Alternative home entertainment

Not if they want to stay in business, no. To the contrary, they'd be forced to offer more attractive pricing.

 

This is why satellite companies offer promo pricing for up to a year and lock you into a two-year contract.

 

This works for DirecTV too. Especially if they have some channel negotiations that are going bad. As long as you're relatively serious and nice to the person in the retention department they will throw all sorts of discounts your way. When they're done offering ask for more. If they can't knock any more money off, ask for free premium channels.

 

I call Comcast at least once every year or two and tell them I want to cancel because cable is just too expensive in my current situation, whichever one I make up for them. It never fails to get me some kind of new discount. I now pay $40 for the expanded basic cable package with some HD stuff. I don't watch a ton of TV, so I don't need any of the premium channels or packages.

 

I have both Prime and Netflix and am strongly considering dropping Netflix. The two services have quite a bit of overlap in their available titles. It makes sense: there is still a somewhat limited universe of titles that have been made available for screening. There are some titles that one has an exclusive license for, but its not many.

I think you can get away with just Amazon Prime. It's cheaper and you get more (videos, use of the Kindle lending library, free two-day shipping) for the money. Use the money that you would use for Netflix for an investment in a Roku. Buy one off eBay, so you can stream the Amazon Prime (and Netflix) through your TV.

 

When I first saw this thread title "Alternative home entertainment" I immediately thought of having a stripper party at home.

Then I remembered - bad idea, e.g., Duke lacrosse.

Actually, if you do your homework correctly, and get references, instead of just thumbing through the fricking yellow pages, you can make it work fairly safely.

But, then again, the solution is simply why Al Gore invented the internet: internet porn

where I am sure we can get strange images like Octopus screwing. \crossthread

 

TV is one of the things I'd make room for in the budget no matter my circumstance. Well, unless I was dead broke, I guess. I'd cut out a lot of other crap before I cut my TV package.

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. I didn't have to work nearly this hard, but I called my provider (Comcast) and they switched my plan to a bundle and voila, I'm saving $65 a month. Prolly shoulda asked for more.

 

No amount of savings is worth going to Buffalo Wild Wings.

 

Depends on where you live as to what kind of an OTA antenna you need. There are several antennas that pretty much anyone could build that will do well in most big cities. Check out this site: http://www.diytvantennas.com. Just for the hell of it I cobbled together a bow tie antenna for about $5 and it works fabulously, bringing in every local station perfectly (I live in the DFW area). Even if you have satellite/cable, it's always nice to have an antenna as a backup in case of outages.

If you have a relatively up-to-date computer (a Pentium dual core or better), you can use that to record OTA shows. You can get those USB tuner sticks (make sure you get an ATSC tuner for North America) on ebay for $20 to $50, and they work great, especially if you have an OK antenna. Alternatively, you can still find the MyHD tuner cards on ebay for $30 to $50, and they'll work on much older computers. You can literally have an HD DVR setup for less than $100.

The only reason we still have cable is live sports and a very small number of cable (non-premium) shows to which we're addicted (Mad Men and Justified, for example). But if (and/or when) MLB has to yield on its local blackout policies (meaning, the ONLY way you can watch the local team is via cable/satellite), then we will probably drop cable.

 

I thought long and hard about doing this when I moved to another house about three months ago. What I found was this . . .

Pros
For the most part, Netflix was a decent replacement for movies and past seasons of shows. Hulu plus was a pretty good replacement for current TV shows. But I had a hard time finding food network and HGTV stuff.

MLB.TV was very much worth the money and better than anything else I could get on Cable. All games, home or road broadcast, and easily hooked up to a TV through Roku or AppleTV, or Xbox, I believe. Or you can run a cable from your computer to any newer TV. And you can watch it all on your phone as well. Plus, I just put a feeler out there for money for the service around Christmas time and it was pretty much paid for.

I don;t buy into the antenna problems, unless you live in the boonies. I put an old pair of rabbit ears, one snapped off, and I got all locals with little to no problems. No need for me to hook one up outside and spend a ton of money.

Cons
DVR is a godsend, and I lose it. Although most of the stuff I mentioned is when you want it and very dvr-like, it's just not the same and you are pretty much at the mercy of your internet connection all of the time.

Cable is convenient and everyone knows it. You learn really quickly that you like watching MLB network and NFL network for the studio shows. You like the occasional sportscenter. Having four ESPNs is actually nice when you are channel surfing. And probably a whole lot more than I am mentioning here. And it is all right there in a guide. And, since I live in Indiana, I kinda liked watching Cubs games during the afternoons, even though I'm not a Cubs fan. Without Cable, that ain't happening due to blackout restrictions on MLB.TV

I had a hard time finding a good price on a fast and reliable internet service without tying it together with cable or phone.

In the end, I just found a good deal with a cable provider, bundled it with internet, and appreciated how convenient things were with Cable. No troublesome workarounds to explain to the misses or the kids. No buying this roku box and these services, having four remotes, along with no worrying about how I was going to watch something, what TV it was connected to, where it was at, etc.

 

I've been without cable/satellite since April, and I am doing OK. We use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon (Amazon only because we are Prime members) and a HD antenna I bought for $40 or so. The best thing for live sports is a website called firstrowsports.eu. It is based in Europe but it shows all the games (NFL, MLB, NCAA, NBA, etc.). Make sure you use Chrome or Firefox and also make sure you have Ad Blocker. (there are TONS of popups, and many I'd be embarrassed for my kids to see). First Row Sports is very similar to the old channelsurfing.net - yes, the picture quality is not terrific, but since it is free, I can't complain. Good luck to all.