Alternative home entertainment

I don't have a DVR.

This is about where I am.

I'm about to drop Showtime. Still, $50 for internet and about another $100 for TV just seems like a lot, and I'd like to see if I can do better. There's a lot on our cable package we never watch/use. Music channels? Meh, I've got Pandora and iTunes.

All right, so if I'm figuring this correctly, in addition to the $875 a year I have listed above, I'm looking at probably $300 or so for baseball and football games.

So I'm at around $1200 a year, or about $600 ($50 a month) better than I'm doing now. That's 10 lattes at Starbucks per month. (I'm not counting the antenna or a streaming box, which I'd have to buy, because those are both one-time expenses).

Seems like it'd be worth a try. And if it doesn't work out well, I bet my cable provider would give me an introductory package to get me back.

 

I don't have a DVR at this temp corporate apt I'm living in, and I miss the hell out of the ability to rewind and pause.

A DVR is the home equivalent of a rear-view camera in your car; you think it's stupid till you get one, and you have no idea how much you'll miss it when you don't.

 

If you already have the internet connection, I wouldn't consider the connection part of the expense.

You will have to give up some TV watching functionality. If it's important to you to be able to watch anything that's on, when it's on, then maybe paying the extra money for a traditional TV setup is worth it.

 

Might have a little bit of a learning curve to it, but I've had good luck with this program called XBMC. If you have a laptop with HDMI (or a PC you don't use that much), plug it into the TV and run this program. There's a few add-ons required for the good stuff, but once you have those in place it becomes a viable streaming entertainment option. And we're not talking illegal stuff either (although you can tailor this program to do such things).

Couple things I love about it:
- Just about all of PBS's content going back decades.
-This add-on called free cable. The program mines legitimate sites for freely available programs and surprisingly there are a lot of offerings out there buried on web sites. Lots of current network stuff (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) on this add-on. Old stuff like the entire original run of Star Trek too.
-ESPN3. You have to find the correct add-on to make this work, but it's a great interface.
-Have a smartphone? Then you can turn that into your XBMC remote very easily by downloading an app.

 

The DVR is huge if you have a kid. Always having new episodes of their favorites at any time is so, so clutch.

I can also stream live TV to my Ipad, which is something I don't want to give up either.

But I do not have any premium channels. We pay $189 for high speed, phone, HD, DVR and a second TV with HD and On Demand.

If I was single, it would be tempting.

 

The expenses I listed are monthly fees x 12. I'd still be paying an internet bill, which is why I listed it.

93, I have a 19-year-old at home. Not sure how much TV he watches. He spends most of his time at home either sleeping or gaming online. He's never had life with a DVR. If we make this switch and he insists on having access to cable TV, then I'll insist he pay for it.

 

My little girl isn't playing Assassin's Creed, yet, but you make a good point about the gaming.

 

We did the no cable/satellite for about a year and wound up going back when the $30/month internet promo with Comcast expired and they wanted to double the price.

I bought a Roku and used primarily Netflix and Hulu+ (already have Amazon Prime) during our year of cutting cable. So ~$16 a month for the Netflix and Hulu+. My kids (all under 12) watched a lot of full seasons of American Pickers, Cake Boss and Bizarre Foods on Netflix as I recall. I think stuff like Modern Family was available on Hulu the next day, so we lived. Never did get the HD OTA antenna working really well – we're ~30 miles from the big city, the set-top antennas didn't work great on all local channels at all times, really needed a roof-top antenna which was a estimated $300 installed since I'm not terribly handy. So NFL was out, I was getting shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad through "alternative means" on my computer, we had no DVR to pause live football etc.

Anyway, after a year, with the cost of internet doubling, we just bit the bullet and went with a Double Play™ promo for around $60-$70. That ran out and I called Comcast and got on some other promo (PIA how that works). I think now I'm at around $100 for internet, TV service that's one level up from basic cable with HBO added on so I can watch Bill Maher, Newsroom and Girls (guilty pleasure) all with an HD DVR.

Considered the aforementioned XBMC, which is really good. Hell, the Roku is awesome. But missing out on live Braves games, NFL etc. was a hassle, which I'm sure Comcast/DTV/Dish designed it to be!

 

I do it as well. Heck mine has let me do it just because the promotional period is over and then gives me the like promotion. This last time I got even more channels than I had and it cost less than I was paying. I also get phone and internet.

I guess I'm sort of the opposite here. I like my sports and movies too much to not have cable. Throw on the bonuses of the DVR, a really solid on-demand system that you can access pretty much anywhere now and tons of children's options and it makes it really worth it to me. I don't mind paying at all, especially if I keep getting the latest promotional package.

On the other hand I still haven't taken the smart phone plunge and can't believe what people pay for the phones plus the all-inclusive data plans. But that's a whole different thread.

 

I've had suggestions to drop cable. Time Warner does itself no favors, but because I want live sports, it doesn't leave me with any worthy alternatives.

 

If enough people start doing this, won't cable companies just start raising the price of their internet services?