Monday, February 21, 2011

How We Cut The Cord On Cable

 In October we ditched the cable box.
 
The primary reason was that our cable was so crappy. We had cable through a dish (something I was not a fan of but the only cable choice in our apartment complex). Frequently we lost signal. The final straw was when our DVR failed to record an episode of Glee and mangled an episode of Chuck. I called the cable company and told them to take their box back. They did send a tech out to check if anything could be done before we said sayōnara. They determined that we lived in a dead spot and would always have shitty reception. I wish they would have told us when they installed the cable.
 So what do we do without cable? We still watch plenty of tv. We signed up for Hulu Plus and Netflix and use our Playstation 3 to stream tv and movies to our tv. I did buy an antenna and digital converter box so we can watch live tv like football games and award shows but we haven't hooked it up yet.

Life without cable has been easy for me since I don't watch any reality tv except for Dancing With The Stars (which is on Hulu anyway) occasionally. A lot of my friends who watch Bravo shows have felt lost without cable tv. Plus we save $100 a month. Saving money wasn't the reason for ditching cable but it's a benefit.
So have you ditched cable? Would you?

7 comments:

  1. I don't watch that much television, but I still don't know if I could cut out cable completely :) Serious props for doing it though!

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  2. I haven't had cable for 10 years. I watch shows like Mad Men and Friday Night Lights on pirated sights online and we watch a lot of Hulu. We do get the local stations so we can watch sports and the basic networks. I feel a bit out of the conversation- but if want to watch something- you can always find it online!

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  3. We are getting rid of our DirecTV. Finally DSL has made it to our neck of the woods and will soon be installed in our home. We figured we would stream cable shows that we want to watch from their websites and get a HDTV antennae...we'll be saving 70 bucks/month and probably find ourselves doing much more than sitting around the t.v.!!

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  4. We just finally got rid of direct tv this week. Last year we started talking about it bc we never watched 99% of the channels and were always just watching streaming shows through netflix or downloading them... but we had to wait for the contract to end. So far so good!

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  5. we don't have cable either - welcome to the world of no cable!! :)

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  6. We only have basic cable - more for the Internet package than tv. And rely more on Netflix (our new Samsung tv has an instant Netflix app!) and hulu. I don't mind waiting for the DVD releases of the shows I follow, like Mad Men... Hope you're enjoying the world of no cable

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  7. We cut our Time Warner cable TV about a year ago. We still have their Internet service; because, it is the best available where I live. They did increase my Internet bill by about $10 a month; however, that increase was offset by the removal of the cable TV bill. Netflix doesn't come close to costing as much as the cable tv providers. You can also watch NBC, CBS, FOX, etc., using the Internet.

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