How do you watch TV shows?

knittingbec said:
We have a bunch. Every now & then I think we should narrow it down to our most-used, but unfortunately, we all have a different most-used ;) Hulu (me), Netflix (husband), Disney+ (kids) & Amazon Prime (my mom). HBO Max is included in our phone plan. We also get great reception on our antenna, most of the time, usually just for Jeopardy & Wheel of Fortune when we have a chance to watch or some sports.
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Nah - I say "keep them all" - you can always pare down, but why limit yourself? I love having lots of options!!
 
lovely1m said:
Probably 6 or 7 years ago, I got rid of cable after they tried to up my price significantly. Now we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Hulu, Discovery +, and ESPN. It's kind of a lot, but still not as much as cable was supposed to be.
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You would THINK the cable services would "get it by now", am I right?????
 
Cherylny said:
I LOVED cable - we could access just about everything with Xfinity - I know so many people who cut the cord and it was just too complicated and they went back. My brother, who fancies himself very techy, even did it.

We moved to the middle of nowhere a couple of years ago and didn't have anything for months - we were forced to get Hulu to access anything. It's so different in the country.
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I live in a small town Ohio. Because of my location I could only get 3 over the air stations, NBC, CBS and Fox with an antenna, all 3 from the same town and owned by the same communications company so a news anchor on one of them is also on the other 2 stations. Only network programming is different and all non-network hours are filled with the same programming. My cable company does have a "cord cutters" subscription that you can at least get 2 more CBS stations out of large cities and an ABC station out of another city as well.

I can't complain about my cable price, it is very reasonable for what I get. Yeah, I could add subscription services and digital channel tiers if I wanted that would give me even more but I find that the basic tier of service suits me just fine. I have a few reality shows I actually watch. The rest of the day the TV is just on for background noise while I'm either on the computer or working around the house. My cable bill did increase in 2020 but only because I upped my internet speed :)

The other thing I found with streaming is the buffering... drives me nuts and my internet speed at the time wasn't even bad. So in the long run, cable is for me as long as it is available.
 
We never have had cable. When the streaming services started coming on, we got netflix and have added others on/off as our interest in them ebbs/flows. Currently have hulu, netflix & disney+ plus amazon prime. We do have a antenna and get all the major networks plus all the little additional stations the local area networks broadcast. I never watch regular TV - my husband watches it for sports and sometimes for old westerns & war movies (definitely not my thing). I hate commercials (especially the repetitive ones - showing the exact same commercial within a single show). Nothing gets me to walk away from the TV faster.
 
Never had cable... We just have a massive antenna on our roof that we rotate to pick up different stations. TV is DH's thing, I watch occasionally with him, but generally I am doing something else. We do buy DVDs and watch movies. Super low tech around here.
 
Pachimac said:
We are getting ready to cut the cord. We have our streaming services, but we are not sure if we have covered every show we usually watch. I guess we'll find out - but at 230 a MONTH for cox, we can't afford NOT to cut the cord.
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It's a big decision to cut the cord - I know exactly what you mean. Cable prices are rising so fast, though.
 
mcurtt said:
Never had cable... We just have a massive antenna on our roof that we rotate to pick up different stations. TV is DH's thing, I watch occasionally with him, but generally I am doing something else. We do buy DVDs and watch movies. Super low tech around here.
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It sounds like your antenna does the trick! We've never not had cable (Well, not since cable came into existence) until we moved to the country. I would have probably never cut the cord. We were forced to look at other options living as far in the country as we do.
 
stephc777 said:
We never have had cable. When the streaming services started coming on, we got netflix and have added others on/off as our interest in them ebbs/flows. Currently have hulu, netflix & disney+ plus amazon prime. We do have a antenna and get all the major networks plus all the little additional stations the local area networks broadcast. I never watch regular TV - my husband watches it for sports and sometimes for old westerns & war movies (definitely not my thing). I hate commercials (especially the repetitive ones - showing the exact same commercial within a single show). Nothing gets me to walk away from the TV faster.
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I hear you on the commercials! We rarely watch regular TV anymore, but decided to catch up on Shark Tank the other night. They're maddening - commercials - that's all we saw. I told my hubby that was why I liked to watch streaming, although, some of them have "limited commercials" at the low prices. I think I'm going to bump a couple of them up to be commercial free.
 
lovely1m said:
Probably 6 or 7 years ago, I got rid of cable after they tried to up my price significantly. Now we have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Hulu, Discovery +, and ESPN. It's kind of a lot, but still not as much as cable was supposed to be.
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That sounds about right :D we have quite a few, too. If we like them, we keep them and if not, I cancel them before the trial period ends.
 
HavaDrPepper said:
I live in a small town Ohio. Because of my location I could only get 3 over the air stations, NBC, CBS and Fox with an antenna, all 3 from the same town and owned by the same communications company so a news anchor on one of them is also on the other 2 stations. Only network programming is different and all non-network hours are filled with the same programming. My cable company does have a "cord cutters" subscription that you can at least get 2 more CBS stations out of large cities and an ABC station out of another city as well.

I can't complain about my cable price, it is very reasonable for what I get. Yeah, I could add subscription services and digital channel tiers if I wanted that would give me even more but I find that the basic tier of service suits me just fine. I have a few reality shows I actually watch. The rest of the day the TV is just on for background noise while I'm either on the computer or working around the house. My cable bill did increase in 2020 but only because I upped my internet speed :)

The other thing I found with streaming is the buffering... drives me nuts and my internet speed at the time wasn't even bad. So in the long run, cable is for me as long as it is available.
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We got along, pretty much, with the basic tier of cable, too. There were a couple of shows that we used to watch that were on Showtime and HBO, so we paid for them for awhile. We don't have any trouble with buffering. I was afraid we would have, because that makes me crazy. We have really high speed internet, though - that's probably why we don't have a buffering problem.
 
We have Cox cable with Tivo. I'd like to cut the cord but DH isn't ready. He prefers to record shows and just have them ready to watch rather than having to jump from site to site to watch his shows. Plus, he subscribes to the hockey channel to get all the hockey games (in the world, it seems like :D). We have a package deal with our Cox fiberoptic internet so our internet would go up if we dropped cable. With all we watch and get for free because of cable (e.g., channels like Peacock streaming are free if you have a cable subscription), I'm not sure we'd save enough to make it worth it but I need to sit down and figure it out one of these days.
 
Cherylny said:
We got along, pretty much, with the basic tier of cable, too. There were a couple of shows that we used to watch that were on Showtime and HBO, so we paid for them for awhile. We don't have any trouble with buffering. I was afraid we would have, because that makes me crazy. We have really high speed internet, though - that's probably why we don't have a buffering problem.
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I actually wonder if the buffering problems I have had at times is because I am the last person along the cable internet line in my neighborhood. I had a lot of problems with internet outages several years ago in early February. Couldn't get anything at all but my neighbors were all fine. Turns out a squirrel had chewed through the line before the area where my connection branched off. We had snow and ice and when warmer temps came and melted the ice on the line, it took out the line. That's when I found out I was the last person along the line.

And, when the schools shut down 2 years ago and students were doing remote schooling, my internet was so slow during the day. Besides others along the line doing remote, my neighbors who also have the same provider had 2 college students and 2 teachers in the house on the internet every day. If I tried to download a kit I bought it took forever. If I waited until after 10 at night, it zipped right along. And, again, my speed was not the slower speed available.
 
We cut the cord to cable way over 10 years ago and I don't miss it one bit! We watch things on Netflix mostly but also use Hulu and Amazon prime (where I just binge-watched Reacher which was amazing!!!).
 
We've never had cable; we had DirecTV satellite. We cut that cord back in 2014 because we were paying $50 a month (I know - dirt cheap compared to most people) for almost nothing. Then we got a Roku streaming stick shortly thereafter. The only apps we pay for are PBS Passport ($5 a month), GAIAM TV (which is a yoga/exercise channel for $7 a month that I've probably used 3 times in the last 10 months), Hallmark Movies Now ($5 a month) and Disney+ (I think I last paid about $80 for the year, but we may not renew it again). I've never had Netflix, and I'm not interested in spending the money. Thank goodness my husband is not into sports. We save tons of money! I want to get Peacock Basic, and that is $5 a month, but I'm still on the fence about it. All these little fees can really start adding up. We have an antenna in our attic to get the local stations.

Although we don't like commercials, we endure them rather than paying money to skip them. My favorite free app is Tubi. It has a lot of movies and TV shows with ads. We have VUDU. It's a free app that has free movies with ads, but they also have a lot of movies that you can rent or buy, which we have done.
 
We dropped cable (effective a few days ago) and switched to YouTube TV. It's a lot less expensive than cable was. We bought ChromeCast for each TV.
 
We dropped cable several years ago and have an appletv device for the 2 tvs upstairs and a roku device for the one in the basement to stream everything now. We have a bunch of streaming services and my hubby keeps switching and we have too many in my opinion. Currently we have Netflix (which I want to drop), Disney+ bundle (through Verizon), Discovery+ (through Verizon, will drop when promo ends), Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+ (ends in a few days and I need to decide if I'm keeping it), AppleTV (promo with new iphones), and FuboTV for getting local stations and hubby's sports.
 
I don't have cable TV anymore, we have apps: Amazon Prime, and a friend share with us other 2: HBO and other Brazilian app, Globo. here everything costs a LOT, so I'm a Netflix fan!
 
We have way too many and spend way too much on it all! DH is a big sports fan and doesn't care how much it costs as long as he can see what he wants when he wants. For him we have DirecTV with some of the sports packages and the ESPN app. The rest of the family really only uses Netflix and Disney+. Because of the bundle (ESPN/Disney+/Hulu) we also have Hulu but rarely use it. We have Amazon Prime for the shipping and music, but only DH watches things on it.

I'm really not a TV person--if I lived alone I could let it all go and probably never miss it. If I had Amazon Prime, it would be plenty for the handful of times a year I want to watch anything. I prefer audiobooks or music when I'm scrapping, cooking, cleaning, etc.
 
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DawnMarch said:
We have Cox cable with Tivo. I'd like to cut the cord but DH isn't ready. He prefers to record shows and just have them ready to watch rather than having to jump from site to site to watch his shows. Plus, he subscribes to the hockey channel to get all the hockey games (in the world, it seems like :D). We have a package deal with our Cox fiberoptic internet so our internet would go up if we dropped cable. With all we watch and get for free because of cable (e.g., channels like Peacock streaming are free if you have a cable subscription), I'm not sure we'd save enough to make it worth it but I need to sit down and figure it out one of these days.
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It's pretty complicated - sometimes I just can't wrap my head around it. I DO miss the ability to record shows, though. I used to record everything and we'd sit at night and watch shows and I'd FF through commercials.
 
HavaDrPepper said:
I actually wonder if the buffering problems I have had at times is because I am the last person along the cable internet line in my neighborhood. I had a lot of problems with internet outages several years ago in early February. Couldn't get anything at all but my neighbors were all fine. Turns out a squirrel had chewed through the line before the area where my connection branched off. We had snow and ice and when warmer temps came and melted the ice on the line, it took out the line. That's when I found out I was the last person along the line.

And, when the schools shut down 2 years ago and students were doing remote schooling, my internet was so slow during the day. Besides others along the line doing remote, my neighbors who also have the same provider had 2 college students and 2 teachers in the house on the internet every day. If I tried to download a kit I bought it took forever. If I waited until after 10 at night, it zipped right along. And, again, my speed was not the slower speed available.
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It totally could have been caused by all of the above. I know what you mean because I've seen that buffering. We only have 5 people on our service so it's really good. Our wifi is lightning fast and we get great reception. When all of the kids were homeschooling, where we lived before, I could see a lag in our internet. We lived in a big subdivision with lots of kids. It makes a difference.
 
rach3975 said:
We have way too many and spend way too much on it all! DH is a big sports fan and doesn't care how much it costs as long as he can see what he wants when he wants. For him we have DirecTV with some of the sports packages and the ESPN app. The rest of the family really only uses Netflix and Disney+. Because of the bundle (ESPN/Disney+/Hulu) we also have Hulu but rarely use it. We have Amazon Prime for the shipping and music, but only DH watches things on it.

I'm really not a TV person--if I lived alone I could let it all go and probably never miss it. If I had Amazon Prime, it would be plenty for the handful of times a year I want to watch anything. I prefer audiobooks or music when I'm scrapping, cooking, cleaning, etc.
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I'm not a huge TV watcher either, but my hubby enjoys sitting down for a couple of hours in the evening and watching something. We watch a lot of documentaries and pretty much watch Netflix and Prime. One of the apps has a documentary channel on it. He finds everything I let him hunt away. We have 2 different remotes and it drives me crazy. :confused:
 
Ferdy said:
I don't have cable TV anymore, we have apps: Amazon Prime, and a friend share with us other 2: HBO and other Brazilian app, Globo. here everything costs a LOT, so I'm a Netflix fan!
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Netflix is great - that and Prime are our favorites.
 
keepscrappin said:
We dropped cable several years ago and have an appletv device for the 2 tvs upstairs and a roku device for the one in the basement to stream everything now. We have a bunch of streaming services and my hubby keeps switching and we have too many in my opinion. Currently we have Netflix (which I want to drop), Disney+ bundle (through Verizon), Discovery+ (through Verizon, will drop when promo ends), Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+ (ends in a few days and I need to decide if I'm keeping it), AppleTV (promo with new iphones), and FuboTV for getting local stations and hubby's sports.
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You do have a lot, but so do we. We don't watch some of them a lot, but have them. I keep forgetting we have Roku - we had to get that to stream anything before we got broadband installed. Paramount+ is good - I'm going to keep it. I think I'm going to go to the next level to get rid of commercials. Coming from always having cable, we were clueless as to what we needed. Luckily, we had lots of help and got something set up until we got broadband.
 
craftytam said:
We dropped cable (effective a few days ago) and switched to YouTube TV. It's a lot less expensive than cable was. We bought ChromeCast for each TV.
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I'm not familiar with Chrome Cast. There are so many now that I can't keep up. It's probably like Roku, I'm guessing. We got that, in the beginning, in order to watch anything.
 
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