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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
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
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.
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; }
Also forgot to mention we often hit the library to borrow seasons of shows and movies, and of course trade with friends and family. Pretty good and low budget.
Twinstiq, game news
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.
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!
My bill from Comcast is $49/mo for internet only. Your assertion varies wildly by location.
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...
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?
Who wants ESPN? In fact, most cable providers are realizing the majority of consumers don't want ESPN.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
I got the VPN+uTorrent bundle and I'm OK.
I'll perhaps go legit when it gets just as easy.
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.
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you should downgrade your connection. The only thing you're getting at 150mbps is your speed test. The damn equipment has a SFP (not SFP+) port in it which means the 48 other customers are ALSO bottle-necked by the same 1gig uplink. Even 4k streaming only consumes 10-15Mbps. Thats still 4 simultaneous 4k streams at one time. Do you actually own 4 separate 4k screens and simultaneously watch actual 4k content on all 4 screens? Spectrum is doing 60Mbps for around $50/mo
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
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're going to need
Let me stop you there. You don't NEED any of those.