Any (cable) cord cutters?

Have you cut the cord?

  • Yes, it was easy to give it up

    Votes: 19 70.4%

  • Yes, but I may go back

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, and I don't think I ever will

    Votes: 2 7.4%

  • No, but I'm open to it

    Votes: 3 11.1%

  • N/A (Never had cable TV, don't own a TV, etc)

    Votes: 3 11.1%
  • Total voters
    27
T

Tree City

Member
Long story short: our two-year cable TV/internet contract was set to expire on Monday, so the cable company emailed us about the new price: They wanted to raise our rates by $30 to $50 per month for the same exact service. So we decided to cut the cord.

It's been two days and except for one show (Real Housewives of SLC, if you're interested lol), I haven't missed it. Is that due to the pandemic royally messing with the 2020 TV schedule? Is it because I'd already moved on from regular cable TV without realizing it? And I can always get Live Hulu if I want to watch more shows--we'd still be paying less than if we'd kept cable. (And we already pay for ad-free Hulu with an HBO add-on, so it's NBD to add on the Live option lol.)

Anyone else cable TV-less? Want to share your thoughts?
 
When we moved into our current house (July of 2018, I believe) we decided to NOT have cable or satellite service. I sort of "grieved" the loss of The Hallmark Channel. But, I'm fine now. We tend to only watch rather old movies that we already own on DVD or use VUDU to rent them occasionally. We can see YouTube on our TV, too. I think there are a few more options on the TV menu, but I don't recall what they are. Generally, we just try to stay away from that big ole screen. lol TRY to do more reading, game-playing, etc. We are pretty much out-of-the-loop when it comes to what people are binge watching. lol
 
We cut the cord about 10 yrs ago when our cable company screwed us over on rates. We had moved to a new house and they told us we were new customers and jacked up the rates to a "new" price. I told them we were done and they could come get there equipment. We have Hulu (we got a black Friday deal for .99 cents a month for a year), Netflix, Prime, Up Faith and Family and Disney Plus. We also use my inlaws cable logins if we want to watch ESPN or TLC shows but that is rare. We don't miss it. We have an HD antennae in the attic for our basic cable channels as well. There are some days I don't turn on the TV at all. I watch a few minutes of the news in the morning and then it is off the rest of the day. We may watch a TV show at night with the kids or something once the youngest goes to bed with the teenager but overall it is rarely on around here. :) There are so many options now without cable that you don't really need it.
 
I want to! We're a household of 5 people. Four of us never watch anything on the actual television. Unfortunately, DH refuses to give it up because of sports.

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We haven't had cable in years and I didn't mind paying for Netflix and Hulu. Disney+ was an easy add, too.

What I don't like it is how all the different companies are now pulling their shows and creating their own subscription services (like Discover just did with TLC, HGTV, etc.) I don't mind paying for a couple big services that house most movies & shows I like. What I don't like is having to have Frndly for Hallmark movies, Peacock for NBC shows, CBS All Access for CBS shows, HBO Max, Starz, Apple... the list goes on.

I don't mind subscribing for a month here and there for a specific show (or for Christmas like with Frndly) but I will be hard pressed to pay for any more subscription services on top of the ones we already have.
 
I would much rather get rid of our expensive cable and get the Disney Plus with Hulu & ESPN, but we would have to upgrade to a smart tv first, LOL! Not to mention, our internet is TERRIBLE for streaming and we wouldn't be able to watch our Penguins hockey games, either. It is extremely irritating that there is literally nothing good to watch right now and like LeeAndra said, all of these streaming services are really getting out of hand.
 
I'm the same as Rachel. I hardly ever watch anything on cable (except the playoff games last weekend--and I'll watch the Superbowl). But, I have our phone and internet bundled with the cable and since I do enjoy our lightning fast internet speeds, it's all good.
 
We gave up cable a couple of years ago - I think it has been about that long. It was my husband's idea because the cable company kept jacking up the price. After the initial shock at losing my cable, I've adjusted. I haven't really watched live TV since the kids came along, I just wanted a way to be able to record and watch the things I like when I had time. It took a while for my husband to settle on what services we would have, and the constant changing as he tried out different things was super annoying to me.
You can have a non-smart TV and still use streaming services -our main living room set is not a smart TV. Your TV does need to have a USB/HDMI input and you need a ROKU or Amazon Firestick that you can add the streaming apps to and use to control them. We've got both. We like the ROKU better, it is more stable and has less 'issues' than the Firestick.
As far as services go, it will still cost you about $50+/month to have a service that carries live TV with a decent selection of channels, and they still don't typically have local network channels. We use an antenna to get local broadcast channels - there is a device called Tablo that helps us with that and has some recording capability with an attached EHD.
We've tried most of the major streaming services that offer a selection of channels - youtube, directTV, Sling and maybe another one that I can't think of at the moment. I liked the Youtube service the best for ease of use, channel selection and the amount of space they offered for recording programs to watch later. Sadly, we've moved on to only having a few individual services as it is cheaper but again I've adjusted. There are a few things I miss still, but I can usually catch the shows the next day through the free version of the apps that are offered for those networks. We have a HULU and Disney+ bundle, Frndly for Hallmark channels mainly, Amazon Prime (no additional cost to us with our Prime membership) and CBS All Access. We signed up for Peacock early and got a good deal so we have that right now, but we probably won't renew it when the year deal expires. The NBC shows we like show up on HULU after a day or two delay. We have one other service that you can't get individually anymore so I won't name it, but as long as we keep it they won't take it away from us. Sportswise my husband really only cares about college football, but with the unpredictable sports schedules during the last year he hasn't watched it much - I haven't missed it (LOL), but that may be more of a factor for him when things get back to being more 'normal' eventually. There are lots of 'free' apps that offer a wide variety of older shows and movies for the price of watching their ads and commercials. There is way more content out there free than there are hours in a day to watch.
 
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We did this a few years ago! We currently use Netflix, Hulu, Frndly (for Hallmark, UPtv etc), Disney+, and a shared Amazon Prime account. We also use an indoor antenna thing to watch regular TV. We pay way less than our cable bill was, and we can pick and chose what we want to watch and when. We can even record shows using Frndly (it's our newest and I don't understand it, but as long as someone in the family can figure it out, I'm good!)

There are a few shows that we may miss, but most we can find past episodes of on Hulu and we'll watch that way. The money savings was the huge deciding factor for us, and we wouldn't go back!
 
We cut off our satellite I think 7 years ago and didn't look back. We just had the basic stuff, and thankfully my husband is not a sports fan, so no issues dealing with that. LOL

We have one smart TV but the rest aren't. We have a Roku on each one. We only subscribe to PBS Passport and Disney+. We don't even have Netflix. I think the free NBC and Fox apps have the shows for free the day or maybe the week after. My favorite free app is Tubi. It has a lot to watch, including a bunch of Christmas movies.
 
rach3975 said:
I want to! We're a household of 5 people. Four of us never watch anything on the actual television. Unfortunately, DH refuses to give it up because of sports.

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Same, but we also bundle cable, phone (yes we have a landline, because the older kids refuse to answer their cell phones, lol) with internet, so I think if we dropped cable completely our internet bill would increase.
 
I tried it 4.5 years ago. I only lasted 6 weeks. At the time I was diagnosed with tinnitus and one way to soften the sounds in my head is to have noise in the house 24/7. The radio at night didn't work because that was my alarm in the morning so it needed to be loud and that loud at night just kept me awake. So I turned to the TV at a lower sound level. Just enough that there was sound but not enough to make me want to watch. I tried streaming but after a couple of hours it would quit and ask me if I wanted to keep watching. Cable doesn't do that!

The "local" channels are not even local for me so I still had to keep a cable subscription so I could get those local channels (2-13 for me) which the cable provider calls their cord cutter special. I have it through a local company that started as a telephone company in the late 1800's then added internet in the mid 1990's and cable not long after. So everything is through one company and because I bundle it is a lot cheaper.

Like someone else said with so many services popping up, I'd have to subscribe to so many different ones to get what I have with my cable service that it would probably end up costing me more. My internet cost would definitely go up since it is in a bundle with the cable.

So consider me a dinosaur. I still like cable.
 
Ever since I moved to the US I've always hated cable tv. The commercial breaks are ridiculous! Every 5 min?? Come on! In France it's one break per show or every 30 min or so. I don't understand how someone can follow the story with all those breaks.

So I never had it here. We just got Netflix dvd when it was still a thing. Then we switched to Netflix stream. We then added Prime and now we also have Disney+ because it was free with our Internet provider.
 
One worry we had, and I see here in the thread, is how much "just" internet would cost. We now pay $40 per month for our internet (granted, we did get a $10/m discount for signing up for autopay). We have the same speed as we had prior to cutting the cord--which cost us $138/m for both internet and TV. Our speed is 100mps.


So we're saving almost $100/m, and currently we spend much less than $98/m on streaming services. We currently have Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime (but IMO Prime Video is "free" because I get Prime for the shipping and Video is just an added benefi). If we upgrade Hulu Live, we might be close to $100/m in streaming services: quick mental math tells me we might be at $90ish/m for streaming services: that is STILL a big savings (because we'd be paying about $10 less per month for internet and all our streaming than we previously paid JUST for TV/internet). So, for us, it made sense to cancel cable TV. And maybe we'll get Hulu Live if we want. Oh, and one thing I want is British TV that we can't easily get here, so I might do what some of you mention and pay for Acorn or BritBox for a couple months in order to binge/catch up on a few fave shows and then cancel it. Thankfully Amazon makes that easy on their website.



And if we get a $40 antenna, we can connect our TV to the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS, plus other channels) at no extra monthly cost. That way I'm not missing out on the big networks. I have heard there are even EHDs you can set up to record shows like your cable company's DVR, although I'm not sure I care enough for that lol.


Okay random question: when you were a kid, did you have any idea how many channels, let alone streaming services, we'd have now?! I still remember watching The X-Files on my parents big wood-encased TV and having to change the channel via cranking the dial.
 
We cut the cord a long time ago, but we do have an antenna to get local channels. Over time, we have had netflix (dropped a few months ago), Disney Plus (once we watched most everything over the lockdown we let it go as well), and now have Hulu and Amazon Prime. We did have Hulu Live for a short time in order to get college sports for my parents who follow a local team - while we had the live bundle added, they upped the price $10/month with no additional content which I thought was ridiculous. We've since cancelled it the "live" component and have just regular hulu. I think it has saved us a lot over the years. We primarily watch TV on weeknight evenings and small amounts on the weekend. Good luck to you!
 
Tree City said:
Okay random question: when you were a kid, did you have any idea how many channels, let alone streaming services, we'd have now?! I still remember watching The X-Files on my parents big wood-encased TV and having to change the channel via cranking the dial.
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Heck it was black and white when I first started watching TV! We were lucky to get 4 or 5 channels with the big antenna that was outside the garage.

On New Year's Day, Dad would set up 2 TV's in the living room (we had 2 different places to connect to the antenna in the room) to watch 2 bowl games at the same time so someone wouldn't have to stand there to change the channel.

In the long run streaming just doesn't make sense for me. I've only used Prime streaming a couple of times. I'm just not a binge watcher either. I can always find something interesting on my 90-some channels if I really want to watch TV. :)
 
LeeAndra said:
What I don't like it is how all the different companies are now pulling their shows and creating their own subscription services (like Discover just did with TLC, HGTV, etc.)
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YES! It's annoying how things that used to be on the free Hulu have all moved & there's no more free Hulu. We've never had cable, we get by with internet, Amazon Prime & Disney+. We used to pay $95 for just internet though, it was so annoying. But when we moved to this county the internet is only $40/month, which seems much more reasonable & it's tons faster.
 
HavaDrPepper said:
Heck it was black and white when I first started watching TV! We were lucky to get 4 or 5 channels with the big antenna that was outside the garage.

On New Year's Day, Dad would set up 2 TV's in the living room (we had 2 different places to connect to the antenna in the room) to watch 2 bowl games at the same time so someone wouldn't have to stand there to change the channel.

In the long run streaming just doesn't make sense for me. I've only used Prime streaming a couple of times. I'm just not a binge watcher either. I can always find something interesting on my 90-some channels if I really want to watch TV. :)
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Two TVs?! I wish my parents had thought of that! I only was able to watch X-Files because no one else wanted the TV at the same time.

And I still remember watching Star Trek TNG with my dad when I was a kid. One episode ended with TO BE CONTINUED and I was shocked. I asked him, "What do they mean, 'To be continued?!'" He said we had to wait to find out. I couldn't understand the idea of a cliffhanger and how we'd have to wait until the fall to see what happened next. Couldn't we just skip to the next episode?! It's like binge-watching was meant for me. :w00t:
 
Tree City said:
Two TVs?! I wish my parents had thought of that! I only was able to watch X-Files because no one else wanted the TV at the same time.
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We had to borrow the 2nd one! Usually several couples that were friends of my parents would come over. One would bring their really small black and white TV with them. This would have been in the mid-60's right after we moved into this house.

Eventually Mom & Dad got a TV for their bedroom (when cable came to town a couple years later) and Dad would move it to the living room to watch the games. Took him and another guy to do it since it was one of the cabinet type of TV's. We still had those cabinet TV's in the 80's only they were now color TV's.
 
Tree City said:
Okay random question: when you were a kid, did you have any idea how many channels, let alone streaming services, we'd have now?! I still remember watching The X-Files on my parents big wood-encased TV and having to change the channel via cranking the dial.
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We started out with a black and white tv and remember the excitement of seeing colour for the first time. There were only 3 channels and it shut off for large parts of the day/night. Cripes I feel old now. The funniest thing though was watching TV at my friends place - their TV was also rented but came with a slot to put in coins. The groans in the room when the box ran out of money and switched off mid-show were hilarious! TV is sooooo different nowadays and honestly, I think the new generations are missing out. Back then there'd be shows nearly everyone watched, so it was huge topics of conversation and the cliffhangers were awesome (anyone remember waiting to find out who shot JR? :D)
 
rags said:
We started out with a black and white tv and remember the excitement of seeing colour for the first time. There were only 3 channels and it shut off for large parts of the day/night. Cripes I feel old now. The funniest thing though was watching TV at my friends place - their TV was also rented but came with a slot to put in coins. The groans in the room when the box ran out of money and switched off mid-show were hilarious! TV is sooooo different nowadays and honestly, I think the new generations are missing out. Back then there'd be shows nearly everyone watched, so it was huge topics of conversation and the cliffhangers were awesome (anyone remember waiting to find out who shot JR? :D)
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One of my fondest memories from "back in the day" was watching the Wonderful World of Disney and the Lawrence Welk show. The first time seeing Disney in color was mind blowing.

As for JR, I was on my way to FL with a friend and stopped to say hi to my parents since I was going by my hometown on my way (I was out of college and living elsewhere). I walked in and asked them "Who shot JR"... and they told me I'd have to wait... until fall!
 
I don't have a tv and to be honest I don't miss it - I can find pretty much everything I want online in some fashion. The only thing I pay for is a subscription service for a couple of programs but once I'm finished that I'll cut the virtual cord again.

When I move out of home I'll probably get a tv but no cable subscription service as much as I'd like to since it costs an arm and a leg basically
 
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We have been cable-less I want to say for 5 + years. Do we miss it? No way! Last year I was visiting somewhere and we watched a tv show. I couldn't believe the amount of time I spent watching commercials rather than the actual tv show! Not having cable really makes you forget about the "wasted" time of watching commercials.

We do have streaming services and are in the process of figuring out which ones we are going to do away with. However currently we have Amazon Prime (comes with our membership), Netflix (got rid of The Office and now we never use it), Hulu, HBO Max (it's a Christmas present to the girls so they can watch Doctor Who) and Disney Plus. Of the ones mentioned above, I believe in the next few months we will be getting rid of all but Amazon Prime.

The hardest thing for the man of the house to give up was his sports. However after the first season of not watching sports, he enjoyed the savings from not having cable. The kids were sad to give up cartoons, but they were quickly replaced with other things in one of the many other streaming services. Me, I miss the Hallmark channel and all the cooking shows, but really do I need to watch them?
 
nesser1981 said:
Same, but we also bundle cable, phone (yes we have a landline, because the older kids refuse to answer their cell phones, lol) with internet, so I think if we dropped cable completely our internet bill would increase.
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We too have a landline phone because it was cheaper to get a "bundle" rather than having just internet. I like having the phone because the kids have access to it should there be an emergency and the cell signal is out.
 
Tree City said:
One worry we had, and I see here in the thread, is how much "just" internet would cost. We now pay $40 per month for our internet (granted, we did get a $10/m discount for signing up for autopay). We have the same speed as we had prior to cutting the cord--which cost us $138/m for both internet and TV. Our speed is 100mps.

Okay random question: when you were a kid, did you have any idea how many channels, let alone streaming services, we'd have now?! I still remember watching The X-Files on my parents big wood-encased TV and having to change the channel via cranking the dial.
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When you have cable tv, you play a LOT of extras when it comes to taxes, surcharges, fees, etc. When you are only paying for internet, you only get charged state taxes which help lower your price.

Our internet is $165 a month (Comcast), but that comes with unlimited bandwidth because we are always over the limit and didn't want to get charged $10 per mb over. It also includes a landline. If I were to remove the landline, our bill goes up to $175 a month. Internet is expensive where I live - I wish it were a lot cheaper. However if I were to get cable tv with our internet/phone, it would be almost $250 for the first year and then after that who knows what Comcast would gouge us with!
 
Same here, I have been contemplating on cutting as well since DH is the only one watching on it now for sports. ever since the March pandemic boom, I never watched news anymore and just rely on reading on the news website.

rach3975 said:
I want to! We're a household of 5 people. Four of us never watch anything on the actual television. Unfortunately, DH refuses to give it up because of sports.

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We have not cut our cable yet... but I have thought about it... we also still have a landline. Our cable is bundled with the landline and internet. We also have Disney+, Netflix, Starz (for my Outlander) and Prime.
 
LeeAndra said:
We haven't had cable in years and I didn't mind paying for Netflix and Hulu. Disney+ was an easy add, too.

What I don't like it is how all the different companies are now pulling their shows and creating their own subscription services (like Discover just did with TLC, HGTV, etc.) I don't mind paying for a couple big services that house most movies & shows I like. What I don't like is having to have Frndly for Hallmark movies, Peacock for NBC shows, CBS All Access for CBS shows, HBO Max, Starz, Apple... the list goes on.

I don't mind subscribing for a month here and there for a specific show (or for Christmas like with Frndly) but I will be hard pressed to pay for any more subscription services on top of the ones we already have.
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I completely agree with you, LeeAndra. We have Netflix & Disney Plus, but I can't add everything...it would be as much as a cable subscription! So we just accept that there are limits on what we can watch, and my kids don't seem to mind watching the same show a dozen times. If I really want to watch something I don't have access to, I just rent it from Amazon.
 
We haven't had cable since 2010? Whenever they first came out with streaming over computer to get channels or something... we don't miss it at all. We have Sling, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix and have plenty to watch... Sling - that is how I watch Bravo and TLC... Hulu (pay for no commericals) I use for broadcasting shows on demand... Amazon Prime used for school documentaries... netflix - eh, that one can go don't use that as much. We are looking at switching all over the YouTube TV, but seems like overall be more expensive then what we pay now.
 
We watch A LOT of sports- right now it's NHL & NFL & Gonzaga (college) basketball. We try to catch our local sports- EWU football, UW Softball & Spokane Chiefs too. ~I~ would be TOTALLY down to cut the cord- but my family might start a coup! ;) I have mentioned with the ESPN streaming we could get a lot of the same sports- but no one is worried about the $$ of the bill (I pay the bills & cringe!) ON TOP of cable- we have Disney+, Netflix, Amazon & some of the others that are included in our cable so we don't' have to pay for them- HBO max, Peacock, etc etc. SOO much tv.... :eyeroll:
 
I gave it up probably 8 years ago? Don't miss it a bit. I have a digital antenna for local channels (which carry most of the sports teams I want to watch). I have Netflix for 8.99, Hulu for 5.99, and I just picked up Discovery+ for 4.99 (all per month). So I pay $20 a month and have TONS of things to watch. I also have Prime of course for shipping and Kindle and video. I've had that for years and will always have it, so I don't count it as part of my "TV" bill. Oh, and I have Disney Plus through my cell phone carrier for free for now. I'll probably drop that when the year is up.
 
I gave it up years ago and it was so easy. We have Disney+, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix. We never want for anything to watch and it's much cheaper.
 
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