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Just cut the cord this weekend, after we realized we're paying $170/month for cable, and only watch about 8 shows. Was also paying monthly for Tivo. Already had

Just cut the cord this weekend, after we realized we're paying $170/month for cable, and only watch about 8 shows. Was also paying monthly for Tivo. Already had Netflix & Amazon Prime. Subscribed to Hulu (eats the savings of canceling Tivo) and may add a few others. Still feels weird to not be able to turn on live TV in the background (haven't gotten the HD Antenna working yet). Only downside so far is - it was nice turning on the Tivo and having a small number of shows to watch that it had recorded for us. Now my wife and I have to think - what do we want to watch? Did it come on yet this week? And is it on Hulu or Netflix or Amazon or...

ch 11y ago
Mind reporting if you still obtain your Internet uplink from the same provider as your cable? Did you just ditch the TV service or drop the provider entirely?
- impostervt 11y ago
  Just dropped the TV service. Still have Cox for internet. $60/month for 50mb (not really). But, it's enough for my two kids to stream youtube while I stream from netflix, so I can live with it.
csydas 11y ago
> Still feels weird to not be able to turn on live TV in the background I think that even older generations are starting to realize that the cable bill is pretty much paying for a white noise generator at this point - computers and phones/tablets have so much to occupy attention and time that all it's going to take is a person saying aloud "Why am I paying $X to not watch TV?"
- impostervt 11y ago
  What's funny is my parents, in their 60s, cut the cord about 2 years ago - long before me. My father is technically savvy compared to most his age, but for them saving money was far more important.
tbyehl 11y ago
> Now my wife and I have to think - what do we want to > watch? Did it come on yet this week? And is it on Hulu > or Netflix or Amazon or... I feel like this is where streaming still fails to be better than piracy. I pay 16€/month for a dedicated server, pay nothing for an RSS feed of TV show torrents I'm interested in, spent a couple hours whipping up some scripts to automate transferring the shows to my home and putting them where Plex expects them to be... And when we fire up the TV, it just tells us which shows have new episodes available to watch. Don't care what the schedule is, which service has it, doesn't matter if the Internet is being uncooperative, and I don't have to deal with DVRs sometimes missing a recording or having some other problem (I think I've gone through every DVR solution that isn't tied to a cable / satellite provider). I keep paying for cable and streaming so that someone is getting paid for the content I'm consuming but I'm longing for the day that some box and combination of services can give me that level of just not having to give a crap about the details. After 10+ years of trying different things I finally have something that "just works" all the time, but I'm still responsible for it and I'd rather pay someone else $50/month so that I don't have to be.
- impostervt 11y ago
  I'm strongly considering this. I've experimented with Plex and it works very well. Haven't done the scripting bit yet, just manually adding some things to try it out. I would also keep paying for Hulu/Netflix/etc, just so that the content creators get paid. But, if I went this route, I could also rip the bajijllion movies my daughters have and no longer worry about them getting their jelly covered fingers on them...
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I have an old Silicon Dust device and a couple scripts that record the shows I watch each week, transcode them and put them on the plex server. It's a _really_ simple setup, but for the two or three OTA broadcast shows we watch, it's not bad.
cableshaft 11y ago
I just have several shows in my personal collection that I rotate between for background shows. Because I've already seen them multiple times, I usually don't get too distracted by them and can do other things while they're on. I just pop in a DVD or queue up a playlist and let it run for a couple hours. Hunting for live TV that I can tolerate would take up so much more effort for me, and the commercials are basically designed to be distracting.

ch 11y ago

Mind reporting if you still obtain your Internet uplink from the same provider as your cable? Did you just ditch the TV service or drop the provider entirely?

impostervt 11y ago
Just dropped the TV service. Still have Cox for internet. $60/month for 50mb (not really). But, it's enough for my two kids to stream youtube while I stream from netflix, so I can live with it.

csydas 11y ago

> Still feels weird to not be able to turn on live TV in the background I think that even older generations are starting to realize that the cable bill is pretty much paying for a white noise generator at this point - computers and phones/tablets have so much to occupy attention and time that all it's going to take is a person saying aloud "Why am I paying $X to not watch TV?"

impostervt 11y ago
What's funny is my parents, in their 60s, cut the cord about 2 years ago - long before me. My father is technically savvy compared to most his age, but for them saving money was far more important.

tbyehl 11y ago

> Now my wife and I have to think - what do we want to > watch? Did it come on yet this week? And is it on Hulu > or Netflix or Amazon or... I feel like this is where streaming still fails to be better than piracy. I pay 16€/month for a dedicated server, pay nothing for an RSS feed of TV show torrents I'm interested in, spent a couple hours whipping up some scripts to automate transferring the shows to my home and putting them where Plex expects them to be... And when we fire up the TV, it just tells us which shows have new episodes available to watch. Don't care what the schedule is, which service has it, doesn't matter if the Internet is being uncooperative, and I don't have to deal with DVRs sometimes missing a recording or having some other problem (I think I've gone through every DVR solution that isn't tied to a cable / satellite provider). I keep paying for cable and streaming so that someone is getting paid for the content I'm consuming but I'm longing for the day that some box and combination of services can give me that level of just not having to give a crap about the details. After 10+ years of trying different things I finally have something that "just works" all the time, but I'm still responsible for it and I'd rather pay someone else $50/month so that I don't have to be.

impostervt 11y ago
I'm strongly considering this. I've experimented with Plex and it works very well. Haven't done the scripting bit yet, just manually adding some things to try it out. I would also keep paying for Hulu/Netflix/etc, just so that the content creators get paid. But, if I went this route, I could also rip the bajijllion movies my daughters have and no longer worry about them getting their jelly covered fingers on them...

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

I have an old Silicon Dust device and a couple scripts that record the shows I watch each week, transcode them and put them on the plex server. It's a _really_ simple setup, but for the two or three OTA broadcast shows we watch, it's not bad.

cableshaft 11y ago

I just have several shows in my personal collection that I rotate between for background shows. Because I've already seen them multiple times, I usually don't get too distracted by them and can do other things while they're on. I just pop in a DVD or queue up a playlist and let it run for a couple hours. Hunting for live TV that I can tolerate would take up so much more effort for me, and the commercials are basically designed to be distracting.