Cord Cutter's Cost Comparison Calculator

Where do "exceeding bandwidth charges" enter into the cost calculation? Verizon's $15 per 1GB can be costly.

It is an appealing idea. But living in the country means my only internet service is satellite. No cable, no DSL, no cell-phone. And the satellite has serious bandwidth limits. Even without streaming, I often run over my monthly allowance.

But at least it now has decent speed. Three years ago, it was not much better than dial-up.

Let me know when we can get NBC, CBS, ABC and WiFi phone for less $$.

I was all set to drop my DishNet TV, called them up to do so and they offered me my $50 per month off my $102.03 package. Just a thought. If and when we even get a decent reliable high speed signal out here in the hinterland I may drop it altogether, but until then this is a pretty good deal for 250 channels and Sirius-XM satellite radio. I was told it was because I had been a customer for a long time. Just to be clear when I had DirectTV they never offered me any deals after my contract was up. Even wanted me to pay for upgrading my set top box w/DVR. This deal also upgraded my set top box for free.

CLAUDIA - RE: SMART TV. If you have an HDMI port on it, you can plug your computer into it, if you have a desk-top that can't move in less than half and hour, but have wi-fi in your home you can get something like the Amazon TV 'stick' that will plug in and pick up your wi-fi signals as I understand it - correct me if I'm wrong -- ANYONE. I think I read that the Amazon firestick (I made that up, but it sounds like what Amazon would call their device) is about $100 now.

Thank you for your informative site. I wanted very much to do this and was confused by so many sources of conflicting information. I found disablemycable.com which answered all my questions. I bought a Leaf antenna on Amazon, a Roku 3, signed up for Netflix and Hulu Plus. I have everything I want to watch and much more.

@Claudia the reason you were told that you need a smart TV is that the assumption was that you didn't have or want to use an external streaming device such as a Roku, Apple TV, or one of the "streaming sticks". The so called smart-TVs typically have the streaming service software built into them so you don't need a separate box. Note that also most blu-ray players also have these streaming services built in. As long as your TV has a HDMI input then you can use it just fine with an external streaming box or blu-ray player.

I my self have a smart TV, blu-ray player and still use an external streaming device (Roku) as I prefer the nicer interface.

Hope this helps

1st, I'm not a Millenial (I'm tail end baby boomer), so the Dish/Sling doesn't sound interesting, and not in the demographic of Dish's choice, anyway. But where are the Millenials getting their Internet so that they can watch Netflix? I live in an area that doesn't get all the channels OTA. Aren't they paying for their Internet connection?

Thank you for this Bob. This is great info

I am a Canadian that cut the cord and very happy at that I live in the country and have xplornet satellite internet 50Gigs a month for 70 bucks
bought a roku 2 box it makes my old and thrusty tube tv a smart tv subscribe only to netflix enjoy you tube and facebook on it and get a miriad of other services on roku
another great service I use is called STREEMA is on the net IT IS FREE it actually offers Word wide live and video tv and live radio aniwhere My World is a lot smaller our days
Give it a try guys
sincerely Fred

I guess I'm still living in the dark ages. I watch tv on an analog television, hooked up to a cable box. This tv has the ability to watch DVDs and VCRs. If I got rid of my cable & purchased a HD tv, I would purchase a Digital HDTV Antennas & Accessories. Have seen them in action and the picture is beautiful. My husband likes to watch shows on Netflix, but there are very few movies or shows I would want to watch. Wished they offered more tv shows in the 50's & 60's and a few ones.

I do have internet - 50mbs for $46/month and I bought my own modem and router - Comcast is now negotiating with existing customers once AT&T comes into your area; cut $30-$35 off my monthly bill. Purchased a refurbished Ooma telephone and pay $3.50/month for telephone (plugged it into our existing base and all our handsets work fine) - still use our old number and it works with 911. I've used an antenna for about 3 years now (there are about 25-30 English speaking channels in our area - started with an inside but moved to a larger outside antenna to pick up the lower VHF stations; use Windows Media Center (WMC) with PC (refurbished Dell XPS 7100) as TV guide and DVR and external hard drive to store recorded shows (removed everything on the computer except what was needed for the TV and repartioned hard drive to 90g - very good response for streaming. I use a WMC plugin for Netflix and plugin for the, now unsupported but still works, Kylo Browser (goes to TV and other internet sites from WMC). With an inexpensive Rosewill remote, all that I've mentioned so far makes this very friendly for my 79 year old mother. Already had Amazon Prime (free books, music and videos as well as shipping) which I share with my mother (her Kindle is registered to me so we share my Kindle unlimited account as well) and have Netflix.
Purchased PlayOn/PlayLater and got Chromecast free on a special - just plug the Chromecast in a free HDMI slot on the TV and I'm casting (which I don't have to do much because of the Kylo Browser). I record internet shows overnight for later viewing with PlayLater and PlayMark - works great. I do pay an annual fee for VPN so get Canadian TV and British TV (BBC iPlayer rocks!). We also use our library to check out TV series - US, British, Australian - if it's not on Netflix. That's the basics; I do use XBMC for Playon (lots of internet video apps Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, ect.) as it doesn't have a WMC plugin but I don't use it often because the Kylo browser still works for us.
My annual layout for internet, TV and phone is around $810; our Comcast bundle before all these changes was over $2000/yr. You can add another $120/yr for Kindle unlimited and that takes care of our annual home entertainment for TV, books, music, and movies. Sounds simple now, lots of trial and error; went from complicated and beautiful looking media center that needed constant care to simple WMC that needs no special care.

I cut my cable three years ago. I have a high speed internet connection, attached a ROKU box to my non-smart TV, subscribed to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus. I also subscribed to ACORN TV for $5 a month because I like British TV. I don't need a DVR, because streamed programming is always on all the time. Even if I stop watching a show in the middle, it will resume where I left off the next time I get on. With a ROKU player, the reception is crystal clear and it rarely buffers. It is a reasonable cost, and is less than half what I used to pay. I use an HD antenna for NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and FOX. The only thing that Sling TV could use to attract me would be to add Fox News to their lineup. Without that, they don't have anything that would beat what I already have.

This is not really cutting the cord, Internet is not over the air, anywhere. Unless you spend lots of time at a public WiFi spot or a coffee house. They will get your money, somehow.

You are talking predominantly for USA in this article.
What about Australia?

Sling sounds like a loser. But who would create a losing idea like this? Could it be the same loser who decided to feature the continually discredited CNN instead of the station that gets many times the viewers, Fox News?

About four years ago, I decided cable was a near total waste of money for me. So, I got rid of cable TV and telephone from Comcast, keeping just the Internet signal. Comcast immediately made a deal to include basic cable, basically for free. With the monthly savings I bought my own modem, a brand new iPad, a new phone, Magic Jack services, a Netflix subscription, and had a friend build a very good computer. Haven't missed cable one iota, almost never use the basic cable, and never once used 890 of the 900 full cable channels. Totally happy with my decision, though my TV demands are probably minimal compared to most. Also, not a phone user, so Magic Jack is more than adequate. Mostly, I certainly don't miss paying Comcast for cable I barely used.

About four years ago, I decided cable was a near total waste of money for me. So, I got rid of cable TV and telephone from Comcast, keeping just the Internet signal. Comcast immediately made a deal to include basic cable, basically for free. With the monthly savings I bought my own modem, a brand new iPad, a new phone, Magic Jack services, a Netflix subscription, and had a friend build a very good computer. Haven't missed cable one iota, almost never use the basic cable, and never once used 890 of the 900 full cable channels. Totally happy with my decision, though my TV demands are probably minimal compared to most. Also, not a phone user, so Magic Jack is more than adequate. Mostly, I certainly don't miss paying Comcast for cable I barely used.

Bob, I look forward to your daily news letter and learn a lot from the comments, usually. As the majordomo of this site do comments like those from FactsRule offer us anything but a troll's angry political rant? How does this advance a legitimate discussion of the issue du jour? What's your policy about this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I admit to not reading the entire comment before posting it. So I've edited out the political bits. But it did pique my curiousity. According to several sources I found, Fox News does in fact have 3X the prime-time viewership of both CNN and MSNBC. So from that perspective, Dish's choice of CNN in their Sling package does seem odd.

Have been reading all of the posts as we have been searching for how to get rid of Time Warner! I'm still confused as our favorites are History 1 & 2, Discovery, etc. We do not like sports & minimal news as what they say is scripted by the elites. I watch On Demand mostly as I'm on my CPU working daily. Does someone have a suggestion for us? We can not utilize an antenna in our area, (shoot), so can't figure out how to get around T.W. and still see networks and the listed above plus some on our Smart TV's which are not totally set up because T.W. wants even more than the $200.00 per month we already pay. PLEASE HELP!