Average Jane Cuts the Cable

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I'd been threatening to do this for a while, but early this week I finally called up and cancelled our cable television service. The cost had crept up to $92 a month (not including taxes), which was absolutely not worth it for the amount of time we spend watching TV.

We were already streaming Netflix through our Wii, but we decided to go ahead and buy a Roku so we could also stream HuluPlus and various other sites. Then we bought a digital antenna for watching broadcast television. It turns out that a lot of the network shows we like can't be streamed to the TV, so we're currently handling that with a combination of:

Watching TV shows when they're actually broadcast, just like a savage!
Streaming them to the computer after they're broadcast, and
Investigating work-arounds.

Some observations so far:

Who knew there were so many public television stations broadcast in our area? We can watch "Antiques Roadshow" pretty much any time of the day or night.
The picture quality of most of the HD broadcast channels is phenomenal. The stuff on Netflix and Hulu looks pretty darned good as well.
We have had no problems whatsoever when it comes to streaming speed and quality. I went ahead and squandered $20 of our bill savings by bumping up our internet speed, but I'm not completely convinced that was necessary.
Making an "appointment" to watch our favorite shows is actually kind of nice. It gives me an excuse to stay home, cook dinner and hang out with the hubby.

There are definitely a few inconveniences associated with getting our shows this way, but I think we'll make up for it by watching more movies and enriching our brains with public TV fare when nothing else is on. Frankly, I don't think that the firehose of cable TV programming to which we used to have access was all that desirable.

And then there's that big stack of books I have waiting…

Photo credit: Alyson Hurt

Comments

9 responses to “Average Jane Cuts the Cable”

January 7, 2011

Jenny

lol “just like a savage.”
How do you get internet? That’s our problem – we have Roadrunner cable internet. We have very basic cable – no movie channels, and there is no way I’m convincing my husband to do without all his college sports packages. But I just don’t want to move to dsl for internet.

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January 7, 2011

Logtar

Not getting cable when we moved up here was truly a blessing. I don’t think we miss anything. Via Netflix or Hulu we get to entertain ourselves whenever we have time and like you said, we make time for it. It has really allowed us to manage our time in front of the TV a lot more. There was really nothing on TV we could not live without.

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January 7, 2011

meesha.v

It’s the commercials, I am so used to skipping them. I don’t even need hulu,netflix can keep me busy for a long time, I don’t watch any network shows.If my employee discount is ever gone, so will the cable. Everything with a screen in my house including phones has netflix access.

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January 7, 2011

The D

If you get a Tivo dvr you won’t be watching tv like a savage. Just buy the base model, no monthly fees, I think.

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January 8, 2011

Fate

Welcome to the club, we ditched cable for a similar combination a few months ago. 🙂

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January 9, 2011

Keith

$92 a month for telly… That’ a lot when you think of what other stuff that money could buy

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January 9, 2011

Kevin in Columbia

Welcome to my world! There is nothing on cable that is worth that amount of money. An extra computer hooked up to the HD-tv is what I use.
Also check out Amazon movie download.

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January 9, 2011

Dina

We’ve NEVER had cable. Ever. And with four kids growing up in a house that is cableless… well, you can imagine what they and their friends thought of us. (Voted worst parents in the entire world year after year) 🙂

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January 12, 2011

Christy @ Raising Knights

We are considering going cable-less. My boys watch the same shows over and over anyway. And dh prefers movies, unless he’s off and has time to watch a game (which he usually doesn’t). And I wouldn’t miss it at all. I’ll have to see if it’s possible since we have a package deal with Roadrunner internet and our home phone.

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