A little over a decade ago I unplugged the Cable from my TV. It was an awesome, liberating experience. I still remember the initial feeling of not knowing what to do with myself, this quickly was replaced with reading and fun, exciting outdoor activities that actually involved doing something. Unfortunately I plugged the TV back in for a Superbowl and fell back into old habits.
Fast forward to the present. Over the past year or so I’ve noticed that I’ve been “watching” less and less TV. My DVR is set to record fewer shows – and even those I don’t seem to care that much about. Most of my TV time has been background noise while I’m sitting at the computer working on something. So after talking with my brother (who cut his TV and Internet this year) I found myself fixated on the idea of cutting the cable again.
This time my transition has been more gradual. I’ve removed most of the DVR subscriptions. Instead of channel surfing for noise I’ve gone to my Netflix queue. And I’ve been reading more at night. The less present the TV has been, the less I’ve missed it and I decided to take the plunge.
After researching I settled on a outdoor HD Antenna by RCA (see bottom of this post for more details) which I purchased from Amazon. My barometer for success was an indoor test. Namely if any signal was picked up sitting on my floor haphazardly pointed towards the source I would be in business. Not only was the test a successful by my standards, the signal was clear and beautiful. Last night I had the antenna installed on the roof, and didn’t even bother with directional tuning – my TV reports 98% signal strength. The NFL season opener with the Cowboys @ Giants was gorgeous – better in fact than the HD feed on the still plugged in Cable.
Today I called Verizon and cancelled my Cable service. That was the adventure that I expected, with a few surprises:
- According to Verizon they cannot generate a bill if you only have one service (in my case Internet) without a phone line, and that the only way is with Credit Card billing. Fine if you want to pay the fee I’ll gladly take the Amex points.
- My TV+Internet Bundle was $99.99 / month. The Internet only (same speed) cost is $89.99. I considered keeping basic Cable for the extra $10 bucks except you need to pay an additional fee for the box. That’s right, you can’t actually watch TV if you have a TV package without an additional fee.
- Not really a surprise but I spent 61 minutes on the phone (mostly in hold waiting) to cancel service.
What did this cost / what am I saving?
- RCA ANT751R Outdoor Antenna $40.77 via Amazon
- 50ft Quad Shielded RG6 Cable $14.52 via Monoprice
- Installation $120.00 (easier and probably about the same as buying the ladder)
Total Cost = $175.29
Estimated First Year Savings = $1,128.36
TL;DR
I cancelled my cable, installed an HD Antenna and will save over $1,000 this year.
I “ditched” DirecTv over a year ago. So long $100 a month TV bill..
I use the RCA 751ANT antenna to pull in 45 stations. The HD picture is alot clearer than DirecTV. I have Netflix and Hulu Plus on my AppleTV.
I no longer feel that I “have” to watch TV because I am not paying that much $ for it.
I am not sure that I will ever returnto pay Tv under it’s current business model. It is not that I couldn’t afford it. I just do not need it.
I feel the exact same way. I’m curious what your experience with Hulu Plus has been – is it worth it? Do you use it?
Hulu + works well as a dvr for tv shows on ABC, Fox and NBC.
The movie selection is not up to par with Netflix. But, for $8 a month it is not too bad.
Max, for a long time (about ten years) we had a decent DSL connection through glasscity.net, eventually transfering to AT&T at the end. Before that, my wife and I shared an Internet connection via a 56k dialup modem, some Windows software, a second Ethernet card in my PC connected via a “reversing cable” to an Ethernet card in her PC. We became Internet junkies almost immediately. I don’t remember when we decided to re-connect the Time Warner cable television service. It was probably just before the national switch-over to digital television. We treated ourselves to two LCD HDTVs around Christmas that year.
We added Roadrunner “broadband” via Time Warner cable four or five years ago and, for awhile, had both the DSL with a landline phone, as well as cable with a
VOIP phone, all the “premium” and “on demand” video available, and Basic Roadrunner service. The cost of all this was more than $200 per month.
Three years ago we ditched everything except the Roadrunner. Our cell phones replaced the landline. An amplified RCA indoor antenna provides all the HD television we care to watch. From time to time I watch a network kindergarten news show off-the-air. Mostly we rent or purchase DVDs, or watch movies and television shows (sans commercials!) on Netflix or Amazon video using our Sony PS3. Hulu is also available, as well as a couple more subscription services, but Netflix and Amazon are our “go to” choice right now. I have never found anything on Hulu I am willing to pay to watch; Hulu seems to me to be mostly re-cycled commercial television.
We now have four PCs, including an Intel Core i3 HP laptop my brother gave to me as a birthday present two years ago, two Intel Core i7 towers I built this year, and an ancient Intel Pentium 4 my wife gave to me as a birthday present six years ago. The Pentium uses Windows XP Pro SP3; the other three use Windows 7 Professional.
We are still Internet junkies of course, but television is now a choice instead of a habit. Savings from “cutting the cable” are at least $1200 per year. I would ditch Time Warner if an ISP friend could hook me up with a line-of-sight wireless link to his downtown antenna farm, but there are trees in the way. Waiting for someone to run fiberoptics down my street or offer broadband over the air at a reasonable cost.
Howard,
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s amazing how little the cable is missed once it’s gone.
My youngest brother is completely cordless relying solely on a LTE Internet connection. He’s streaming Netflix and playing XBox Live without any complaint whatsoever. I have friends who have reported similar experiences with WiMax uplinks (Sprint / Clear). I don’t know if I could go that far, as much as I don’t care for the latency with Verizon FiOS all in all I’ve found it to be a good value for the money.
-Max