Cord-Cutting: Does it Really Cut Costs? - Comments Page 1

I get about 45 channels over the air and they are totally useless except for Jeopardy. considering the amount of advertising inserted, IMHO one would have to be crazy to pay money to get more of same.

Every person has to do the cost analysis for his own situation. For me, dumping satellite has saved money. My discounted (via retention department) satellite bill was 85.00 when I discontinued. And, it went up steadily each year, even with the discounts.

I am already an Amazon Prime customer, so had Prime Video anyway at the time I discontinued satellite.

The issue was replacing things like the History Channel and Investigation Discovery. At $20/per month, Philo streaming service provides me those and many more channels. I don’t care about the sports channels, and those are what really drive up costs.

I also go a good aerial antenna for broadcast tv. This gets me local news and some of the substations that I like.

Throw in the use of free YouTube for all sorts of video entertainment, including concerts and documentaries and the like, and I’ve got plenty of content to enjoy.

Cutting the cord from satellite has been a good move for me.

When I discontinued my landline with AT&T, my U-Verse went up. I was able to negotiate a reduced fee. My landline bill was going up and up due to taxes and fees.

I am retired. I try to keep costs as low as possible. I rarely watch regular TV. I watch mostly movies & specific TV shows. But,this cost has been creeping up. I added Netflix streaming to my DVD plan. I also have Amazon Prime. I added Criterion which came on the scene 2 years ago. Initially, it was just Amazon Prime and Netflix DVD.

I recently found, either here or at another website, an app for watching TV via my Fire stick. I don't watch TV for a number of reasons but one of them is the terrible reception. With this app, which was free, I will be able to watch the Academy Awards on my TV next year.

I canceled Directv back in 2010. I was on verizon's dsl plan until they dropped that and I went with their FIOS (200mb, good stuff). But I've with netflix since 2006. DVDs and Streaming. And a few years ago I signed up for Amazon Prime (shipping and video), so I am good to go. I am old-school and despise all the on-screen text (besides the huge logos) that gets slapped on to the screen. Not to mention the 1/3 of the broadcast run-time devoted to ads.
Oh, as far as sports goes, I gave up caring about baseball after the 1994 strike. And nowadays, whenever I've seen any clip all I see are the overlays of pitch zones and advertising plastered on the stadium. So good riddance.
I will wait for any of the tv shows that might be on an exclusive streaming pkg (e.g., cbs) to come out on DVD and then rent them.
I use a VOIP phone system which is set to ring my cell simultaneously. So no 'play' pkg from verizon. The voip plan costs $10 but the fees/taxes = $12. Yeah, costs more in taxes & fees than the vendor is charging me.

You can consider me a "never-cutter"as I never had cable TV service in the places I lived.I lived in the LA metro area for over 30 years and relied on OTA TV service to see shows.All I needed was a good antenna and this was true with analog TV and the new digital TV that started in 2009.

I moved to my current location in 2013 and have no TV service at all.With me being retired,I had to consider expenses and cable TV is on the bottom of my list.Seeing the current shows offered,most are boring,obscene or repetitive,so I am not interested in the service at all.

I am a cord-cutter, but for me it's not about saving money; it's about no commercials and watching/streaming what I choose to watch on my schedule.

I cut the cord in 2019. I had Direct-TV, ATT's Internet-50, and phone service. I was paying IIRC about $220.00 per month.

I dropped the Direct-TV and phone services and switched my Internet package to ATT's Fiber-300 for Internet service. I got the Uverse Local-Basic package for local channels, but only for my living room TV (about $90.00 per month).

I got a MagicJack for my phone service (about $40.00 per month).

I got three Roku Home devices for streaming TV (a one-time cost of less than $100.00). I subscribed to the SLing-TV blue package with cloud service, and one expansion bundle so I can get the Science Chanel (about $40.00 per month).

My TV - Internet - Phone costs are now about $135.00 per month for TV and Internet services. Then with my Magic-Jack phone service at $40.00 annually, that works out to about $3.34 per month, so I'm paying less than $140.00 per month for an overall savings of over $80.00 each month.

I am not a big sports fan, and since all of our preferences will vary, you may not reap the savings I am getting.

Ernie

I have been cable and satilite free since 2006.

I am a fan of Roku, have one in every room, with one 55" Roku TV and a 65" Roku TV for my father - it is SO much simpler to use than a regular TV (my father is 94 years old).

With Netflix, Hulu. Amazon Prime, and my PlexTv with my 2947 movies and TV shows on media drive (plextv will let you watch even if you are out of town) I am spending only about 28 dollars a month.

I have the WONDERFUL option of only having Stars (for Outlander), Epix (for Pennyworth), and Disney+ (for Mandalorian) then cancel till the next season of those shows (which is impossible with cable subscriptions)

Best of all with cable cutting? NO COMMERCIALS !!

Magic Jack is $40/year, not per month as Ernest states in one place. My previous phone service was more than that per month.

I bought an amplified indoor antenna for a one-time cost of about $39 and get all the channels I want. My previous basic cable bill was $59/mo.

True, my Internet only cost has risen as Bob states, but the total cord-cutting savings more than offsets the relatively minor Internet cost increase.

I never wanted cable so I never signed up. I literally cut the thick cord present in my condo when I bought it in 2000. Now I watch over the air television, getting over 60 channels in a major metro area. My preferences run to PBS, and occasionally something else I discover on another set of channels. One relative is buying a couple of sources of British television shows, which have a low annual not monthly fee. I might consider that someday. We both like a lot of the same shows from the Brits.

One good fortune is that my building has fiber optic cable wired to each unit 2 years ago, part of some program for multi unit residential buildings. I get the broadband only, and it is usually 120 Mbps at $50/month, a price $3 a month less than DSL had been and about 60 times faster download speed, all with AT&T. There was no forcing to get Uverse, which was good as I do not want it. Someday the price will rise, but it has not risen yet.

I want to show movies from the library on my television but am having trouble making that work from my mobile phone. Once I get that working, I may pay extra for the British sources.

A couple of years ago, I cut the cord with AT&T. I was paying about $140 a month for TV and a landline phone. I cancelled that and went with OTA antenna plus a TIVO for time-shifting programs. The TIVO subscription is $15/mo. Using an antenna for local channels can be trickier than you would think. You have to find a good antenna and a good spot to place the antenna, and that takes a little trial and error. But now I'm getting around 50 channels including all the major networks, and all for only $15/m. I do not use any streaming service. If you are going to pay for streaming, then it rapidly approaches the same price as cable TV.

Netflix should be a stand alone decision, independent of the cord cutting choice. In 2015 the TV portion of the Cox bill was about $110 which included a $10 movie pak. The phone portion was about $30. I now pay $60 for YouTube TV which includes all local channels plus PBS. I use VOIPo (Internet) phone for $11. So instead of $140 for TV and phone I now pay $71. My Internet bill from Cox is $67 and works fine with Roku and multiple simultaneous HDTVs. My total bill went from $206 (2015 price) to $138 (2020 price). The only channel I lost is Pac-12 sports which is expected to be added to YouTube TV soon.

Check with your internet provider, too. I have basic cable (mostly broadcast stations) because they gave me a better deal with the tv/internet package than internet alone.
I still don't watch it, but there it is.
I just don't watch enough to justify any streaming service. On the rare occasion I want to watch a new movie, I'll rent it from Amazon or Google. But I may only do that once a month.

"We" still have DirecTV. That is mainly because it's a family thing. Sports were my BIG thing, but now, with the mess they've become at all levels, even that's not worth it. DirecTV could go, if I was the only one with a say. I also use an OTA antenna which brings in ~40 channels, ~10 of them worth watching, ever. I also have Amazon Prime and a Fire TV stick. I watch an old movie or old cartoon (yes, cartoon) maybe once a week, if that. For me, TV watching has declined in every way, from whatever source.

I cut the cord in 2014. We had a Comcast bundle (internet & cable) and was paying approx $150 monthly. We had numerous issues with Comcast and every time they fixed one thing something else would go wrong. Customer service was awful to boot & I did not like who I became when trying to resolve an issue with them. Finally had enough & dropped all their equipment off on the counter.
We bought 3 mohu leaf digital antennas & for the initial cost of about $140 we were able to view all local channels(ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, PBS) plus some. It was very hard to be without internet but we held off til Feb 2019 and finally broke down. Stand alone internet as you mentioned has gone up considerably. Its with comcast and after the initial year of $69 internet service it has now gone up to a little over $80 monthly. Last Aug we purchased 2 firesticks and stream netflix & hulu which is approx $16 month combined. so overall still saving but with the cost of internet going up I dont know how much longer that will hold true. I dont understand why (other than that the cable companies can) the prices are so high to begin with.

Well, I stayed with my cable TV and still enjoy a steeply discounted triple-play plan including 400 MB internet, cable TV, and home phone. I do have to call each year and re-negotiate a new plan when their "12-month special rate" expires, but I have done this for years and pay the same monthly rate I was paying 10 years ago. I tried a Fire Stick and hated it because I always had to log in with my cable TV subscription to watch the "locked" channels. I guess I'm one of the few remaining happy cable subscribers!

We dropped all but Internet in 2015. Fiber optic service is about $61/month. Netflix is $2 net per month because most of the fee is covered T-Mobile (which also saved us a significant amount of money over Verizon). We watch weather and news OTA, and occasionally a show on "regular" TV, but most of our viewing is streaming. I echo Thomas - no commercials, on our schedule, and I'd add the ability to pause to refresh our drinks.

I dropped cable in January and cut my Spectrum (now internet only) bill by $110/mo from $185 to $75. I use an indoor antenna for local stations. I have Hulu (free with my Sprint cell service) and Amazon Prime (I'd have that regardless as I shop a lot). I also subscribe to Netflix (basic plan ~ $10/mo). I get everything I could want and then some. No regrets for the cut.

prices are going up because we have no one in our government to help with price gouging. they all work for big business,that is how they become millionaires in less than a year after being in office

At the end of the day, it's just not worth the effort to cut the cord. I get the basic package from DirecTV, which is bundled by AT&T with my high-speed internet (I work from home). It gives me the channels I want at a reasonable price, without a lot of energy going into figuring out which service to get.