Cord cutter

slmjim · 2019-10-19T15:04:24.000Z

No cable for decades, just OTA.

I live in a fairly urban area, but at the bottom of a localized geographic bowl about a mile in diameter, surrounded 360 deg. by 100 ~ 200 ft. limestone ridges. No line of sight to any horizon. I ended up installing a 30 yr. old deep-fringe ChannelMaster antenna on the roof, on a short mast connected to a vintage NOS Archer (Radio Shack) rotator (Made in USA, if that gives an indication of it's age). I could probably have gotten away with the antenna in the attic, but wading through 18" of loose fiberglass insulation discouraged me from doing so.

The deep-fringe antenna gets me a very good signal, far better than the cheap "digital" indoor antennas. Depending on what direction it's pointed, I can see the more powerful Indy and Cinci stations, but their programming is a dupe of my home stations.

No such thing as a "digital" antenna. RF is RF is RF as far as TV frequencies go. "Digital" is just marketing hype. Frequencies are mostly the same as the old analog broadcasts. Modulation is what's changed.

I've used a ChannelMaster DVR for the last few years for time-shifting. My current one has a 1Gb HDD for storage that's never been more than half full. Two built-in tuners to record two OTA programs concurrently while watching a third on the TV. New ones have larger HDD's.

Landline is VOIP using an Ooma device. $4.95/mo. plus $44.95 for 15 Meg. broadband.

slmjim

California_Prepper · 2019-10-19T15:21:28.000Z

Anyone using YouTube tv? I have a friend who recently subscribed to it and he says he loves it, but his wife says it tends to have trouble loading quite often. They have the top tier of wifi speed. I’ve been seriously thinking about switching to this. I currently have Direct Tv, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Tv.

Scallywag · 2019-10-19T18:13:53.000Z

I’ve never had cable TV or a land-line since moving out. My parents ditched the land-line a few years before I moved out, but they still have cable TV.

Have Netflix and Amazon, Hulu too usually though occasionally we un- and re-subscribe to that (as well as other extras like hbo or showtime for a month at a time). When I moved last month I went from 100mbps for $65 to 200 for $40 with the better local cable company. When the promo rate runs out it will still be cheaper…

nitroz · 2019-11-11T18:16:13.000Z

California_Prepper:

Anyone using YouTube tv? I have a friend who recently subscribed to it and he says he loves it, but his wife says it tends to have trouble loading quite often. They have the top tier of wifi speed. I’ve been seriously thinking about switching to this. I currently have Direct Tv, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Tv.

I have been using YouTubeTV for about 6 months. I like the unlimited 1 year cloud DVR and the channel lineup isn’t to bad.

No issues with loading so far.

Pete7874 · 2019-11-11T19:05:13.000Z

We cut the cord almost a year ago. The OTA antenna gets me 2 of the major local networks. Other than that, we just pay for Netflix subscription and get Amazon Video as part of Prime. But even without these, there’s plenty of free content out there. We don’t spend much time in front of the TV anyway.

G0OSE · 2019-11-11T20:23:10.000Z

Big_Sam:

Our line was ‘fibre enabled’ by BT, but it was slower than normal broadband so ditched it all together and now run a 4G router with external aerial on ‘3’ network with unlimited data. Speed is fine, 30mbs up & down.

No telephone cable to the house, haven’t used a landline phone since 2012!

Hmm something to think about. The UK is light years behind on upgrading it’s network, if you live anywhere half rural you’ve had it.
The massively annoying thing is, during the Olympics BT ran a cable to the outskirts of our town, then took a shortcut over to Portland via the bay!
Portland is super fast, our town is super slow still, about 20mb but the ping/latency is the problem I think, bearing in mind we have 2 kids who want to watch, my wife and me gaming sometimes 20mb doesn’t even come close to being enough.
I can get more, but I have to have the lines combined and pay twice, whilst other people on the same service in cities pay for one line, and still it’s quicker. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair………

klrman · 2019-11-11T19:35:57.000Z

Just Netflix, Amazon and the free TubiTv app for my Samsung TV. Too much entertainment, but I'll take it when Winter comes.

Where I live, those ota digital antennas get no reception.

Melven · 2019-11-11T22:46:22.000Z

I use a cheap roof antenna from Walmart ($30) that is hooked up to a Tablo for DVR and guide info. This works on all TV’s and mobile devices in the house (Amazon Fire sticks and Roku’s). I pull signal from 70 miles away and get great reception. We subscribe to Philo for the cable channels my wife wants to watch, then Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Hulu does not get watched very often, but I got the 99 cent a month deal last Christmas, so we may drop it when the the price goes up. We have fiber internet and pay for 250 megabits up and down, but I have measured 260 megabits. We pay $67/ month for internet.

justanotherguy · 2019-11-12T02:24:33.000Z

Melven:

I use a cheap roof antenna from Walmart ($30) that is hooked up to a Tablo for DVR and guide info. This works on all TV’s and mobile devices in the house (Amazon Fire sticks and Roku’s). I pull signal from 70 miles away and get great reception. We subscribe to Philo for the cable channels my wife wants to watch, then Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Hulu does not get watched very often, but I got the 99 cent a month deal last Christmas, so we may drop it when the the price goes up. We have fiber internet and pay for 250 megabits up and down, but I have measured 260 megabits. We pay $67/ month for internet.

I keep putting this off…

I am getting raped but I am too timid to cut without obsessively researching…
Then again we already get amazon and netflix… Toss in Hulu and philo… then something for nfl nba….
I might make this my mission this week

raccoon · 2023-05-25T01:33:46.091Z

Necrobump!
We recently got 500/500 fiber internet, and we’re thinking about getting YouTube TV and ditching DirecTV if we like YouTube TV.
I know that YouTube TV is fairly expensive, but I like getting all of those TV channels along with the 9 months of online DVR-ing.
We don’t get many OTA channels because we live in a cove and there are hills/mountains around us.

pennzy · 2023-05-25T01:40:23.476Z

Another choice is direct tv stream https://streamtv.directv.com/shop/choice-package

slmjim · 2023-05-25T12:43:04.950Z

Haven’t had cable for ummm…, 40+ yrs. Decades ago, Pink Floyd mentioned “13 channels of s#|t to chose from” in the rock opera ‘The Wall’ IIRC. Now it’s a few hundred channels of s#|t.
Paying for cable just to sit through commercials is a non-starter for me.
Been running a Channel Master DVR with OTA for many years. Can whip through commercials in just a few seconds.
I see cable offerings at hotels & such when traveling. Nothing I’ve seen compels me to buy cable.
Still have a landline for logistic convenience. I turn my .gov - sanctioned personal tracking dev… er, cell phone OFF when home. Only close, trusted friends & family have my landline #. Unknown calls go to VM. The landline is running on a VIOP ‘Ooma’ device for ~ $6.00/mo.

slmjim

manithree · 2023-05-25T13:58:28.529Z

slmjim:

Decades ago, Pink Floyd mentioned “13 channels of s#|t to chose from”

Huge Floyd fan here, and that line is my anthem/earworm whenever I have to replace the coax to the antenna, or repair the htpc which has migrated from mythtv to JellyFin.

slmjim:

The landline is running on a VIOP ‘Ooma’ device for ~ $6.00/mo

My solution is less expensive, but we leave our cell phones on all the time. I transferred our old landline number to voip.ms a few years ago, and for about $1/mo. everything just goes to my wife’s cell number.

raccoon · 2023-05-25T18:52:54.167Z

We got rid of our landline phone years ago…
Now everyone in my family has a smart phone.
My mom and I use Consumer Cellular, and it’s pretty cheap compared to our old landline phone.

raccoon · 2023-05-27T03:21:16.140Z

I signed up for YouTube TV today…
We only get the first five days for free, then they charge us the monthly fee.
I hope that we like it.

toddcshoe · 2023-05-27T05:37:03.891Z

I found the live tv online streaming services to be just as expensive as cable or satellite. Especially if you have too many people in the house that need their particular channels. I just have Netflix and Prime now. Anything else I need I just steal off the internet. If you pay for every service just to get the shows or movies you want, it will cost a small fortune.

These TV services have found a way to get our money more than once. You might have sat or cable for a few channels and streaming services for others. You end up paying for the same channels more than once because they are bundled in all the services you pay for. Nonsense. I don’t really see my friends and family saving much if any money by cord cutting.

wolfgirl42 · 2023-05-29T00:56:49.541Z

There’s going to be a consolidation at some point. People won’t keep paying for 4, 5, or 6 streaming services in a recession. Winners are probably Amazon (due to being everything else as well), Netflix, and Disney, but I think a lot of the ones tied to a single company’s properties are going to lose a lot of subscribers unless they lower their prices, which they are probably unlikely to. We’ve probably not seen the end of attempts to squeeze out extra subscriptions by restricting account sharing either, and will probably see a few buyouts of smaller services by larger ones to build up content libraries cheaply.

As for paid TV myself: Have Netflix, but really more for my partner. I don’t watch that much TV overall, and the few things that are really worth it are easy to… ah… ‘find’. Have never paid for cable/satellite and probably never will. For the most part, there’s a comparable amount of actual free content I find just as interesting to watch for that matter. I guess sports are a big one for a lot of people though (I’m investing in one streaming service with a lot of sports due to aforementioned chance of buyouts), but personally the only sports I really care about are racing.

raccoon · 2023-05-30T22:56:42.977Z

We cancelled DirecTV today.
By the way, if you like DirecTV but want to save some money, you can tell them that they are too expensive and they’ll take $50 off your monthly bill for a year.
Apparently, you can keep on doing that year after year forever.
YouTube TV is about the same price at DirecTV (with the discount), so we’re not really saving much money, but YouTube TV is so much nicer than DirecTV.
Of course, you need an excellent internet connection for YouTube TV to work optimally, but if you have that, YouTube TV seems to be more convenient than DirecTV.

pennzy · 2023-05-30T23:55:07.321Z

Was that Directv sat. or streaming that got reduced $50?

raccoon · 2023-05-31T00:32:28.451Z

DirecTV satellite.