Cutting the cord

I did it for about a month and hated it, but I didn't have a device other than my laptop for streaming shows, no HBO go, and I love sports (especially Collegiate Football and baseball) so it was tough for me to adjust (also, LSU was paying post-season baseball at the time)

If you're a sports fan, it's really hard to cut the cord.

I did it for a year. Football season is tuff but it also taught me I could watch at a bar/grill and not get fricked up and also taught me I can live without seeing every football game on TV except for the teams I care about.

Haven't had cable in years. $1600 is a shite ton of money to spend just to watch football. Anyway these days a lot of games stream for free, but usually not the best ones. You can catch some janky MAC games in the morning, but most Saturday afternoons I head down and mooch ESPN at my dad or grandma's house.

quote:

---

Haven't had cable in years. $1600

---

I pay about $110 for cox cable and data. 1 DVR box. No premiums. Sports pack.

If I was single, i'd consider it, but married with kids = never going to happen.

i cut it completely about 2 years ago now
pros:
-save a bunch of money
-i stopped wasting my life watching shite that's worthless
-i stopped my fiancee from wasting her life watching shite that's worthless AND i don't have to listen to her talk about it with her friends anymore because she's out of the loop

cons:
-have to go to bars(might not really be that bad of a con) or stream sports online
-i miss my HBO quality shows

i use netflix and amazon prime streaming btw

couldn't be happier with my decision but the sports situation can be tough, you do realize how much time you waste watching sports though

I've been moving toward cutting the cord for three years now and I'm about to pull the trigger and cancel my Dish service. Between amazon prime, hulu plus, roku and a good over-the-air antenna I'm not going to miss it at all. I finally settled on network attached tuners and a PC running Windows Media Center to handle the TV guide and DVR functions.

that's why I never did it. My bar tabs would win.

Based on what you've posted, it sounds like the sports part is going to kill this idea.

I tried it for a year and it wasn't terrible, but I prefer paid service. The main problem we had was with data caps from our ISP. I have 4 kids and we tore through the cap every month. Eats into whatever you manage to save.

The other problem is that you have to change the way you watch TV. This could actually be a good thing but it didn't work out that way for me. I'm a casual TV watcher, so I like to turn the TV on, flip through the guide for a minute or two, find something interesting and passively watch.

I found it very difficult to do this with streaming services. I used my queue for things that I really wanted to watch so there was never anything that I just wanted to view passively (especially when I was so on edge about the data caps).

Good luck. Hope it works out because it is nice not having that extra bill.

I went off for two years, maybe more. Went back on recently. The cable bill does include internet though which accounts for probably 40% of that bill that you can't get rid of.

So really you are talking $700 a year (for me), which I decided I could comfortably afford now. I enjoy sports, and the bar tabs alone were getting up there. And I don't like bars all that much.

It's nice to cut the cord, but you will miss it, if you miss sports. But everything has a price.