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?
- 24Shares
75 comments
It’s wonderful. You think you’ll miss it… but, you don’t really. We just pay to get the basic local channels plus Discovery channel. That’s all we need. AND: Netflix. Even though Netflix streaming is starting to suck a little.
How do you get just discovery, with our cable provider it is all or nothing which drives me crazy, we just want local channels us espn for the hubby
I would really like to give up the cost of cable… can’t wait to find out what everyone else is doing!
We just use Hulu (or the network website) on our laptops and plug them in to the TV if we really want to watch something on the big screen.
Realistically you’ll find that you discover what you REALLY want to watch and have more free time available. You don’t do as much mindless watching when you’re having to consciously pick what show you’re going to watch.
Hulu Plus is, in my opinion, mostly pointless unless you want to watch back episodes of shows. I agree with you about Apple TV and Roku, they’re kind of overkill at this point, as they don’t offer new content, just a different way of getting it.
It’s very freeing to not have cable. We dropped $70/month from our lives and didn’t even notice it. Our TV pretty much only gets used for DVDs and when I play Wii now. I highly recommend it.
sooo true about the mindless watching. I totally noticed that too!
We talk about it all the time. It’s not like the kid lets us watch what we want anyway!
We have Apple TV, an ipad…we can do it, we just haven’t yet.
We’re headed that way, I think. Same thing, I think we could literally do without and maybe we should. Here’s what’s holding us up: DVR. That’s about it. But not having DVR would probably be a good thing.
I’m inspired by your conviction though.
Cheers,
Casey
I don’t know if this will be helpful at all because I’m in an entirely different situation from you with no kids and no sports-loving husband, but my parents got rid of our TV when I was seven (I’m 21 now,) and I’ve never felt the need to own one that receives channels since. Any show I want to watch, I watch on Hulu, Netflix, or if all else fails, can find illegally (shhh…) and it works just fine. My life is oozing with time wasters, such as a million websites on the internet as well as the shows I watch. I don’t need to go channel-surfing to find something to waste an hour on.
I do *own* a TV, which I stream Netflix and watch movies on and I think that is more than enough. (We also own various gaming consoles, but I’m not the one playing them.) And personally, I don’t think Hulu Plus is particularly appealing considering the sheer quantity of stuff I have available already. I honestly can’t imagine *paying* for cable. Despite the fact that I really love Food Network…
It works for me. Good luck!
We have a cheap antenna, an itv (little dongle thing that acts like a dvr- we have like 2 over-air shows we enjoy, and can’t be home for) connected to a Mac mini that’s connected directly to the tv. We use safari to then connect to Netflix & hulu and are still able to watch DVDs if need be. Works like a champ & pays for itself in a few months after dumping cable. The kids can also explore a little online (allowed sites) and play games on PBS kids etc. Highly recommend!
We gave up cable about 4 years ago. The only thing that we REALLY miss is watching sports. We have netflix streaming, it was good, now it’s not so great. They are taking a LOT of movies off of it lately. Haven’t tried Hulu yet, is it any good?
We gave up cable maybe 6 months ago and I honestly don’t miss it at all. We can hook up our laptops to our tv if we want to watch a movie on the “big screen”. We just watch hulu or you can also find shows online at mtv, abc, lifetime. We also check out movies from the library. We have an antenna for basic channels but Logan loves playing with it and it is pretty sharp so I had to put it away. Really, it isn’t too bad.
We dropped our cable a little more than a year ago and haven’t regretted it. We have a little computer that’s dedicated for the TV which we use to watch Netflix, Hulu, and some shows directly from the network’s website (gotta have my Project Runway!). We tried HuluPlus but dropped it because you still have to watch ads through their pay service.
The only thing I really miss is being able to just turn on the Food Network and watch whatever is on at the time. But I don’t miss it enough to pay an extra $70/month.
We gave up cable back in March when we bought a house. We have Netflix and Hulu, and I am contemplating getting rid of Netflix at the moment now that fall shows are picking up again and will make Hulu that much more useful. I never want to get cable ever again! What a waste of money!
We JUST gave up cable this week too! We hardly ever watched it. We decided on an Apple TV. It is easy and awesome. Now my mind is numb from too much Yo Gabba Gabba.
We’re doing the exact opposite now haha! We’ve not had cable for like 6-ish years. Basically as long as my hubs and I have known each other. But now we live super far away from home and want to watch our Iowa Hawkeyes play football this fall so we need cable. Before babies we just went to the local sports bar every saturday but now it’s kind of more expensive to go out every saturday than pay for cable.
ANYWAYS, our basic set up is xbox 360 where we have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Espn 3, and NBC news. We also have an apple tv which pretty much does the same stuff except you can download podcasts, watch youtube, radio and a bunch of other crap. We used to have an antenna but for some reason it doesn’t work here at our new apartment. Not sure why. Anyways-that’s what we have! We’d rather not get cable now but we are big football fans so we’re going to do it just for the season.
We gave up cable and have had a Roku + Netflix and HuluPlus for a couple of years now. But last football season about killed me, and going to sports bars to watch was more expensive than cable. So, we’re back to having cable, just for the fall, and will turn it off again come spring. (Plus, to get cable isn’t THAT much more money on top of internet. For us, it’s the internet that’s killer.)
We have never had cable, always the bunny ears which was great until everything switched to hd and we have had to pay for several converter boxes because they don’t last long. Also, it is more difficult to get reception than the old analog used to be. I just ordered an antenna to go on the roof so we can have better reception and am excited to be able to watch abc again in time for the new season! We watch shows we miss on hulu and we were considering netflix though it seems people here aren’t happy with it. Hulu plus is kinda lame because you pay and still have to watch ads. My son was watching the Jonah movie last week when an ad for a pg13 movie came on that was violent and upset him. I’m going to complain about that one.
I’m guessing at first you’ll miss cable, but over time it will be a relief since you’ll find more time to hang on the porch and enjoy each other more. 🙂 It will probably be how you felt after your internet fast – was that last year? Good luck with the switch!
I try to catch the network shows that I really love (Glee, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory) on the Fox or CBS website a few days after they air. Honestly, I’ve only been able to catch up with Glee, but now I know that receiving the season sets of the other shows will be more interesting than usual since I haven’t seen every episode.
Other than that…we use Netflix.
We gave up cable 19 months ago when our first was born, in an effort to trim some fat in our budget. We went with an antenna for about 4 months and when we first cut cable I really did miss it and realized how addicted to TV I’d been. With the limited selection on the non-cable channels, we found ourselves watching less and less TV, and only renting the things we really wanted to see (seasons of Dexter, etc.).
I”m in Canada so the online selection is a lot smaller than in the US. About a year ago, we went to turn on the TV one day and realized it was broken… and when we looked at the calendar, we saw it had been about a month since we’d last turned it on. We didn’t bother getting the TV fixed, or even think about getting a new one, since we clearly weren’t using it much. We do watch the occasional thing online together, but for the most part my sports-watching husband will stream shows online or go out for big games, and I watch some things online on MTV.ca when I need a fix of stupid reality TV.
I love love love not having a TV. It’s been a huge change to go in 1.5 years from cable-addicted to a ‘no-TV-household’ but it’s actually surprisingly freeing. When we had our PVR loaded with things to watch, I’d feel almost overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all the shows I was watching, and going cold turkey on that was the best way for me to break the addiction. Our 19 month old doesn’t have any shows he’s interested in now but I will certainly stream things on YouTube for him when he’s interested and I need a 20 minute break. I really reccomend living TV free even though it’s a bit daunting at first.
We gave up cable for a little over a year while my husband was unemployed. I thought it was going to be really hard, but it wasn’t that bad. We only had the local channels, which was nice because we didn’t have to worry about a ton of channels, and we started watching shows we never would have watched before. The only 3 things we missed were our Phillies (although we could get a few games), The Food Network, and Disney Channel. With all the extra stuff you have you will be fine! I couldn’t believe how much money we saved not having to pay for cable every month. My husband finally got a new job a little over a year ago working for the cable company. If it weren’t for that I am positive we still would be cable free 🙂 Good luck!
We haven’t had cable in 6 years! And we love not having to pay that bill! We still watch plenty of TV shows though! Just download the program utorrent which is a program that downloads torrents (files of tv shows, movies, games, programs, anything) and then use websites like kickasstorrents.com or btjunkie or piratebay to find all your favorite tv shows and download them! 🙂 you can find any popular show or movie and lots of underground stuff pretty easily as well! It’s great! and best of all IT’S FREE!! 🙂
Ugh, this is so not going to be helpful, but we tried the “drop the cable, hook up the iPad, get an antenna, and use the streaming Netflix we’re already paying for” experiment and it took approximately six months before I broke down and demanded that we turn the cable back on. The husband seemed to be kind of used to it at that point, and we don’t watch a ton of TV, and I don’t like making that $120 payment every month (although $50 of that is internet, so we were really only saving $70 or so), but it just wasn’t something that I ended up preferring. That being said, if that’s what you’ve decided is a good way to save money/watch less TV/whatever, it’s totally do-able. I think the streaming Netflix content is kind of crappy anymore, but you can catch most of what you’d watch on the networks on Hulu or their websites. It’s just not for everyone.
We haven’t owned a TV in three years. We have a nice monitor we plug our laptop into to watch stuff on. We’ve been using hulu and Netflix streaming, I canceled our DVDs from Netflix bc we weren’t watching them. I think I am going to leave Netflix, and do Amazon streaming instead – it’s free with a Prime subscription, which is $80/year, and works out to be about as much as Netflix. But with a better selection of shows, and free shipping on shit from Amazon, ha ha ha!
We gave up cable this year because I kept just paying the minimum and the bill got WAY out of hand. I’m not proud of it, but it ended up being a blessing. Now we watch TV so much more MINDFULLY. We purposely select every show. We pay for Netflix and just did a free trial with Hulu. I love Netflix to the point that I don’t miss cable at all. The only downside is that we watch NBA games on Comcast (They monopolize it so that you can ONLY see some games on their service) but luckily you can get games online.
Once we are back on top with money, we will probably get cable again, but that won’ be for a long time. Now that we don’t have it, it’s clear how much our lives revolved around it. Be home in time to catch this show! Don’t forget to DVR that show! Sad.
I got rid of everything but basic cable but after a year of paying $25/month for it I got rid of it too.
I went and got Logitech’s GoogleTV and OMG, I love it! The price dropped from $299 to $199 and that’s when I got it. You can’t get Hulu but almost everything else you can.
I recently found, http://www.tvpc.tv and you can watch live television.
There aren’t a lot of cables with GoogleTV (just the power and a plug in to the TV) and it’s super intuitive. I have Netflix but I’m thinking about putting my membership on hiatus a couple of times a year for as long as possible each time.
DO IT!
I would love to give up DirecTv but my husband can’t live without some football and golf. I have convinced him to give up the NFL package so he misses a few games, but sadly with DirecTv it costs a fortune to cancel your contract, which they renew when you relocate. We called them though and found out that they offer unadvertised plans and were able to drop down to a pretty basic plan and save a ton of money.
I have taken all television and DVDs away from the kiddos so we can only watch after they are in bed anyway. Netflix seems to be going downhill so I think we will drop that, stick with the limited plan that allows the hubby to watch sports, and pick up some shows (maybe not super legal) that we really love and use the Redbox when we really want a movie.
When we got married (6 years ago) we just never signed up for cable, we really couldn’t afford it. By the time we could comfortably afford it we really didn’t want it anymore. We do not miss cable at all. We stream using Netflix on our computers or Wii, and then only shows we really want to watch. Sometimes we will borrow movies from the library as well.
We just moved, and opted to sell our TV rather than cart it over 300 miles. We may get a new one (miss the wii) at some point, but for now our computers work well. Can we use the wii on a computer? That is something I should find out.
We get the network channels through cable (to get the Internet discount) have a TiVo to record our shows and stream netflix through.
I miss bravo something fierce but other then that it not bad.
SO easy. In fact, we now have basic cable because it was only $5 more in total once we got a discount on our internet and I hate it. My husband watches it mindlessly and has it on in the background all the time. Drives me nuts!
Our setup works so well I’m surprised more people don’t do it this way. We bought a desktop/ tower computer and hooked it up to our TV so that the TV is like the monitor for the computer. We’re not limited to watching Hulu’s stuff that’s for computers only (since they think we’re on a computer because we are!) and we get to control what we watch. Love it!
Theoretically we could use the desktop as our backup hard drive, too, but my husband has a penchant for wiping hard drives when things are squirrelly, so I keep backups on an external hard drive hidden in my desk.
I would have done exactly what Marisa has done with the extra computer except I didn’t have one. The only thing I would have had to add was a bluetooth module so the keyboard could be wireless (my tv components are in a cupboard in a hallway with my television in my living room).
I priced a cheap computer but couldn’t find anything that could beat the GoogleTV so that’s the way I went.
If you have an extra computer, follow Marisa’s lead sans the cable subscription.
No cable here either-
We use:
Project Free TV, Hulu, Netflix, and Seeon.tv (awesome for some great sitcom reruns).
No complaints here….we can always find what we want to watch somewhere 🙂
My husband and I gave up cable a little over 2 years ago. My husband wrote a blog post explaining what we did here :
http://samablog.robsama.com/?p=4646
Basically we use mostly network TV via antenna with a Mac Mini underneath the box. This lets you record from live TV and watch later using the EyeTV program. With a 2 YO boy we have all the Thomas Episodes & Sesame Street saved on the computer hard drive to watch at will. In addition to this since we started we got an Amazon Prime membership (we upgraded when the mom one ran out because we used it so much) we can also watch all the movies and TV on there which adds to the selection on Hulu, which we use sometimes as well. We buy a few shows that we love on iTunes (Mad Men is the only one that comes to mind) – but it is WAY cheaper for us to do that then buy cable, since most of what we watch now is PBS or a few shows on network TV. We save $70 per month now and 2 years in I don’t miss cable one bit!
Also, if you love baseball (which I do), you can just get MLB.tv and you get the whole season available in HD. Living in DFW you won’t get any of the Rangers or Astros games, but you can live without that.
We just did this last month. When we called to cancel our cable, they offered to let us keep 25 channels for $1, so we did that. We have our XBox 360 downstairs with Hulu Plus and Netflix streaming on it, and our Wii upstairs with Netflix streaming.
It’s been pretty great so far, the only thing my husband really misses is live sports. So, when we move, we may go back to straight cable just for that.
We’ve never had cable in almost 7 years of marriage. We’ve been streaming Netflix for the past 6 months, but already thinking of putting the axe to that as well since the 5 year old can’t seem to get her eyes unglued from the tv anymore.
We have a Roku for Netflix. We have yet to go back to normal TV. Seriously, I’ll take $8 streaming per month over cable ANY day. NO COMMERCIALS!!! I think the Wii and IPad will be more than enough!
We gave up cable over 4 years ago. We used an antenna and hulu until last year when we added netflix streaming. We still don’t have hulu plus. And we still manage to watch way to much tv.
We haven’t had cable in YEARS, since well before baby! We love it! Save so much $$$$ and we have so much more family time! You’ll love it!
And we don’t have Netflix or anything. Just local channels and once a month we buy a season of TV on DVD that’s on sale. We don’t just survive. We thrive!
(haven’t read above comments yet)
We gave up cable for the new place. Don’t bother with HuluPlus, and I’ll tell you why… We bought a new Blu-Ray player that’s got the built-in Wifi so we could do streaming TV. I got the more expensive Sony one because it had the HuluPlus app. Guess what I found out? Most of the decent shows on HuluPlus will NOT work on TV apps or iPhones/iPad apps. You must use a browser and access it directly from the website, which is a PITA because it means I must hook up my laptop. And when you get there? It doesn’t have the latest episode. It says you can get Louie — but not until 30 days after it’s aired. What I found was that I got a jillion more shows just by visiting the station’s website directly. If I want to watch Project Runway or TeenMom or Louie or whatever, I just go to straight to LifetimeTV or MTV.com, etc. I can even watch TrueBlood and Entourage online (using torrents.) Netflix has a trillion awesome kids shows and movies you can stream. I think Netflix is totally worth it, but HuluPlus? I’m canceling it.
But yeah, even though HuluPlus didn’t work out, I’m still ooooo glad I got rid of cable. It changed our whole family dynamic.
We gave up our cable about four months ago and I don’t even miss it one tiny iota. Most of the shows I want to watch are on the free digital channels anyway and with it being Summer and having an 11 month old (on top of trying to run a small business) I barely have time to watch TV anyway. When we did have cable all we did was flip until one of us picked the least boring option. Life is to short to waste it watching bad TV (IMHO).
We gave up our cable 2 years ago when my husband and I both lost our jobs. Now we both have better paying jobs than we did 2 years ago and we still don’t have cable. I don’t think we will ever pay for tv again. We just have our local channels and if we want a movie we “rent” one from the library or Redbox. It’s amazing how much more time we have to get things done or spend together with our kids when tv isn’t an issue. My sister is constantly amazed at how creative our 3 year old is compared to hers and we credit no mindless tv watching.
I think you’ll be totally set with the things you mentioned. We’ve been sans cable for over a year now, and we use streaming Netflix via AppleTV- used to have it through the PS3 until it died. We also have a digital antenna to get all of our local stations.
We really haven’t missed it much, though sometimes I really do have a hankering to watch some FoodNetwork, HGTV or TLC. I’m sure you already know how much you have access to online and through Netflix- you could at least go a couple of years without it until you’ve watch every possible thing on Netflix you want to see! Project Free TV is another good source for any TV show you could think up. It has a lot of pop-ups but with a mac, it’s a little safer than with a PC since they’re not as disposed to viruses. It’s definitely worth saving that extra money!! Good luck with it!
Holy crap, you guys! How come nobody told me we’re the last people paying for cable?! You guys are awesome. So many wonderful suggestions. I’m happy to hear so many of you don’t miss it! Scott managed to MAKE an antenna today. We get 33 channels with it (most of which are in Spanish), including a few HD ones. We’re going to stick with Netflix for now and get the attachment for our iPad to our TV. We’ll skip Hulu Plus for now since nobody had much positive to say about it. We will save $70/month this way! I’ll keep you all posted on how it works for us. Thank you for all the advice!
We gave cable almost a year ago and haven’t looked back, of course it wasn’t during football season so asking me again in about 6 months. We have netflix through the PS3 and Hulu Plus. We bought a blu-ray player that also has both of these. Hulu Plus has so many options and minus the commercials is great. Netflix has plenty of kids shows so our little one, 12 months, gets the good stuff like Veggie Tales and none of the crap. You won’t regret it and you sound like you have a good set-up.
We haven’t had cable for a couple of years now and we love it!! We have Netflix streaming, we get blockbuster movies in the mail, we have Hulu plus and the first version of the apple t.v. Our kids (ages 7 and 3) are watching the cartoons we grew up on. They can work all of these things on either the Wii or the iPad. The reason we don’t get videos home from netflix is because with blockbuster you get the same stuff but the new releases sooner and we can get Wii games in the mail. Blockbuster streaming is more like pay-per view, so the best bet for the money is to do a combo of the two.
Shows that are really important to us we buy the complete seasons and store them on the apple t.v., then when we go to grandma’s we just unplug the apple t.v. and hook it up to her t.v. and the kids have their favorite shows. We get our news from the internet.
We just gave up cable to cut back on expenses. Now that I’m staying home with our first born and we’re on one income, we couldn’t justify cable at all. August 11th was our fist day without cable and I. WAS. SAD. I never realized how much I loved trashy reality TV until it was gone. Now that it’s college football season we’re missing our extra channels even more. My hubs and I are reviewing the budget to see how many nights we can eat pb&j to transfer food money into a cable budget. 🙂
Joel and I have never paid for cable. We had it for a few months once when the cable company had forgotten to shut it off in the apartment we moved into. I was a little bummed that they figured it out and shut it off but I could never imagine paying that much a month for it. I always thought it would make me feel obligated to watch it so I could feel like I was getting my money’s worth.
Between Netflix streaming and network’s websites I’ve never had a problem watching the shows I wanted to watch. I looked into Hulu Plus but it really didn’t seem worth the money to me, especially since you have to watch commercials still. Any cable shows I can’t watch online I either rent the DVDs when they come out or just forget about. It’s gotten to the point where I almost hate watching TV shows week to week because I’m too impatient. I’d much rather watch a whole season back to back.
We also have an antenna that gets great reception but we’ve only watched live tv a handful of times for events like the oscars or something. I just can never remember to watch at a certain point every single week. Thankfully network shows are always online on their sites the next day or at most a week later.
Ok, I found my link to my old post about how we (mostly) gave up cable:
http://bebehblog.com/how-to-cancel-cable-and-not-die-of-boredom/
But like I said on Facebook, we now have satellite again. E missed sports and I missed Bravo and we both missed Nick Jr aka free babysitting. Also, the cable company caught on to our (totally legal) work-arounds and “upgraded” us to digital service which ruined our system of running the TV signal through the computer to get DVR capabilities so we caved and just went with Direct TV to avoid giving any more money to Comcast.
Um, and the other thing that happened is we actually watched MORE TV without cable. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but with our Hulu queue set up for practically every show on network TV we ended up invested in a dozen more programs than we watched before. I think we were doing it wrong.
I have been DYING to get rid of our cable subscription. I absolutely hate our provider and we barely watch it anymore. The worst part is the astronomical bill we pay for it every month. I’m going to look into some of the suggestions other people made and see if I can make it work for us. Thanks for bringing up the topic!
When we moved in July we cut the cable. What I found out is that hulu plus isnt worth it most of the time. Amazon has EVERYTHING available on demand plus VOD is free with Prime membership. Reg hulu catalog is limited on devices that arent computers (wii, roku, etc) – sure their website and read the disclaimers on your fav shows. Most of mine are on there – for comp only. So we have a spare old computer that we hooked up to the tv and have hulu desktop installed on. I am working on a post on it with all the details. Our set up has a tv remote for the computer, etc. We havent missed it. I am adding “tivo” to our media center computer soon with a video capture card.
I’m only 23, so I have never actually had a cable bill. I don’t even have friends with cable. I came into my own at a time when hulu and netflix were more practical and more convenient, and I download what I can’t come across easily (TRUE BLOOD!). I rely on hulu during the fantastic Sept-May months, and rely heavily on Netflix the other 4 months.
I have a tv that is connected to my mac mini, and is used for web browsing/streaming/downloading as well as for the local channels. Literally NO frills in this girls tv package-I have a digital antenna.
So I only pay for netflix and what I would have paid for internet anyway, and I get to be the one who DOESNT know what happened on Teen Mom.
My husband and I have been without cable for five (*gasp* yes, five) years.. want to know something really crazy?? We don’t have internet in our home either.. besides on our phones.
What do I miss about it? Nothing. We avoid advertisements that annoy everyone else and don’t get wrapped up in the drama of The “Real” Housewives of whatever city. We get Netflix discs in the mail to satisfy our need to veg on the couch and we read.. lots.
It really is amazing how getting rid of something like cable can create quality conversation in the home.
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.
[…] I came across this post and this one. I read all the comments and there were only a few, mostly sports watchers, […]