I should add that I'm one of those dropped subscribers. Every series we watched on Netflix is done, and there wasn't anything new we planned on starting. We're busy with the other streaming services.
Cord Cutters
- Thread starter Wolf
- Start date
Buy stock now!
Screw Betamax and Blockbuster. I'm going with Service Merchandise.
I used to work there after I graduated from high school.
I sold electronics, and worked in the warehouse for extra hours.
Hey! I worked at Blockbuster for a few months after high school.
I'm revisiting all this, because my cable bill has gone haywire. What was supposedly a 3-year, 3-tiered discount has turned into a 5 or 6 tiered clusterfuck. When I first signed-up after building the house, it was like $150 with the max discounts. Then $175, then $200, then $225, now $250, and when we called, they said it will be like $280 next month. Those prices are for the bundle - internet, cable, phone (we only got a phone line because it supposedly yielded a bigger package discount).
We called to get our bill lowered, and get rid of Showtime (but keep HBO). They said we can also remove NFL Network, but what they actually did was remove our (now grandfathered) channel package. So we lost a bunch of channels, and Showtime, and the new bill is $225. I called back, and if I want those other channels back, it's another $12. But our service is now in a 7-day transition period, so I can't do anything right now.
Mrs. Scotch just wants to tell them to go screw, and sign-up for YouTube TV, and I'm coming around to that idea. The cable company charges $10/mo for each of our 2 boxes, plus $12 for DVR service. That's just nuts. And when I looked at the breakdown of the bill, our phone line (that we never asked for) is $15/mo, discounted from $30. It was supposed to actually save us money, which it may have in the first year or two. But now it's an add-on expense.
We still need internet from the cable company, so that's $75 plus some bullshit fees, totaling $80. YouTube TV is $65. HBO/HBOMax add-on is $15. And I still want to add Philo. Jon is correct that YTTV now has Comedy Central and Hallmark, but they don't have AXS TV (good music shows and concerts), or MTV Live (not really MTV but a concert channel, used to be Palladia), or History, Lifetime, Magnolia Network, Destination America, Science Channel, A&E, or Vice. Philo is $25, bringing the grand total to $185. But we'd also be ditching the phone line (don't care).
I'd have to get another Fire TV stick for the bedroom TV, but I think that's it. And that would completely replace our cable TV. We'd get all the live local networks, all the sports channels, and all the cable network channels. I plan to get the 2nd Fire stick, get the free-trials activated, and then dump the old hardware back at the cable office.
For me it’s between YouTube TV and Directv stream. They have similar channel packages, but directv has my regional sports networks where YTV does not. And since Comcast doesn’t let it’s subscribers watch the Avalanche, Nuggets or Rockies, that would be my next logical choice. The question is, is that fact alone worth $15 more a month. ($85 vs $70 a month). I already have HBO Max, Amazon Video, AppleTV+ and ESPN+ which covers everything else.
We've been pretty happy with our DirecTV Stream so far. It's the closest we could find to old school cable, with all the channels we'd need. Works well with my Roku & Amazon Fire stick.
So this old guy (me) went ahead and cut the cord - so to speak. Actually, the cord (coax cable) is still coming into the house and going to the modem, but the cable boxes are gone. I got a 2nd Fire TV stick and remote. I got the 4k one, which was on sale for the same price as the regular one ($40). I'm using it in the living room to replace the old Fire stick, which I moved to the bedroom TV.
As an aside, I have to mention something that should probably go in the "How Does Shit Work?" thread. For my entire adult life, every time I got a new remote - either a cable remote or a universal - I've had to go through a horrible set of steps, where you use a pamphlet full of codes for every brand of TV, receiver, cable box, etc., and try to find the code that works for your particular equipment. It's always some fucked-up series of button sequences, blinking LEDs, and steps for each possible code. And you'd have to try it over and over, until it successfully turned your TV off and on, or adjusted the volume. And god help you if you had a home theater receiver for sound: you had to follow instructions to program a "breakthrough" device. That is, a device different than the one the remote was set to control.
With the Fire TV stick, you connect it, hit the power button on the little remote that's included, and somehow it turns my TV and receiver on. Then at one point in the setup, it plays a sound, and I try the volume button, and then tell it if it controls the volume (it does, even though the volume is on the receiver). And that's it. It just works, I don't know how.
Back to the cord-cutting. I signed-up for YouTube TV ($65) with HBO/HBO Max ($15). I will probably add Philo later. Mrs. Scotch waited in line for 1.5 hours to return the boxes and remotes, and have the phone line turned off. Apparently, yesterday was the day that all the summer rentals open, so it wasn't a great time to be at the cable office. They charged us $19 to change service. We're keeping the internet, which - by the way - just got upped from 100mb/s to 200 mb/s. I measure 233 mb/s in the house. Internet service is $80. So that's $160/mo vs. $240/mo for the cable service (including a $30/mo discount they just gave us). The undiscounted cable price is $270. Even when I add Philo, the new cost will be $185.
There's a "live" button right on the new Fire TV remote, so after turning it on, I can go right to the YouTube TV live channel menu. When I was setting it up, it asked me what I wanted to add to my "library", which is their repository for recordings. I started with SNL and This Is Us. When I checked the library, it had about 30 seasons of SNL (every episode), and the entire new season of This Is Us. That's not what I was expecting,
There's also a phone app, which is pretty wild. When you have it show the live TV channel listings, the show at the top of the screen is shown as live TV. You can scroll the listing at any speed, and you still get a live TV view that changes as fast as you can scroll. You can cast any listed program to the TV.
Overall, it's been pretty easy to have it work in a similar way to our cable TV. I'm finding that the live-view phone app increases the variety of what we watch, when we're just perusing the menu. I had to separately download the TV app on both of our TVs, and setup both, but that was pretty simple. And surprisingly, the Wi-Fi signal strength in our 1st floor master bedroom is good, even though the router is upstairs in the loft. So far, so good.
Last edited:
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
The latest boxes from our cable company do this. The cord is cut as all cable boxes go over WiFi through the fancier cable modem which also provides us Wifi and internet. But when you turn it on it does a little song and dance and figures out what brand of TV you have. Then it asks you to adjust the volume and confirms it works. If not it chooses a different set of codes until one works. This has worked for all our TVs except for the new RCA TV in my wife's office. I think RCA doesn't play properly by the standards.
That's the difference between living in a big modern city like Toronto, vs. all the rural towns I've lived in, which are always behind on technology.
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
But there are no ma & pa local providers anymore. No one city cable companies. They are all multi-state conglomerates so the location of the cable drop should not affect the technology available. Unless they are just trying to clear up old inventory on the poor saps who have little choice of company.
You're half right. All the towns I've lived in have either had Comcast/Xfinity cable or Time Warner/Spectrum. But when I moved from a more densely populated town in NH to the more spread-out adjacent town, the original provider was Adelphia, which was a 3rd rate company in NH. Eventually, they got bought by Comcast, but we always got stuck with low-capacity cabling and older boxes, because the costs to upgrade were prohibitive.
Likewise, I'm now living in a Maine town serviced by Spectrum, which used to be Time Warner. All the surrounding towns have Comcast. Because we are a beach community, we have miles of crappy wiring, and old boxes to match. My new house has all new wiring, but the boxes are still a generation behind the Comcast stuff.
And in NH, they got Verizon FiOS many years ago. And then Verizon left, and it was maintained by a company called Fairpoint. They haven't upgraded equipment in 20 years. They just provide maintenance and sustainability.
*beavis chuckle*
Found one!
Dunbarton Telephone Company | Services
dunbartontelephone.com
Then Fairpoint collapsed and now it's Consolidated Communications.
Consolidated Communications to Acquire FairPoint Communications, Inc.
Creates a stronger business and broadband communications provider to better serve its customers Doubles revenue, adjusted EBITDA and provides significant scale and resources Increases fiber route miles to 35,100 across 24 states Adds more than 3,000 lit buildings and an extensive fiber-
www.consolidated.com
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Until they get acquired.