# I cut the cord and love it



## mjh (Dec 19, 2002)

Back in July 2010, TiVo enabled me to cut the cord. I got rid of DirecTV who's fees were on a constant upward slope. I took the dish off of the mast that they installed for me and attached a Clearstream 2 anntenna to it. Then on the other end I put up a Tivo HDXL and haven't paid a red cent for television since. It's been great.

A minimal estimate of how much I've saved is 5.5 yrs * 12 mos/yr* $70 per mo = $4620. But given that DTV's fees have been increasing in that time, it's probably a lot more that I've saved.

Back in July of this year, I sold my TiVo HD and Premiere and was able to use the proceeds to purchase a Roamio OTA + Mini. Sadly I get fewer channels 

Also, as an FYI, in 15 minutes, I was able to save 15% or more on car insurance by switching to GEICO.

Anyone else have any stories like this? I just love these kinds of threads, don't you, mr.unnatural?


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Yeah, I just love 'em. 

FYI - increasing fees are a fact of life. If you want pay TV you've got to pony up. It costs money to keep up with technology and provide more channels with better picture quality. It's only going to get worse if providers start switching to 4K. I do applaud you for dumping DirecTV. I did that as soon as Verizon introduced FIOS into my area. DirecTV does offer a good product, but only as long as the weather is clear. I got tired of constant outages due to bad weather. Comcast was almost as bad. I made the switch to FIOS and couldn't be happier. My internet is light years faster than any previous provider and their service is second to none. I have no problem paying for a service that gives me my money's worth.

And I honestly doubt you saved 15% on your car insurance by switching to Geico.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

I switched to leasing a Toyota 5 years ago instead of Lexus and have saved $200/mo x 60 mos so far. That's nearly $12,500 in savings!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

trip1eX said:


> I switched to leasing a Toyota 5 years ago instead of Lexus and have saved $200/mo x 60 mos so far. That's nearly $12,500 in savings!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I switched from buying new and used cars to buying out-of-lease vehicles. They're still relatively new, have low mileage, they're clean, and they've been well maintained. I still drive a '99 Passat 1.8T and my wife drives a 2005 Audi A6 Quattro. The Passat is the best car I've ever owned and is still going strong with 197k miles on it. The Audi has been virtually trouble-free and is a beautiful ride.

I have a friend that was a Toyota mechanic for many years. Now he's a master mechanic for Lexus. He'd be proud of you, although he would have probably liked it better if you stuck with the Lexus.


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## ciscokid (Jan 14, 2003)

A question to all the cable cutters out there............

When I looked into cutting the cable about a year ago, I found that I would save about $80 a month be terminating my bundle package but then I would have to pony up almost $50 a month for stand alone internet and add to that about $10 a month for slig or Hulu Plus and it was asolutely not worth a $20 a month saving net net.

Or.............am I viewing it incorrectly?


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

No, you are viewing it correctly. Providers give you a discount when getting bundled services. If you order them a la carte they will charge you more. Standalone internet tends to be much more expensive if you get it without a TV package. You can usually get it cheaper if you subscribe to a basic cable package along with it and may actually save money by doing it this way.

If you get a basic TV package for just the locals you can probably eliminate Hulu, especially if you have your own DVR (Tivo, HTPC, etc.). Depending on how your provider transmits the channels and maps them, you may not even need a cablecard or set top box to decode them, which would eliminate any hardware rentals. Otherwise, you'd need a cablecard for a Tivo or a cablecard tuner in conjunction with a HTPC, but they tend to be less expensive than renting a box from your provider.


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## davefred99 (Oct 31, 2004)

ciscokid said:


> A question to all the cable cutters out there............
> 
> When I looked into cutting the cable about a year ago, I found that I would save about $80 a month be terminating my bundle package but then I would have to pony up almost $50 a month for stand alone internet and add to that about $10 a month for slig or Hulu Plus and it was asolutely not worth a $20 a month saving net net.
> 
> Or.............am I viewing it incorrectly?


It is true that your internet price may go up if you un-bundle it but you also will no longer have to rent or lease your cable boxes. some of that might be a mute point if you purchase a TIvo and pay a monthly or annual fee to them. I personally would not be using a Tivo if not for the fact I got a Roamio basic refurb with lifetime for $300.00 when they were clearing them out. If you are a cord cutter there are other cheaper options for OTA & DVR like Tablo,Channel Master or Silicon Dust HDHR PVR. Honestly if you use streaming content a DVR becomes less important as a lot of it is available on demand. I would also argue that the average savings on programming is more than $20 for me it is more like $50 per month savings all things considered.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

ciscokid said:


> A question to all the cable cutters out there............
> 
> When I looked into cutting the cable about a year ago, I found that I would save about $80 a month be terminating my bundle package but then I would have to pony up almost $50 a month for stand alone internet and add to that about $10 a month for slig or Hulu Plus and it was asolutely not worth a $20 a month saving net net.
> 
> Or.............am I viewing it incorrectly?


Well I was a satellite cutter so no change in Internet costs with or with satellite. But your point is true in many markets and just part of what people have to look at when deciding what services to purchase.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Well I was a satellite cutter so no change in Internet costs with or with satellite. But your point is true in many markets and just part of what people have to look at when deciding what services to purchase.


Have you looked into seeing if doing a basic TV bundle with your internet would end up cheaper than Internet alone? My TWC bundle was.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

HarperVision said:


> Have you looked into seeing if doing a basic TV bundle with your internet would end up cheaper than Internet alone? My TWC bundle was.


I live in a "Cable Free Zone" so my one and only choice for wired Internet access is Frontier DSL. I pay $30/mo (discounted with telephone service) for a 12/1 Mbps service but live far enough out so I only get 9.5Mbps down - but it is solid 24/7 now and I have no issues streaming Vudu HDX so all is good.


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## lmacmil (Oct 26, 2015)

mjh said:


> Back in July 2010, TiVo enabled me to cut the cord. I got rid of DirecTV who's fees were on a constant upward slope. I took the dish off of the mast that they installed for me and attached a Clearstream 2 anntenna to it. Then on the other end I put up a Tivo HDXL and haven't paid a red cent for television since. It's been great.


When my Comcast triple play was about to expire, I decided to minimize my Comcast bill. I bought an Ooma first and dropped voice. Then I bought a Tivo, a cable modem and a router. I used the Tivo with a cable card for a couple months then at the beginning of the year, I turned in the cable card and a DTA (I have an old TV in the basement.) By my calculations, it will take about 6 months of internet only to recover the out-of-pocket costs of the equipment I purchased. And if I miss cable too much, I can always go back. I'm hoping between OTA, Netflix and Amazon, I won't have to.


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## KSOC Kid (Nov 19, 2015)

ciscokid said:


> A question to all the cable cutters out there............
> 
> When I looked into cutting the cable about a year ago, I found that I would save about $80 a month be terminating my bundle package but then I would have to pony up almost $50 a month for stand alone internet and add to that about $10 a month for slig or Hulu Plus and it was asolutely not worth a $20 a month saving net net.
> 
> Or.............am I viewing it incorrectly?


 A lot of us never bundled in the first place. I had cable internet & Directv for 8 years. I had 4 tv's hooked up to 3 HD DVR's & 1 HD receiver, a grandfathered package at $89 per month, and always had 1 premium. My bill was usually between $140 & $150 per month. That does not include my internet($58). Damn good TV by the way, but like others, our viewing time shrunk and we only watched a few channels. I used to have satellite so I could watch my Philly sports teams. Now I stream Phils & Flyers.
After purchase of the Tivo, my TV bill is about $25 monthly (Hulu,Netflix,Showtime).


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## mjh (Dec 19, 2002)

I can't speak for anyone else's deals, but there is no bundle of services offered to me by Time Warner that is cheaper than my standalone internet provided by Earthlink over TWC's network. I pay $41.95/mo for 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. The cheapest bundle I can find on TWC's page at that speed is $109.99/mo. And that price they're only guaranteeing for 12 mos.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

mjh said:


> I can't speak for anyone else's deals, but there is no bundle of services offered to me by Time Warner that is cheaper than my standalone internet provided by Earthlink over TWC's network. I pay $41.95/mo for 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. The cheapest bundle I can find on TWC's page at that speed is $109.99/mo. And that price they're only guaranteeing for 12 mos.


Where are you? My TWC in Dayton, OH just distributed it's new price increases for this year and they included EarthLink Internet. It was the same price as TWC Internet and much higher than what you pay.

I just went to Earthlink's website and, based on my phone# and address info, they offered: "Cable Internet - Max" which is 20 Mbps and costs $52/month (after a promo rate of $40/month for the first 6 months). They had no service above that speed even though TWC offers up to 50 Mbps.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

KSOC Kid said:


> A lot of us never bundled in the first place. I had cable internet & Directv for 8 years. I had 4 tv's hooked up to 3 HD DVR's & 1 HD receiver, a grandfathered package at $89 per month, and always had 1 premium. My bill was usually between $140 & $150 per month. That does not include my internet($58). Damn good TV by the way, but like others, our viewing time shrunk and we only watched a few channels.* I used to have satellite so I could watch my Philly sports teams. Now I stream Phils & Flyers.*
> After purchase of the Tivo, my TV bill is about $25 monthly (Hulu,Netflix,Showtime).


What sources do you use to stream those games, NHL and MLB apps? What about Eagles (what a train wreck they are haha!  )?



mjh said:


> I can't speak for anyone else's deals, but there is no bundle of services offered to me by Time Warner that is cheaper than my standalone internet provided by Earthlink over TWC's network. I pay $41.95/mo for 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. The cheapest bundle I can find on TWC's page at that speed is $109.99/mo. And that price they're only guaranteeing for 12 mos.


I pay $48.95/month for 200/10 TWC Maxx internet and limited basic TV, which actually gives me a bunch of good cable channels for some reason.


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## mjh (Dec 19, 2002)

dlfl said:


> Where are you?


Charlotte, NC


> I just went to Earthlink's website and, based on my phone# and address info, they offered: "Cable Internet - Max" which is 20 Mbps and costs $52/month (after a promo rate of $40/month for the first 6 months).


Yeah I see the same thing when I go to earthlink's site. But it ain't the case. In fact, back in November I got this from TWC telling me about the speed increase.

I have no idea why Earthlink doesn't advertise this.


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## mjh (Dec 19, 2002)

HarperVision said:


> I pay $48.95/month for 200/10 TWC Maxx internet and limited basic TV, which actually gives me a bunch of good cable channels for some reason.


Wow! That's a great deal that I'd take, but I don't see it available to me at all. How did you get that deal?


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## hostage (Jul 27, 2004)

People still use land lines? We cut the cord from cable TV about 5 years ago and we have never looked back. We ended up getting a high quality Antenna and get a lot of good shows that way. I have amazon prime and netflix. I use to plug my windows tablet into the the tv to watch Hulu for free, don't know if they charge for PCs now. Every now and then we go to a hotel that has cable and we are always blown away how bad the content has become and how many commercials there are. We even got to watch the Bills game a few weeks ago, when all the other neighbors had an outage


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

mjh said:


> Wow! That's a great deal that I'd take, but I don't see it available to me at all. How did you get that deal?


I had a promotional free upgrade to the Maxx 200/10 internet while I had the full cable package for TV. When I cut back to the Limited Basic TV, they graciously carried over the promo for my internet. I think it's normally 100/5 that's included with that deal, IIRC.

http://www.oceanic.com/packages/?ii...promo&utm_campaign=DP_49_15m10d27_ultimate100

I swapped a couple numbers though, it's $49.85/month.


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## KSOC Kid (Nov 19, 2015)

> *What sources do you use to stream those games, NHL and MLB apps? What about Eagles (what a train wreck they are haha!  )?*


MLB.TV & NHL Gamecenter Live. Much better than the packages through Directv. I was getting Sunday Ticket for years, but I seem to be losing interest in pro football. Same thing happened to me with pro basketball. Eagles, ugh.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

KSOC Kid said:


> MLB.TV & NHL Gamecenter Live. Much better than the packages through Directv. I was getting Sunday Ticket for years, but I seem to be losing interest in pro football. Same thing happened to me with pro basketball. Eagles, ugh.


One tip if you did want NFL ST without DirecTV is that you can signup for nflsundayticket.tv using someone you know that meets the criteria like being enrolled in college, like my daughter. I got it for $99 for the entire season this way! 

I'm glad you said "pro basketball" and NOT the 76ers, because they certainly aren't an example of what Pro basketball looks like! 

Sad times to be a Philly phan!


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

HarperVision said:


> One tip if you did want NFL ST without DirecTV is that you can signup for nflsundayticket.tv using someone you know that meets the criteria like being enrolled in college, like my daughter. I got it for $99 for the entire season this way!
> 
> I'm glad you said "pro basketball" and NOT the 76ers, because they certainly aren't an example of what Pro basketball looks like!
> 
> Sad times to be a Philly phan!


What device did you use to watch Sunday Ticket? How is switching between channels when the games are streamed? And is the window that shows 8 of the games at once still browsable pretty quickly? I had thought about doing the same thing also but was hesitant as to how good the stream might be. And I am in the Philly area so feel your pain about the Eagles.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> What device did you use to watch Sunday Ticket? How is switching between channels when the games are streamed? And is the window that shows 8 of the games at once still browsable pretty quickly? I had thought about doing the same thing also but was hesitant as to how good the stream might be. And I am in the Philly area so feel your pain about the Eagles.


I used many devices from my iDevices, PS3, Roku, PC, etc. It just depended on where I was and how I wanted to stream. I didn't use the streaming part as much because I ended up reactivating my DirecTV account and I got NFL ST as a free promo with that after I already committed to the streaming option for $99.

I have a hybrid system using my TiVo Bolt for the limited basic channels from TWC with their 200/20 internet plan as a bundle. Was going to cut the proverbial cord and use an antenna, but it ended up being cheaper to get the double play bundle than internet alone, so I bagged the antenna idea and just use limited basic cable for the local networks and a few other cable type channels. Then I have my DirecTV system modulated into my cable system with a QAM/ATSC modulator from PVI, so my TiVos can pickup the DirecTV HD signal from an H24 receiver that's tied to my Genie H44 with HDD Kit as a DVR. It shows up in my guide as Channel "1.1 - DirecTV". I tune to that which gives me the picture, then we use the DirecTV RF remote to access the functions of the DTV receiver.

The channels for NFL ST streaming do load fairly quickly and actually have quite good picture qaulity. Not as good as the MLB app, but certainly more than watchable and near HD quality. It all depends on your internet speed and reliability of course though. If you use this service, you would be blacked out on Eagles games so would have to watch on local TV, FOX29 I think.

What area of the suburbs are you from? I grew up in Bucks County and graduated from CRHS.


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## KSOC Kid (Nov 19, 2015)

HarperVision said:


> One tip if you did want NFL ST without DirecTV is that you can signup for nflsundayticket.tv using someone you know that meets the criteria like being enrolled in college, like my daughter. I got it for $99 for the entire season this way!
> 
> I'm glad you said "pro basketball" and NOT the 76ers, because they certainly aren't an example of what Pro basketball looks like!
> 
> Sad times to be a Philly phan!


I actually used the Sunday Ticket Student discount this fall. Wasn't too impressed. Hated that you had to log out of one device so you could watch on another. I mean log out completely on say Roku, to watch on macbook. Also some of the streaming was really bad. I think next year I'll just listen to Merrill and Mike online, as I did this year anyway with the Ticket sound down. Cannot stand NFL TV announcers. But baseball & hockey streaming is excellent on all platforms I've tried.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

HarperVision said:


> .........
> I pay $48.95/month for 200/10 TWC Maxx internet and limited basic TV, which actually gives me a bunch of good cable channels for some reason.





mjh said:


> Wow! That's a great deal that I'd take, but I don't see it available to me at all. How did you get that deal?


You get that by being in one of TWC's "Maxx" areas located in major metropolitan areas like NYC or paradise (in HarperVision's case), where they have both competition and a huge subscriber base.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

dlfl said:


> You get that by being in one of TWC's "Maxx" areas located in major metropolitan areas like NYC or paradise (in HarperVision's case), where they have both competition and a huge subscriber base.


I don't know if I would call Hawaiian Telcom DSL "competition", nor the rural Big Island of Hawaii a "huge subscriber base", but ok. 

I think we just get things that spill over from the metropolis that is Honolulu and Waikiki, on Oahu.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

HarperVision said:


> I used many devices from my iDevices, PS3, Roku, PC, etc. It just depended on where I was and how I wanted to stream. I didn't use the streaming part as much because I ended up reactivating my DirecTV account and I got NFL ST as a free promo with that after I already committed to the streaming option for $99.
> 
> I have a hybrid system using my TiVo Bolt for the limited basic channels from TWC with their 200/20 internet plan as a bundle. Was going to cut the proverbial cord and use an antenna, but it ended up being cheaper to get the double play bundle than internet alone, so I bagged the antenna idea and just use limited basic cable for the local networks and a few other cable type channels. Then I have my DirecTV system modulated into my cable system with a QAM/ATSC modulator from PVI, so my TiVos can pickup the DirecTV HD signal from an H24 receiver that's tied to my Genie H44 with HDD Kit as a DVR. It shows up in my guide as Channel "1.1 - DirecTV". I tune to that which gives me the picture, then we use the DirecTV RF remote to access the functions of the DTV receiver.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the info on the stream. One of my buddies has Sunday Ticket and the few weekends I went over to watch, he explained to me about how you can't switch to the Eagles game feed through their 8 window screen directly, understandable from a local market standpoint but a PIA as a viewer.

I live on the edge of Chester County right across the Schuylkill from Montgomery County in Spring City, probably about 45-60 minutes from the Council Rock area. Maybe longer considering how bad traffic is out here these days. Small world!


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