I’m over dramatic, I get it, but seriously, SERIOUSLY, this weather today? This high of only 91, the breeze? I could cry tears of joy. This summer has been soul sucking. I am so over it. So over the heat. So over the sun. So over the lack of rain.
If you’re not aware, about half the state of Texas is on fire right now. (That really isn’t much of an exaggeration.) My heart goes out to all those families in Central Texas whose homes and neighborhoods are burning right now.
We are safe from the fires where we are at, and this morning we sat out on our porch as a family for the first time in 4 months. The kids enjoyed the backyard while Scott and I drank our coffee and researched what to replace our cable and DVR with. It’s one of many steps we’re taking in hopes of mastering our finances and savings enough to maybe… possibly… hopefully move from here, to another town, to another home in a couple years.
It’s one of the more obvious things we can live without. We have a Wii with streaming Netflix. We have an iPad2 that I believe we can get a TV adapter for, which will allow us to stream anything to our TV from our iPad, including the Hulu Plus app.
Scott just got back from Radio Shack with all the materials he needs to make our own antenna. Yes, I told him we should just buy one. No, he wouldn’t listen. Yes, I hope he doesn’t electrocute himself. You all know how it goes with him by now, right?
Anyway, we looked into getting Apple TV or Roku, but neither of those seem to offer much more than we can get with what we already have. So, am I missing something? If we can get Hulu Plus from our iPad, and Netflix from our Wii, and then we have an antenna that lets us get local channels, that should be good, right?
Have you given up cable? What’s your set-up like?
BOXEE! Love it. It is about $200 up front, but we saved that on our cable bill the first month. I’m on my phone and can’t read all the comments so Idk if anyone has gone in to detail about it. Shoot me an email if you have questions! Oh, my husband has some fancy IT job I don’t even understand most of the time. He did a ton of research and thought boxee was best.
i have been doing the same debate in my head about our cable. our issue seems to be we dont have the same online (HULU) options here in Canada and our internet can be lamely-expensive. Let me know if you end up missing cable or what you decide to go with.
That is EXACTLY our setup: Hulu Plus & streaming Netflix w/ an antennae for local channels. We don’t miss anything because we can watch all our shows whenever we want. We’ve thought about getting Roku but haven’t felt the need THAT badly…this way saves us about $60 per month on wasted cable channels we don’t watch.
We gave up cable a few months ago. We have an HD antennae for one tv, and we get quite a few channels with that, including PBS Kids. We were never big tv people so it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. I catch a lot of stuff online, and I’m happy with that.
We have a mac mini hooked to the TV in the living room. We are stream everything from it. We also have an HD antennae for local channels. We then have an apple TV for the bedroom and can strema our phones to it for music(spotify, pandora, etc) or stream other shows(just not hulu plus). WE then have a Roku for traveling and we have an external USB drive off of it storing a lot of copies of movies we have at home (hello 100 movies at the drop of a hat). I posted more here: http://www.mannlymama.com/2011/01/cord-cutting-101/
I’m bookmarking this so I’ll read the comments later. I would LOVE to give up our cable if there was a cheaper alternative. We’re big on the DVR and I love the free stuff in FiOS OnDemand as well. We have Netflix and tried Hulu Plus but I didn’t think that was enough for us.
We gave up cable and all I can say it thank the Lord for DVD’s! Not so much for us but for our 2 year old that NEEDS to be entertained while I’m cooking dinner and my husband is still working.
And get ready to start getting sucked into network TV shows. Once we gave it up we found ourselves finding shows we enjoying that came through one of our 14 channels we get with rabbit ears
Saving the money IS worth it; you’ve got to just get creative!
Ha! It’s funny that you blog about this. Naaman and I just joined Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and took our first class last night! I cried and I laughed. I’m completely stressed about money. We pay $60 a month for cable and I don’t even watch it. Naaman says he needs it for sports. But I hate paying that much.
When I lost my job we cut cable and just streamed netflix from our PS3. It was awesome. I loved it. I looked into Apple TV but I wasn’t ever really sure what it was about. Sounds like you have some good options here.
We did buy an antenna but man, did that suck. It always went out. ALWAYS. They told us that it was because we had an old house with walls filled with something that blocked the signal :/
Blah. I just want to get rid of it all, actually, and read books
We were so fed up with direct tv that we just up and canceled it about a year ago with a “see how it goes” approach. We haven’t missed it for a day. We’ve got streaming netflix for the kids shows plus dvds. My husband and I don’t watch too much tv and anything we’d actually want to watch is usually on local.
When we first set up our digital antenna and saw the quality of the HD that comes to our house FOR FREE? we were freaking giddy. And we wondered why we ever thought we needed “shark week” or the ice road truckers marathon weekend. There is so much else to do with our time.
Do it. You’ll love it. And if you hate it? guess what. They’ll want you back bad, and they’ll probably give you a helluva deal so you really haven’t lost anything. But I think you’ll love it.
You’ll like it. We missed MNF on ESPN, but you know what really sent us back to cable? “The Shield” on FX. Hubs couldn’t live without it.
We are now finally getting around to watching Dexter on DVD. OMG so awesome.
We actually like watching shows like that on DVD anyway, you get to see it all at once.
I heart the Apple TV. You can rent movies and shows directly from iTunes, buy stuff if you want to, and stream your photos, music, and movies/shows directly from your computer if you have wireless. In the U.S., we paid $7/mo for a Netflix subscription which was invaluable and we still use YouTube to summon up all sorts of rocket videos when El Jefe demands it (which is always). There are sports channels on there too, but I don’t really understand it. We download pretty much all of our favorite TV shows, and went years without cable. The only reason we have it now is it comes with the interwebs.
As a bonus, although I hate the simple remote because my thumbs aren’t delicate enough to use it, the little guy can use it on his own.
We have iPads (yes, plural…someone in this house has an Apple problem), and someone can use that while someone else uses the Apple TV. Flexibility is key, especially when we desperately need to entertain a child.
We ditched cable about 2.5 years ago. We have an antenna and hooked up our TV to a computer right next to it in our living room so that we could watch Hulu and netflix in the same area. We have a secured wireless network in our home so the computer connects wirelessly and we’ve never gone back.
We gave up cable in July 2010 and haven’t hardly missed it. Most of what my 3 year old watches is on Netflix (Dora, Diego, Wonder Pets, etc) and we get most of our shows through Hulu Plus. We stream it through our PS3 in one room and our BluRay player in the other. Ultimately we’re saving about $70/month.
We do Netflix for streaming (and DVDs still). Anything else, I just watch on my laptop (like Teen Mom). Sometimes I’ll ask my mom to DVR something for me and watch it at her house, but that’s rare. Mostly, we just go without. I’m behind the times on many shows (still waiting for the second half of the latest season of Glee to come out on Netflix), but I’m okay with that. TV has taken a back-burner for us, and it’s especially nice now that we have a toddler running around. Not much time for TV until he goes to bed anyway.
When we got married two years ago we never even considered paying for cable. My husband hooked up an old PC to our big screen TV so it functioned like a huge monitor. Then we just streamed Netflix and Hulu from there. Love it!
We gave up cable two years ago. The only thing that is missed is sports for my husband. He wishes all the ESPNs were available a la carte. There are very few games, though, that he wants to see but can’t. I told him for those he can go to the bar and watch them. He can even buy rounds of beer for his friends and it wouldn’t touch what cable costs.
We have Netflix. I love watching TV with no commercials. We can watch whole series at once. Lost, Big Love, Felicity, Melrose Place (yeah, I said it.), etc. And stuff that’s even fluffier, like Parking Wars and Cake Boss.
I don’t miss cable at all, and I really appreciate that I don’t have the TV on now just for background noise. I purposefully watch TV, and that has turned out to be important to me now that I have a kid.
My wife and I are now without cable We have Hulu Plus (Playstation 3), streaming Netflix (Wii) and the one-disc subscription. We’re going to get GameFly soon.
We have been TV-free for a year now. No television set in our house at all. I was amazed at the change in energy in the house when it was gone! (We gave it up on purpose, it didn’t break or anything.) We watch netflix on our laptop when we have the time.
The only time I miss having a TV is when I’m folding laundry and want to watch something mindless.
We have been cable free since July and all I can say is I wish we had done it sooner. I would suggest trying Hulu plus before buying I was really disappointed in it for the iPad. So many shows are just now avail be on the iPad that it just wasn’t worth it to me.
Good luck!
Ha. You’re saving to move out of your town; we’re saving to move into your town. Maybe we should just trade houses.
Do you travel a lot? We gave up cable a few years ago and started using a slingbox. This can stream another person’s TV set to anywhere in the world. We watch the Purdue games in Sydney on Sunday mornings and its great. Slingbox starts at around $199 and you have to have a family member or friend willing to put it in their house that has cable.