I dumped cable TV, and still have loads to watch

I'm coming close to a year of not having cable. I don't miss it one bit. Even convinced a friend of mine to do the same.

obirano wrote:

I'm coming close to a year of not having cable. I don't miss it one bit. Even convinced a friend of mine to do the same.

Yep, June 7 will be 2 years for me! Like you I don't miss it one iota, especially since discovering the HD OTA channels coming in on the co-ax via the QAM signal. I still get my football in HD ... for free!

Jeff-66 wrote:
obirano wrote:

I'm coming close to a year of not having cable. I don't miss it one bit. Even convinced a friend of mine to do the same.

Yep, June 7 will be 2 years for me! Like you I don't miss it one iota, especially since discovering the HD OTA channels coming in on the co-ax via the QAM signal. I still get my football in HD ... for free!

July-ish will be two years for me. I miss Avalanche hockey, which is pretty much cable-only in these parts, but otherwise, I don't miss a thing.

Yeah, my cable bill went up just over $5 this month. Actually, it was almost all in the internet portion of it, but I'm only paying $18/month for the TV portion, which last time I asked, made my total bill only $3 more than if I dumped TV as they up the internet rates otherwise.

I will have been cable-free since Obama took office.

I miss hockey and baseball. ESPN over XBL provided a ton of Kansas basketball and football. I'm still waiting for MLB and the NHL to find a way to make money off of me. I'd buy their plans if they let me watch the Cards and Blues.

One of the other things I missed, MSNBC, just came online via XBL, too.

Otherwise, I don't miss cable even a little bit. And as much as love hockey and baseball, they are not worth $60+ a month.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Yeah, my cable bill went up just over $5 this month. Actually, it was almost all in the internet portion of it, but I'm only paying $18/month for the TV portion, which last time I asked, made my total bill only $3 more than if I dumped TV as they up the internet rates otherwise.

My broadband bill (same co. as TV) went up $3.xx in March. I was paying extra for "turbo" speed, so when they jacked up the price, I called them and asked them if they could maybe not do that. When they said no, I said ok, then remove the Turbo upgrade from my account. So they get $3 more from me, but I cost them $15/mo. I'm still getting by just fine with a 10MB pipe. I'm just sick of all these damn price hikes. Gas, food, cable, power bill, water bill, etc.

My phone bill ... a standard land line with no extra features, has creeped up from $21/mo to $27/mo, so I just dropped that as well and got a cheap cell phone. If these people want to keep screwing with us so their top execs can have mansions and yachts and what have you, then they can just keep the product.

As for food, I planted a garden this year, and am now successfully growing lettuce, peppers, broccoli, corn, cabbage, and a few other things, right in my backyard. I'm not trying to go all end of the world or anything, but I'm just fed up with corporate greed.

We dumped our landline at the same time as we dumped cable. The only reason we were using it at the time was DirecTV's DVR required a landline to dial in. Switching to OTA and using Tivo let me use the internet to update, so that was $20+ off the top in savings. Although I am sure that was temporary, as I am sure most DVR's can use the internet to update by now.

Netflix has been a godsend for us. We dropped cable last year, and don't miss it one bit.

Full disclousure, we still have whatever channels we get from our cable internet, by hooking the TV up.. so I get quite a few channels.

When my wife and I married, we had no cable for about two years. We did cable for a year since she was wanting it. Found out we didn't watch it as much as she thought we would.

Jeff-66 wrote:

My phone bill ... a standard land line with no extra features, has creeped up from $21/mo to $27/mo, so I just dropped that as well and got a cheap cell phone. If these people want to keep screwing with us so their top execs can have mansions and yachts and what have you, then they can just keep the product.

Better late than never.

I dropped my landline way back in 2000 or 2001 and got a Cricket phone, which looked like this. Technology!

I've been without cable for a little over 3 years now and don't miss it one bit as well. I had an urge to jump on a cable package the other day but just couldn't justify the extra 60-80$ a month Cox wanted to charge for it. Netflix is pretty much the only thing I watch, though I've had a few several-month long streaks where I'll hardly touch that as well. My family has cable and when I visit them I'll watch some TV, but I tend to only watch the On Demand stuff, so more or less I've been off "live-TV" the entire time. The only real reason I see to keep cable is for news and sports... News is easier to find on the internet and tends to be less skewed depending on where you read it and you don't have to deal with the national news being full of stories about a cat returning home after 15 years or a woman who called animal control because she found what she though was a snake in her attic, and it wasn't. As for sports, if the game's that important for me to watch I'll find somewhere to watch it, otherwise... meh.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:
obirano wrote:

I'm coming close to a year of not having cable. I don't miss it one bit. Even convinced a friend of mine to do the same.

Yep, June 7 will be 2 years for me! Like you I don't miss it one iota, especially since discovering the HD OTA channels coming in on the co-ax via the QAM signal. I still get my football in HD ... for free!

July-ish will be two years for me. I miss Avalanche hockey, which is pretty much cable-only in these parts, but otherwise, I don't miss a thing.

This is actually a reason that my moving to DC is going to be awesome. The only reason I have cable is to watch the Avs games. In DC, I'll be able to watch them on NHL Gamecenter, since they won't be blacked out in that area. So for the price of about $12/mo, I'll have all my Avs games, and most other NHL games (except the irritating Caps, so no loss there), and won't have any need to have cable.

I have been cable free since 2007 when we bought our house. Never looking back. Every year I call up my internet provider (Time Warner) and tell them I am switching to Verizon because they are cheaper and they give me another year of the introductory offer ($29.99 a month the last 2 years) I highly recommend haggling with your internet provider it has saved me hundreds.
My local BlockBuster finally closed shop so I don't have movies as easy as I used to. They did crazy deals, like how do you make money crazy. In the last month there they had a deal where if you rented one movie you would get a coupon for a free rental but then when you used the free rental they would count that as a rental and give you another free one. I got a movie every day for a month and only paid for the first one. The manager said he was sure it was a glitch but I was a loyal customer so he didn't care.

My local BlockBuster finally closed shop
They did crazy deals, like how do you make money crazy
I got a movie every day for a month and only paid for the first one
TheGameguru wrote:
My local BlockBuster finally closed shop
They did crazy deals, like how do you make money crazy
I got a movie every day for a month and only paid for the first one

Yeah I know, I knew it was coming but figured I'd get what I could while it was available.

Coldstream wrote:

This is actually a reason that my moving to DC is going to be awesome. The only reason I have cable is to watch the Avs games. In DC, I'll be able to watch them on NHL Gamecenter, since they won't be blacked out in that area. So for the price of about $12/mo, I'll have all my Avs games, and most other NHL games (except the irritating Caps, so no loss there), and won't have any need to have cable.

Yeah. We're planning a move to Oregon soon, and it'll be nice for the same reason. It's so frustrating that I have to move to another state to stream Avs games, though.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Coldstream wrote:

This is actually a reason that my moving to DC is going to be awesome. The only reason I have cable is to watch the Avs games. In DC, I'll be able to watch them on NHL Gamecenter, since they won't be blacked out in that area. So for the price of about $12/mo, I'll have all my Avs games, and most other NHL games (except the irritating Caps, so no loss there), and won't have any need to have cable.

Yeah. We're planning a move to Oregon soon, and it'll be nice for the same reason. It's so frustrating that I have to move to another state to stream Avs games, though.

That is a practice that they really need to get rid of.

obirano wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Coldstream wrote:

This is actually a reason that my moving to DC is going to be awesome. The only reason I have cable is to watch the Avs games. In DC, I'll be able to watch them on NHL Gamecenter, since they won't be blacked out in that area. So for the price of about $12/mo, I'll have all my Avs games, and most other NHL games (except the irritating Caps, so no loss there), and won't have any need to have cable.

Yeah. We're planning a move to Oregon soon, and it'll be nice for the same reason. It's so frustrating that I have to move to another state to stream Avs games, though.

That is a practice that they really need to get rid of.

Or at least let us stream the local feed (Altitude, for the Avs) for a nominal fee.

The problem is, the cable companies would flip out if they could not lock-in sports fans. Sure, the distributed can get paid. But that makes it way too easy for local cable and satellite to start losing $80-$100 a month customers in droves.

Yep. And those cable and satellite companies are doubtless deeply engrained in the revenue models for channels like Altitude. It's a messy situation.

Although really, it's going to happen eventually. It's just a matter of when.

I'm confident it will happen, too.

Seems like as good a time as any to check back in.

Did you guys see that the PS3 has Amazon VOD now? No need for a separate Roku any more if you've already got a PS3, which makes the cost of adoption lower.

After using it for a while now, I absolutely love Amazon VOD. There are some suboptimal UI elements with finding what you want on the Roku, but this is pretty close to what I really want for content delivery. Between Netflix for discs and streaming, unencrypted local stations piped into my PC DVR, and Amazon VOD for the rest, we just haven't lost much at all.

Notable content gaps here:

- HBO stuff (you can get it if you wait a year; otherwise, you know the drill)
- Sports (we don't care here, but sucks if you do...)

And... that's about it. There are some weird ones that you can't Roku, like Daily Show and Food Network, but are still available online if you use a browser on your PC (and since we have a PC hooked up to the TV, that's not a big deal).

gore wrote:

Notable content gaps here:

- HBO stuff (you can get it if you wait a year; otherwise, you know the drill)
- Sports (we don't care here, but sucks if you do...)

And... that's about it. There are some weird ones that you can't Roku, like Daily Show and Food Network, but are still available online if you use a browser on your PC (and since we have a PC hooked up to the TV, that's not a big deal).

For the record, the first season of Game of Thrones is on both Amazon VOD (but not Prime streaming) and DVD/Blu-Ray through Netflix now, and you can Roku the Daily Show through Hulu Plus (which is among the handful of shows that keeps our house subscribing).

But yeah. For a company whose business model involves getting people to pay for content, HBO is remarkably bad about making it easy and convenient for people to, y'know. Pay. For content. All caught up with the first season of GoT? Well, that's great, because the second season just started! Oooooh, you mean you don't let your local cable company rape your wallet every month? Then get ready to wait... and wait... and wait. Hey, it's just to get you used to it for when you get caught up with the books. (-:

For a company whose business model involves getting people to pay for content, HBO is remarkably bad about making it easy and convenient for people to, y'know. Pay. For content. Without having to pay for cable, their primary means of income.

FTFY. Let's not forget that HBO is, first and foremost, a cable channel owned by a cable company. They don't want you getting their shows without cable. HBO is one of the big reasons people get cable in the first place, and they get buckets of money from the cable companies because of that.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
For a company whose business model involves getting people to pay for content, HBO is remarkably bad about making it easy and convenient for people to, y'know. Pay. For content. Without having to pay for cable, their primary means of income.

FTFY. Let's not forget that HBO is, first and foremost, a cable channel owned by a cable company. They don't want you getting their shows without cable. HBO is one of the big reasons people get cable in the first place, and they get buckets of money from the cable companies because of that.

I've got 4 coworkers who signed up for HBO just to watch Game of Thrones. Imagine how many people they pulled in when the Sopranos was running.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
For a company whose business model involves getting people to pay for content, HBO is remarkably bad about making it easy and convenient for people to, y'know. Pay. For content. Without having to pay for cable, their primary means of income.

FTFY. Let's not forget that HBO is, first and foremost, a cable channel owned by a cable company. They don't want you getting their shows without cable. HBO is one of the big reasons people get cable in the first place, and they get buckets of money from the cable companies because of that.

And I'm sure that worked out quite well for them in the days when that was the only way to see their stuff, but for better or worse, in the age of broadband and torrents, all entertainment content is effectively on the honor system. In this brave new world, it behooves them not to hide the donation box in a basement five blocks away. When I WANT to pay for your product and you're not letting me, your business model is effed.

I've been tinkering with XBMC since I put together an HTPC from a hand-me-down Mac mini, and last week I installed by far the most awesome addon/script I've ever seen. It's really genius. It's called PseudoTV, and essentially it goes through all your media and makes TV-like channels of your stuff. So there will be an "NBC" channel that has all my Seinfeld, Frasier, and Parks and Recreation DVD rips, and a "Comedy TV" channel that has those plus my Big Bang Theory stuff mixed in. Then there are several movie channels, like SciFi, Action, Drama, etc. It's like having your own basic cable of 15 channels or so (I guess you could have a lot more depending on how much stuff you have available), except it's all guaranteed to be stuff you like! I can't wait for the price of hard drives to come back down so I can rip the rest of our DVDs.

May be old hat to all you long time XBMCers.

I dumped Comcast today and signed up for CenturyLink's internet and phone service. For a 12Mbps connection and a landline I'm paying $39.99 a month now (price-locked for five years) compared to $140 a month with Comcast for cable, phone, and internet with the same connection speed. I signed up for Hulu Plus and bought a Roku box and HD antenna this afternoon from Amazon. Between Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant the only thing I can't watch legally that I want to is Game of Thrones.

Btw, telling Comcast that I was done with them felt like getting out of a deal with the devil and getting my soul back.

Swarfigo wrote:

I dumped Comcast today and signed up for CenturyLink's internet and phone service. For a 12Mbps connection and a landline I'm paying $39.99 a month...

I hate you. I pay $55mnth for 6Mbps and no phone. Granted I won't have to do that here in a week when I move.

gore wrote:

Seems like as good a time as any to check back in.

Did you guys see that the PS3 has Amazon VOD now? No need for a separate Roku any more if you've already got a PS3, which makes the cost of adoption lower.

Yeah we talked about it a bit in the Amazon vs Netflix thread the other day.