, and you'll notice it when things on the screen are moving (blocky!). Never seen it on OTA television. My advice to you is that if you're even thinking about dumping cable, just do it. You'll be glad you did later.
Due to cable packages and billing models, the majority who watched less TV on a few channels always subsidized a minority who watched a lot of TV across a lot of channels. Cable is cheaper if you want to watch ESPN and live sports or watch a lot of TV on a lot of channels.
If you are like most people though, with a $15 sub to Hulu, a $14 sub to Netflix and your annual Amazon prime membership (that I had before free videos anyway), you have way more content than you could ever watch for around $30/month, commercial free. High speed internet was essential in my home long before the rise of VOD streaming services, so I don't consider it part of the cost (at the least it gets amortized over VoIP phone/gaming/VOD streaming/internet/face-time/etc., etc.) so it's not really a big part of the equation.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
No problem - Slashdot posted the solution earlier today.
"The Windows App Store is Full of Pirate Streaming Apps"
...is to take a break from the "content" that everyone else is telling you is "can't miss".
If nothing else in this day and age you can be sure that all of those shows will be waiting for you down the road when you can binge all of the seasons at once...or not.
The character who wrote this article must be a cable corporate paid shill. My wife and I cut the cord 3.5 years ago. Half our viewing is the few broadcast programs we like - those are free because they are OTA. We have: Netflix - let's just call it $10, Amazon Prime - which we consider a freebie because we purchase enough merchandise that the annual Prime fee covers all of our shipping, Hulu at $7.99 and finally we also subscribe to Acorn TV for $5. The internet service we would have regardless because of our jobs. So even If I include the cost of the DVR+ and external drive and amortize them over 36 months my monthly costs have been less than $35 and now they would work out to less than $25 since the Channel master unit is fully amortized. I admit that it helps that neither of us is a big sports fan, so we could care less about ESPN etc.
All in all though - this guy is using nothing but sophistry to attempt to support arguments that only apply to a surprisingly smaller percentage of the viewing public than he wants to believe.
Then there is also that crazy notion of getting out of the house and socializing with real people, face to face!
Ur doing it wrong. Borrow passwords for hulu, Netflix, etc. Torrent the rest. or use gomovies.to or similar.
Replacing a single service that includes a bunch of crap you don't want with multiple services to include all that crap ends up costing more!
If you want 100 channels, pay for cable. If you don't, don't.
you could just put up an antenna and take your live programming over the air for free
I don't want a REPLACEMENT for my satellite channels. I want a FEW channels I'll actually watch. We cut the "cord" (well, satellite thingy) and not only went with another ISP that boosted us from DSL @12MBps down/1.5 up -- we got 80MBps down/40 up, Netflix, PS Vue, 4 Roku's (one-time cost) and put $100 back in our pocket.
I took about a month to get used to it, and now we're much happier. Kick the cab;e/satellite bums to the curb!
I had/have a satellite dish. Decided to disconnect that & see what would happen. Got an antenna to grab OTA TV, I have a tonne of channels over that. Netflix handles a whole lot of other stuff (including Kid stuff). Now, I'm not 'HBO junky' or cared about all those other 'premium' channels, if they want me to watch their stuff they can stick it on OTA or Netflix or drop the price significantly. The only thing I can see me missing is live sports & I've pretty much got a handle on most of what I watch there (big NHL junky & for that I pay $100 a YEAR...and last year due to an out of court settlement I got it free for the year).
If you're a video 'junky' & have to have all the options than sure it's going to be expensive, but maybe you should be asking yourself if you don't have something better to do with your time (to each his own I guess).
Here's the secret:
Internet: 30 Euro per month
Netflix: ~10 Euro per month
For everything else there is the piratebay and usenet.
That said, the only thing I really get from piratebay is GoT and porn, and most porn can be got from pornhub for free.
I'd get an HBO subscription with my internet for another 10Euro per month, but that seems like a lot for a show that is only on for 2 months out of the year.
What exactly on all those other channels is worth watching?
My parents still have them, but I rarely see them watch anything anymore, and I don't even bother when I visit them for xmas.
They use amazon, netflix and itunes almost exclusively. (yes, my 70 year old parents use computers)
I get what I want to watch, when I want to watch it and not all the other crap. Live TV isn't that important. I can cancel Netflix one month, add extra channels to Sling TV the next. It's about convenience and options.
When you look at cable packages without their equipment costs added in your rates aren't nearly as scary. And Tivo is pretty amazing.
I bought a Tablo 4-tuner DVR, a 2TB external hard drive, and the "lifetime" subscription, instead of fighting with Kodi or MythTV and a USB or PCI tuner card. $150+$100+$150 total vs. $150/mo for a minimum satellite package and hardware and rental fees.
For the one-time cost of the amplified antenna and hardware and subscription, the Tablo box records the programs I am interested in over-the-air and I watch them whenever via the app. My suburban area has reasonable access to the major broadcasters and some common sub-channels, so recording PBS programs, American Ninja Warrior, the terrible sci-fi movies on Comet, and "classics" of yesteryear on the other subs is nice. Neither the cable package nor the satellite providers give access to the sub-channels in my area.
Honestly, the deal-maker for me was being able to skip the commercials. I don't want a live stream with 5 minutes of content and then 7 minutes of commercials and no way to pause and then fast-forward. No thanks. Being able to record and watch later is preferable.
I thought not having the Tablo box directly connected to my television would be a major downside. Turns out, it is actually more convenient to have access anywhere in the home, or outside the home, from one box.
I had Comcast for 15 years, but they continued to offer me less and poorer quality service for more money year after year. I originally had a basic cable package (30 channels), no stupid cable box needed, and I had HD to as many TVs as I wanted in my house. And that cost around $20-$30 for a long time. A few years ago, I upped to a slightly better package (60 channels). But around that time they started requiring a cable box. Oh, and the basic cable box had no HD, and I was no restricted to one TV. And I was paying $50/mo. Oh, you want HD again? Like you had before? That's another $10/mo.
Direct TV Now had an early sign-up deal. $35/mo (now is $60/mo), 100 channels, and they threw in a free Apple TV. HD included, and they have on demand TV and movies (although that part still has some bugs to work out).
It's not even close which service is better.
Really has everything except "local channels". I still have both Netflix and Hulu, Hulu often has a large (and easily accessible) back catalog of TV shows, and I want to actually support Netflix's "original content" development.
So we cut the cord for a few years out of budget necessity. It's not like you call up your cable company, drop their services, and then you pick up right where you left off with your streaming box. You give up services and you may gain some services. Sling used to be a great deal until the orange/blue plans came out (they used to be the same). I found this out trying to watch some Thursday night football... where the fuck is my NFL channel? Oh, for fuck's sake I need to buy a bundle of other channels to watch football? SOUNDS LIKE FUCKING CABLE!!! We ended up going back to cable after we started getting slapped with data overages ($50/mo) and we were basically breaking even at that point.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Put up an antenna.
Have gnu, will travel.
That time would be so much better spent on YouTube and Twitter.
Amirite?
you're going to need
Let me stop you there. You don't NEED any of those.
You can get local channels in HD free with an antenna. If there are "gaps" in your content, you can subscribe to a number of services---Netflix, Amazon, Crunchyroll, and, yes, even Sling.
Since most services are in the $10-$20/month range, you can have a variety of them for less than a monthly cable subscription. You can easily get more channels for a lower total cost. The content will be slightly different than what the cable company offers, which is fine because the cable companies aren't 100% consistent from region to region anyway.
Recreating the cable bundle by maxing a SlingTV subscription is the exact opposite of what cable cutters should be doing. I know of no one who is doing what the summary suggested.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
This is assuming you have kids, multiple TVs, or you actually want 50 channels of sports. Many people don't care about 'the big game' and just want quality movies and TV shows to watch. We pay USD $10 for Netflix, and USD $11.99 for Hulu and we never find ourselves longing for anything else other than Game of Thrones, which my wife is addicted to. She goes to our neighbor's house to watch that. They pay $170 USD/month for their cable/internet package.
My dick is black, and fat. Just ask your mom.
Services and license fees cost money
It really just depends on what you need or want. Myself, I don't need a ton of TV in my life. I do enjoy watching some TV here and there. It doesn't make sense to pay a ton of money for something I'm not using.
I have a TiVo Roamio OTA w/Lifetime sub that I bought for $300 and high-end antenna for $100., and the maximum low-power hard drive it could support (3TB) for $140 giving me 450 hours of storage.
I have Amazon Prime for many reasons (books, music, next day shipping, etc.) and I get their video service as well (but I wouldn't pay for it on my own). My Dad comes over from time to time and so I have my TiVo logged in as his NetFlix account. No matter what, I'm going to have highspeed Internet. I don't count that as a factor toward my TV bill (and my employer pays for it anyway).
So, my TV bill is free at this point, after that one-time cost of $540 that I paid 2 years ago. If there is some series I really want that was on some cable subscription I don't have access to, I just by the series on Amazon, or wait to pick up the DVD/BluRay used on eBay, or more often then not borrow it for free from a friend.
This sounds like propaganda. Netflix + prime and you're set for a fraction of the cost. ./ "No one could possibly use more than a 3mb down connection"
Next on
Who cares about channels anymore? That's the whole point of "cutting the cord" - going away from linear programming to a-la-carte on-demand viewing.
Netflix and Amazon Prime have me pretty much covered for everything. I don't watch sports weekly, but the sports I do like to watch can be had via season passes or weekly/monthly subscriptions for when I want to watch things like playoffs or tournaments. News is free and nobody needs to watch 24 hour news or pundits blabbering on in arguments.
If there's something that's not available on Netflix or Amazon Prime, chances are it's available on iTunes. The most recent example of this for me is Fargo, and I didn't mind dropping $30 or whatever it was for the season pass. Gift cards for iTunes are always on sale somewhere so you never need to pay full Apple prices.
Truth be told though, I'm considering giving up Netflix because I'm rarely watching it lately. Maybe that's because it's now summer, but in the last few months I've watched more YouTube than TV as I've found some "channels" that have videos on my hobbies and topics I'm interested in.
A la carte works best when you don't want every channel under the Sun. If you want it all, sticking with your cable provider is probably your best bet. The point is most people don't want everything. At least the bills are more predictable. For a while on Charter, my bill was going up $2-$3 every month or two with no explanation while I was in contract. After a year of it, I had my wife call them up and start a fire storm. My wife can be down right evil on the phone, but only because she knows you have the play the game to get anywhere.
I just don't want any billing shenanigans. If I can get that while paying within 10%-20% for exactly the channels I want, that's a win.
"Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement, not abandoning live television altogether" - why would you assume that? All the good shows are either on broadcast television or on websites like nbc.com. If there's one specific show you like, such as Game of thrones, subscribe for three months, watch it and cancel.
If you actually enjoy sucking the boob tube for 4 hours a night then cord-cutting is not for you. If you watch 2-3 shows total in a week or just enjoy broadcast TV then you're fine.
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This article starts with the assumption that the reader needs everything that the author's cable service is offering. He does admit that not everybody may feel the same way, but the article doesn't discuss it so much as dismiss it. It's very self-centered and arrogant. "Oh, sure, if you're an inferior being who doesn't WANT all the amazing stuff, hey no problem, settle for less."
He's right as far as he goes. Yes, if he wants to keep everything he's getting now, he's going to have to subscribe to a whole bunch more more services, disjoint and expensive, and it'll cost more and be less convenient than simply keeping his cable service.
Part of me wants to sneer something like, "If you REALLY feel your life is incomplete without your cable service, perhaps the problem isn't your cable service." But that's mean, and while I do wonder about that enough to have mentioned it, I also don't feel that it's my place to judge. I've spent many hours of my own watching plenty of passive entertainment (including daytime soap operas, for a while). And sneering at him while complaining that he's sneering at me is a tad hypocritical.
Had to mention it, though. *shrug* What can I say, I'm only human. And hypocritical. :)
But no, that's not really the point I want to make. What I really want to point out is: if you're satisfied with the content you're cable service is giving you, and don't feel that you want to sacrifice any of it, then why are you talking about cutting the cord? Cord cutting is for those of us who feel we are getting too little value for the money. It's for people like me who see 200 channels and nothing is on. It's for people who don't feel a strong need to keep up with the latest of popular shows. It's for those of us who would rather lose a channel than pay an extra $80 premium. It's for those of us who like being able to watch what we want, when we want, on the device we want.
Yeah, there are problems. There are limitations. Shows are being nixed from my favorite service while others are being brought in. Networks are being parsimonious with their programming; not everything I want to watch is available on the few accounts I own. While streaming services are pretty well established as A Thing, nevertheless it's still early days (especially with the major networks still in denial about cord cutting).
If all you're looking for is a way to save a few bux on your cable bill, but you don't want to give anything up, then stop talking about cord cutting. It's not for you. It's not about you. You're not part of that demographic.
If you want to save a LOT of money, and are willing to sacrifice some things you've gotten used to, then cord cutting is something to consider.
If you want to... well, there are a lot of reasons to cut the cord, I won't try to list them here, but in fact I've already covered a bunch. Suffice to say that cord cutting is an obvious move for some of us. TFA did his research and discovered it's not for him. Fair enough. I have access to a couple streaming services and Youtube, and sometimes I do things aside from potato* the couch. I usually watch the stuff on my tablet anyway. In fact we cut the cord almost 20 years ago. We're pretty happy with what we've got now.
If you can't justify cutting the cord, then it's not for you. Yet. Maybe someday. For now, relax and enjoy your cable service. Cord cutting will be there when you're ready.
* "Potato" is now a verb. :)
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
"...the very instant I allow myself to picture what life looks like after that figurative snip, my reverie comes crashing down."
Damn, sounds like someone is a little too attached to their TV-machine. Give up the Bullshit Box and reclaim your life.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Some people evidently have a lot more time on their hands but honestly folks - do you need to watch that show right now?! With ads? Why not wait six months and sign it out from your friendly neightbourhood Public Library? Most of them even provide streaming access so if you are mobility-impaired then you still have access. (My public library even has the Criterion Collection of classic films available.) Or watch it on Netflix in six to eighteen months. Buy or build a PVR if you have a good OTA option and you'll be positively swimiming in content. If you run out of stuff to watch, then try one of those paper things.
If you are agonizing over the $1000/year for various subscription fees then you should probably spend more time with books and dvds from your public library.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Cord cutting" is all about getting rid of live TV. If you're not okay with that, then cord cutting isn't for you.
It's baffling that live TV with commercials costs more than services which give you shows on demand with no commercials.
First of all, not a true comparison, because no cord cutter wants to watch ESPN(U) and FX, Netflix, Amazon, Twitch and YouTube have way better content for much less.
Even so, if you want all the channels, TWC comes in at $65/month as a promotional price. True cost for TWC (now Comcast/Spectrum) Full Package Cable + Internet + Phone after all the discounts have ended is $220/month - not kidding that is over two-hundred dollars per month for the package that includes ESPN and FX; HBO is another $25/month. It's not unlikely to have people paying nearly $180/month for "basic cable" and $300/month for 'premium cable' once they've included all the sports and movie channels, DVR rentals etc.
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This is silly: to avoid paying more money, just sign up for only one streaming service at a time and never watch a TV show before the whole season is available. (I mean, sure, if you're a sports ball fan, maybe you'll also want to pay for ESPN all the time too. If you have kids, maybe you'll have to do something like sign up for both HBO and Disney for a month instead of just HBO. DVD-in-mail Netflix is something I've done at the same time as a non-Netflix streaming service. But for the most part, one service at a time is plenty.)
I gave up live TV when I first got a Tivo back in '99 or 2000. Even things I wanted to watch "right away" I'd wait about 20 minutes after start on an hour show to skip all the commercials. I gave up cable/satellite ~8 years ago when the ex left and my daughter moved out. Even radio is something I can't stand, using podcasts as a substitute.
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Wow, what a dumbass. How can this idiot call himself a reporter? The whole POINT of "cord cutting" is not to merely get live TV via a different means. That's no different than switching to a satellite TV provider. The point is to stop consuming live content entirely. How can this guy be so ignorant on this point? Wired should be ASHAMED of itself for allowing this useless drivel on their site.
If you want everything cable offers, cord cutting is not for you. And it'll probably never be. Cable companies will always flex their muscles to keep some exclusive content there to force people to keep paying them. They are still huge monopolies, and thanks to them tying different types of services under a single brand, I don't see a future where they stop being monopolies.
For me personally it's more like a legal option to piracy. For over a decade I was forced to pay for cable basically because it was cheaper to get a basic cable package tied to Internet and landline than getting cable Internet by itself.
Then finally fiber became available, I switched as soon as I heard about it and never looked back. I pay less for a huge improvement on the stuff that I care about, and none of the crap I never used in the first place.
And now that services like Netflix and Crunchyroll are available, movies, series and anime just became available for me at reasonable prices without having to resort to piracy. Well, almost none of the content on Crunchyroll was available on cable anyways, and cable never gave me the convenience of watching whenever I wanted to like Netflix. In fact, in the past I relied far more on movie rental services than on cable per se.
So yes, if you so strongly want content that is likely to be cable exclusives, you are not cord cutting anytime soon. But that's not really the point of cord cutting. Also, you just went and forgot about a whole metric ton of reasons why people with cable TV are also signing up for those services. Like all the shows your kids will want to watch on a tablet or smartphone, like a la carte service without having to rely on DVR solutions, among others.
It's not as cut and dry as this snippet is trying to pass. Cord cutting is ultimately an alternative. And if you are not willing to budge on your watching habits, you are ultimately no different than old people who can't deal with new tech. There's nothing wrong with that, but cord cutting is probably not for you.
BUNDLE THIS! Nice try though. F**K cable TV providers.
I liked the products. Hated the marketing scheme. New customers got all the great packages and equipment. If you were a loyal always paid on time customer, they did not treat you as well. My "package" had rate hike creep and went from 65 to 124 in about 5 years. I took just the programming that didn't repeat itself every 6 months. I was with them for about 15 years straight. The programming I did have got worse. The infomercials ruled most of the channels from 10 pm or until dawn. News network repeated themselves after 10 pm. My equipment was so old the time shifted programs filled the drive up fast. I worked 2nd shift most of my life so I came home to infomercials all night long and stale news channels at 124 per month. Not my version of quality programming. So I called them up after 15 years to cut the cable and they called me all kinds of names and kept saying you will be back. I finally found out how you beat them is to trade from dish network to the other one.Every 2 years after your commitment is done drop the one you have and go to the other one.Just be sure you have both dishes on your roof and piped into your house for quick hook up.That way you always get the discounts and new equipment every 2 years. To me it is just a big load of crap anymore. I have the local channels [free] netflix hulu and that's it. I've have now found out my head is not so full of crap from the political news networks and I think a lot clearer. Quality of life is more important to me now that I'm older. So pass the pig shit somewhere else. And stick your weasel marketing schemes somewhere no man has gone before.
I decided to finally try that, earlier today. I stepped outside, but the sun got really dark...
There's no sun during nighttime, you idiot.
Why should I care about "channels"? I do not care about channels, I am watching movies, not channels - and I am watching it, when I want. I can subscribe for 15$ for both netflix and hulu, once I am done with Game of Thrones I will give up hulu.
And for getting news, I still prefer to read, even if is not fashionable.
If you've already got internet at moderate speeds (12kbps is good enough) then this is a no brainer.
12 kbps like a V.32bis dial-up modem from two decades ago? With HTML and JavaScript having become far heavier since then, I'm not sure even Netflix's DVD mailing service can usefully be used under that condition.
it's not hard at all to wait a year to save $900 to $1000.
Unless office politics where you work are such that those who can join discussions about sports and recent episodes of scripted TV series get raises or promotions sooner.
CSPAN and CNN have live streams, too, if you don't want to watch network programming but just network news.
Last I checked, when the House and Senate aren't in session, C-SPAN's live stream was "TV Everywhere". "TV Everywhere" streams are available only to viewers who present valid credentials issued by a participating multichannel subscription television provider.
Also some places have alternate Internet means like Fios, DSL or can Tether via Smart Phone.
How many shows can you watch on tethering's 10 GB/mo cap?
How about cutting the cord to the TV and then you don't have to watch it at all. Instead, spend quality time talking to your family and developing meaningful relationships.
$200 a month is $24,000 a decade!!! That could be a down payment of a frakking nice house in most areas of the country. What were you thinking?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...why do you need ESPN, Starz, and MTV Live? What in your life is improved by being able to view them?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
That's about the price of a car. Think about that a minute - never watch cable again, and eventually it's like a free car.
I had a package of cable TV, then I simply used the move to cancel it (local laws state that you can cancel a contract on a move). I got a call telling me I could still get the package where I lived, well yuppee doo. I cut the cord and I am not looking back. In the last 5 years I watched *once* what was on cable. The rest was streaming, youtube and other providers.
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When we cut the cord we stopped just laying around browsing for random things to watch on random channels and watch less TV overall. Netflix + Hulu + Amazon Prime + iTunes. Just watch things we want to watch when we want to watch them.
If you are trully on a budget, get the lowest tier Netlix subscription and an antenna for basic news/sports. If you are sufficiently desperate, connect an Android phone with T-mobile service to monitor/keyboard/mouse as a replacement for both a TV and a PC, no need for any other internet service. If not, higher speeds are overrated and basics work fine.
If you are financially comfortable, consider the convinience you are getting from watching your stuff on any TV, device and hotel room setup. At this time your time and quality of life is more important than counting pennies.
Are they concerned that their subscribers will follow?
Nobody does their scenario, everyone is different which is why cable is such a disaster. Instead of giving customers reasonable choices, skinny bundles, at reasonable prices they push for $200/month regardless of what you use. And Comcast for one will go to extraordinary lengths to get the cash, including their much publicized extra fees that don't really exist.
Every cutter I know is happy with the solution and they spend less money. Nobody wants to pay wired's projected costs. People read, they Netflix, they stream and YouTube. Who cares if the content providers go broke? Not I. If they can take down Comcast and their ilk on the way, so much the better.
I don't have cable, I don't have Netflix, HBO or any other streaming. What idle time I have, are spent on YouTube videos that are more interesting and informative than anything that comes from cable.
Real cutting the cord means ISP fee only. That's the only way to get away from the main problem of cable - ads.
ISP should pay content owners, like youtube, per view. ISP knows already what you are watching. It's new Nielsen system with 300M unwilling participants instead of 1000 willing.
I am in bewilderment, why people who just cut the cord, are gleefully gasping about Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu.
It's the same yoke.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Just thought I'd plug this website. Best cable tv replacement I've found. And it's free. Every channel you need. Couple this with a free OTA tv tuner for local news, Amazon, Netflix or Apple TV and you're set.
Yeah, this reads just like an article written by an alcoholic claiming that stopping drinking beer is too expensive - after having compared the price of beer with the price of whiskey, vodka, rum, etc...
And there's the problem with the argument. Many "cord-cutters" never hooked it up to begin with. There are plenty of people who simply haven't given their money to another streaming service, like me. I will never get cable or pay for any video service: the value is automatically garbage as soon as you limit what I can do with it or attempt to shove ads into my face, and every "provider" out there does some shade from time to time. I demand to be treated better than that, so I must hold to my principles.
Our numbers are not as small as people think, and it will lead to financial problems for these companies. I will patiently, and eagerly, watch this unfold.
When you switch from regular cable to Netflix, you don't just 'cut the cord', you are cutting out all the advertisements you get on cable tv. I really have no desire whatsoever anymore to watch a movie, and get 5 minutes of advertisements every 15 minutes.
We cut the cord several years ago, but we've just recently resubscribed to cable. We're in a small town without any local broadcasters, so we only get two spotty HD channels with the antenna, and we don't get PBS. We did have a few channels coming in through our cable internet which were never switched off, but just recently those were turned off by our cable provider after several years, and then suddenly no PBS, and no sports at all. I wouldn't give up small town life for a major metropolitan area again, but those of you who can just plug in an antenna and get 40 to 60 channels have it pretty good. On the other hand, lots of live sports (colleges and soccer) are only on cable, and there's no good substitute for those.
Make love, not reality television.
In every state I have lived in, internet-only service is either not available or costs $5 less than a TV-internet bundle.
COE
Watch less TV?
It's not the cost. It's the "I have to pay for every little thing" that I dislike about cable. The fact that I can't get what I want when I want without paying extra. Why is there a fee for HD when there is not a single TV sold that is in SD anymore. I mean SD is no longer a thing. HD is now OTA and free. Also, I have more local channels with OTA than I do with cable. And after hooking up the antenna to HDHomeRun my plex server is now my DVR and access to Live TV streams via my Apple TV. (the TVOS app is a bit wonky but I'll let Plex work on that). So, I have free HD, a free DVR and a program guide that comes with PlexPass ($4.99).
The next thing is SlingTV for $25 so I have cable channels + Showtime, a cloud DVR. for cable channels. Netflix $9.99. Hulu+Showtime $19.99. I'm still paying for just watching TV. Not equipment fees and nothing extra for HD. And then I pay $55 for 75 Mbps Internet. All told just to watch TV is $55.00 and then $55 for Internet. I pay $110.
I don't mind paying for pay TV but it's the extras that a duopolies like AT&T U-verse, Comcast, and Spectrum that I don't like. I can change anything without being in a contract and if there is a service I don't use until something good comes on, like Ray Donovan, then I turn that on, watch the season, and turn it off. Same with GOTs and that is because I do viewing parties on Sunday and Monday of both shows.
I don't watch enough of either channel beyond specific programming so that $10-15 for those add-ons fluctuate so the cost I'm stating right now is only because of those shows.
So, reality am I happier than being tied to a cable company? Heck yes. Did I do it to save money? Nope, I did it to have the freedom to watch what I want, when I want, and without being beholden to the cable company.
UPDATE: $125 because I do have Showtime and HBO. Again GOTs is over Sunday and it will be turned off.
Or perhaps watch a little less TV. I know, "Oh the horror!"
Get an HD antenna. Get a slim cable package and get Netflix or Hulu. Go outside, speak to girls, find other hoobbies. Tv isnt that important.
Let's review:
1) Dude wants cable.
2) Dude writes an article that has no insight into WHY people may choose to forego a cable subscription, nor what any of the real and perfectly viable free or cheap options are besides multiple expensive cable-ish services aren't quite what he wants for some reason.
3) Dude decides to keep paying for cable.
Did I miss anything?
The only contribution this article makes to the sum of human knowledge is that Brian Barrett, writing for Wired, has no real interest in "cord cutting" beyond possibly redefining it to look like a poor substitute for cable. This makes him look like a paid shill, and Wired look like they care more about product placement advertising than journalism. So, I guess nothing new there, huh?
Chromecast, You Tube, and a tablet or a phone, the number of full length high quality programs on You Tube is astounding. Want sports, get an antenna. Clearly the author is shilling for cable.
Murphy was an optimist
I am happy having cut the cord. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime through which I get HBO. I also use a device called Tablo which is like an inexpensive Tivo. It uses an antennae to get over-the-air stations and sends them across you local wifi network. There are a lot of local stations these days; maybe 20 sations here in Portland, OR. Tablo has a listing of upcoming schedules which you select for recording. So you can get all the network shows, local news, old TV shows, etc. and watch them at your leisure, skipping over the commercials. After a show has been recorded, it does thumbnails so you can skip forward and backward easily. You can also just watch live TV through it. I think mine supports 4 streams. You attach your own usb hard drive. You can watch using Roku on TV, Ipad, PC. There are probably others. It has been very reliable.
And yet, when I pick that non-cable TV service I have selected the exact things that I want to watch, not 200 channels of junk forced on me for the one or two bits of content I'm actually interested in. I've never been happier after eliminating cable TV from my life. This article reads like a shill piece from a cable TV marketing department.
I actually didn't know why that had happened. I'm not a smoker any more, but when I started seeing all the color codes I assumed it was just new product. Thanks for the trivia.
The only channel I need is the channel I'm presently watching.
That's why I generally buy just one or two flavours of potato chips at a time. If I had ten flavours in the house, I'd be hard pressed to eat anything else.
Given the garbage that was and is available in the "packages" that I have seen (I haven't looked in a long time because everything was so abysmal) it was an easy decision to drop the cable tv offerings long ago. Every once in a while I will look at the local weather channel broadcast, and even rarer the local PBS broadcast, but rarely. So I will be darned if I will spend $20 per month for 18 channels that are of no interest to me. But that is me.
I cut the cord years ago and pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime because there are no ads. I really, really hate ads.
Amazon Prime has been showing ads before some shows on the iPad, usually ads for more of their content. If I didn't use Amazon Prime for other benefits (e.g., reduced shipping costs), I would have dropped Amazon Prime already. I rarely view Amazon content on the iPad anymore because of this annoyance.
If/when Netflix starts showing ads, I will drop them, too.
Ads in the middle of a program or movie break the flow. If I am watching television and ads are present (in a hotel room recently), I end up muting the television and ignoring the ads. That's when I brush my teeth or check my email.
Did I mention that I really, really hate ads? Why would I pay to view ads?
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What a terrible article. Cutting the cord is about changing your viewing habits, not replacing cable with internet alternatives that give you exactly what you had before. Of course it's stupid to do the latter. If you're primary way of consuming media is live TV, then just subscribe to cable. That's what cable companies are for. The real question is, why do you need to watch so much live TV? Most cord cutters don't watch live TV very much, if at all. If they do watch live TV, they have an antenna just for the basic channels. My wife and I cut the cord about 8 years ago and almost everyone we know around our age or younger has as well. Out of all those cord cutters we know, we're the only ones who still watch live TV on the main prime-time channels and that's only because we're sometimes too impatient to wait for it to come out on Hulu. In fact, we'll quite often get teased from our friends over the fact that we still watch live TV. All you need is one or two streaming services (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) and maybe an OTA antenna. If you need more than that, you watch too much TV and need to find a hobby.
When will people learn the best options in life are frequently free. I've not paid a cable bill since college (2005). I didn't drop cable because it sucked. I dropped it because I had had enough with Comcast's BS. You can only attempt to deceive me so much before I will say screw you and walk away. Plus- there is this thing called Kodi. And before that there were sites like ****.ch with lots of great content. In fact so much better than all of the big boys- like Amazon, Hulu, Apple, Google, etc. And now you can even get "fully loaded" Kodi boxes online. Even eBay has them. Lots more channels, content, and options than these shitty costly companies.
Have you tried cutting the cord, or have you only read about it?
In my area, there are no cheap cable bundles where you can get anything worth viewing.
Before I cut the cord two and a half years ago, my basic bundle had ballooned to $140 a month. And for that I was getting crummy reality tv packed with ads.
But now I stream great documentaries unavailable on cable, foreign and classic film scare on cable, and anything else I care to view for less than $30 a month, commercial free. My high speed internet costs another $40. And during football season, I may subscribe to a service like PS Vue or Sling, which I cancel after the season. That runs anywhere from $20 to $40, including taxes, for five or six months.
Any way you look at it, I'm saving money, and my viewing options are ten times better than they ever were with my cable bundle.
Agreed. Our internet provider (Shaw Canada) has been shamelessly begging for us to bundle cable with our internet for years now.
You might save some bucks switching to https://start.ca/ or https://teksavvy.com/ for your internet service - they resell the "bug guy's" intenet service. Here are some comparisons for Ontario pricing - similar savings are likely available elsewhere:
http://compare.wikia.com/wiki/...