Has anyone here gotten rid of cable/satellite TV?

My brother-in-law hasn't had it for a long time. They get Netflix through the Blu-Ray player for the kids. He's a sports fan, and an Indiana/Big Ten basketball fan, in particular, but he just deals with the sacrifice. They seem to be fine. He binge watches shows like "Breaking Bad" through Netflix.

I did it for about a year to cut expenses the one year I didn't have a roommate. I was covering preps and MLB at the time, so it wasn't too bad, because I was working nights any way.

 

For me, it's not a money thing. It's more about having the ability to watch stuff anywhere at any time.

I dropped cable about three years ago. I buy seasons on ITunes of shows I really feel like I need to see right away like "Mad Men" and "Louie" and otherwise rely on Netflix (streaming and disc services). For sports I stream the online MLB, NHL and NBA packages through my Blue Ray player and iPad. The mid-major college football and basketball program I follow usually has most of its games streaming somewhere.

Money-wise I don't come out way ahead, but I actually feel like I get more entertainment options this way. And no commercials.

 

Similar situation here. I've been without it for 14 months and really enjoy it. I find there are more than enough sports on broadcast tv. Other than having been a huge C-SPAN/C-SPAN2 junkie (no, that's not a joke), the only time I even remotely miss cable is the Saturday night ESPN game during college football season, but even then I'm usually at that game or in transit from another game. When I'm not I can catch it at a bar or just follow along on twitter. My promotional rate on Internet service is about to expire so I'm looking at the deals for new service with a couple of different providers.

I've decided I'm going with another Internet-only package and upping my download speed so the Netflix will load quicker. The recent court ruling on net neutrality and the rumors that Comcast is intentionally slowing down speeds for Netflix are my biggest concern. I would not be surprised at all to see them try to screw over the cord-cutters.

 

I haven't had cable in at least 15 years. I don't have the time to watch much TV anyway.

 

We had cable, home phone and Internet bundled together with Grande. We dropped cable and phone and our bill went from $90-something a month to $23. We watch Netflix and Amazon Prime through Roku, and get local channels with a digital antenna. We haven't missed any of the channels we're not getting anymore.

 

I wonder how long it will be until Google takes what it's doing in Austin, KC and one other city national? It's supposed to be incredible and for a fraction of what everybody else is paying.

 

Haven't had cable since the last World Cup year. Like others, we use a Roku to stream hulu plus and amazon prime stuff to our TV, and an antenna for the over-the-air networks. Really haven't missed cable that much. With an 8-year-old in the house, we don't have nearly as much time to watch anything as we used to. He hasn't even missed the Disney stuff that much.

These days it seems like you can find just about anything online if you want it bad enough. You might not save much money that way, but we found that once it wasn't readily available, we just didn't miss a lot of what we had been watching.

 

Add AMC and I could do that, too.

 

Probably never, based on a Texas Monthly article I read about the Austin experiment. BTW, the other city is Provo, Utah.

Anyway, article implied it was a way to put pressure on companies like AT&T to get them to go to the expense of running the lines. It worked spectacularly well in Texas as AT&T can't spend money fast enough as Google laughs its way to the bank.

 

Yes, and we love it. Got rid of Dish in exchange for an Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu Plus. We put $20 into a digital antennae for local channels. The video services are $8 per month. The Apple TV was $100. Dish was $65 per month for the bare bones HD package, so we're saving a lot compared to the $16 per month we pay now. I'll add the WWE Network for $10 a month. Still not even paying half of Dish. The one-time costs of the antennae and Apple TV box were nothing.

We were only able to do it last summer after the cable provider, frrom which we get Internet, bumped download speeds from 10 to 50 Mbs and increased the monthly data cap from 100 to 300 GB.

The WatchESPN app is what I use for Alabama games not on CBS (and since the CBS broadcasts are national, I even get the Tide in Idaho), but I have to use my brother's cable provider log in (Comcast). Anything else I want to watch like "Walking Dead" or "True Detective" I stream on my MacBook Pro or iPad, then AirPlay them to my TV. The sites aren't hard to navigate, just have to close a few pop-up windows. For birthdays or Christmas, we ask for iTunes cards so we can rent movies via Apple TV.

 

If the WWE Network will let me watch past editions of Raw and Smackdown, I could combine that with MLB.TV and WatchESPN app (primarly for Alabama, like Bradley) and get rid of cable completely. The asterisk is that I usually DVR about 10 weeks worth of Raw before I watch (right now my DVR is backed up since around October but if it let me go that far back, I wouldn't need cable. My wife would be fine with DVDs and Netflix.

If Sunday Ticket would come back to PS3, I might never need cable again, and could just use the saved money to upgrade my internet service.

Of course, that's the rub. Paying for all of that would have me pretty much where my bill is now

 

The WWE Network is supposed to feature as much back catalogue from WWE, WCW, and ECW as possible. The E bought the video libraries for those two companies as well as stuff like AWA and many other old territories. The questions are how many shows were preserved on video and has The E digitized them all yet? I'm guessing one reason it took so long to get any kind of a network going is that The E has a hell of a lot of digitizing to do with its own catalogue, much less every other promotion library its bought over the years. I fully plan on reliving my youth by watching as many awful Monday Nitros as possible. Because I'm sick like that.