The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

AKA living without cable TV, and instead using streaming services, HD antennae, and other a la carte content.

Does anyone do it?

I'm potentially moving to a new place and it's making me re-think a lot of what I've been doing in this regard.

Good Timing,I'm on that edge, Tired of paying a high monthly bill to Directv,that I don't watch as often.Add since AT&T has taken over directv I've had nothing but Billing (Especially concerning with MLB extra innings,and NFL Sunday ticket.problems)

I'm going to Go with MLB's premium streaming service next year (Perhads the 1 team Package,and just watch the Cubs games),instead of buying Extra innings.

NFL Football and NFL network,are probably my biggest oncern...

I've been looking into Youtubes T.V. service, and Sling T.v packages (I'm already an Amazon Prime member,so I use Amazon Prime Video)

I'm looking into this.  Youtube's service seems the most inline with what I want...only one that included CBS and FOX so I can watch football on Sundays.

I stopped my cable TV subscription in 2007.

I use an HD antenna for most of my live sports watching, which is primarily NFL Sundays + the NBA Finals.  However, I do also take advantage of the old "use a relative's login info to access the ESPN streaming app," so I'm not truly 100% cord-cut.

Dan, do you use any kind of DVR box?

And do you have one of the 3 services that have a basic channel package (Sling, PS Vue, ...can't remember the third)

I do not have a DVR box, and I don't have Sling or any other paid basic-channel service.  I just use an HD antenna for my basic channels.

Luckily, I live right between the SF and Sacramento broadcast markets, so I get channels from both regions.  I get about 60 over-the-air channels total, though admittedly some of them have unreliable reception.

I feel silly for not thinking of the HD antenna...I could do that and combo with PSVue, YouTube Red or whatever.  You guys might have just saved me a bunch of money.

I already use a Mohu leaf HD Antenna over the air.Directv didn't offer local channels in my area when I first got directv. So It saved me $3-$7 a month (I'm not even sure what it is anymore)
The past couple of years has brought quite a few channels...I get
ABC
CBS
NBC
Fox
CW
3 PBS stations (PBS,Create,and PBS kids)
Grit
Laugh
Metv
Antenna T.V
CoziTv
Bounce
QVC
Ion
Movies! (channel)
2 religious channels
an old channel that runs old TNN network reruns from the 80's
A Spanish language channel

I'm thinking the Youtubetv subscription might be the way I'm leaning...

Strange question,but How many GB's a month of Data are you'd guy's going through a month (Prior to cord cutting vs now that you've cut it?) I realize it's probably going to go up,but does your ISP have a cap?

Currently mine is currently unlimited,but I have At&t ,and Directv....258gb (with 11 days left of billing ) I'm not watching and shows live,outside of baseball/football.I've been streaming just about everything this year. (I'm between 200-400 GB's a month this year)

Yeah, Comcast keeps jacking my shit up every few months and the last time I tried to call retentions dept to threaten to cancel they wouldn't budge on the prices. I was thinking about Direct TV Now streaming service. It looks like it would work, but I figure that if I cancel my cable TV that Comcast is going to jack up the price of my internet service since it's not a "bundle" anymore. Then by the time I add the cost of the Direct TV now, I won't really be saving anything. Also, I'm limited to 1TB of data a month on Comcast. I only use about 75GBs a month, so I'm not sure if I would hit the cap or not. I have an NFL2GO account for streaming all the games, so I'm not worried about any sports add ons.

No cap limits so I don't even pay attention.

I officially cancelled cable.  1 day in, it was kinda weird, but I managed fine.

Yeah, Comcast is the fucking devil  >:D

Aha, So YOU'RE the reason why NFL's TV ratings are down...mystery solved.

Nope, I haven't watched or paid for NFL on TV or cable since around '07. Who the hell would pay hundreds of dollars to watch just Miami games anyhow?

^ I'm still trying to figure that out myself, yet I do it.

I once looked into it.  At the time because of bundles buying internet alone wasn't much of a saving over the bundle that included TV and if I was going to do that much streaming it would require a larger data cap which defeated all of the cost savings. 

Bundling makes it almost impossible to completely cord cut around here. I know a couple who got a cheaper rate and faster internet just by keeping the basic cable package.

Just stream them off reddit or get an NFL2go sub. Had to pay in bitcoin though, that was an interesting experiment, haha.


Yeah, I would just call every year or two and threaten to cancel and they would get me back down to around $75-90 a month for TV and internet. They called my bluff the last time and only gave me a bump in my internet speed from 50 to 75. Which is basically useless since I can easily stream 1080p with a 20Mbps connection. They are some tricky fuckers. I bet if someone came out with a true à la carte cable TV and internet package, they would take over the market.

A la carte cable TV is not what people think it will be.  Your ESPN is being subsidized by millions of single women that don't watch it, as is their Lifetime by you.

The numbers I've seen indicate that with a la carte cable, most bills would stay about the same but you'd get less channels.

I've started the process of cutting the cord.  Ordered my HD antenna today, going to buy the new Amazon Fire TV dongle when it comes out on October 28th.  Just need to decide on Youtube, Hulu, DirectTVNow, etc. as a streaming service.  Should cut my bill in half.

I wouldn't order ESPN nor Lifetime. Neither would millions of people. Most of the channels being subsidized are highly overpriced. They would either have to reduce their prices to compete or lose subscribers which in turn would make them have to raise rates which in turn would make them lose even more subscribers in a never ending loop until they don't exist anymore. Let all the channels price themselves accordingly and the problem will fix itself by the consumer making their own choices.

And to politely refute your point. SlingTV $20 package includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, and Lifetime. Again, for $20. I don't care what bogus propaganda numbers someone put out to downplay à la carte pricing, it's all a scam.  If the online providers can do it, the cable companies can do it. They just don't do it because they are like used car salesmen and want to fuck you out of every penny they can. And then to add insult to injury they add an extra regional sports fee for some shit show channel they make you buy and you never ever watch. Hopefully the online providers will make them rethink their tactics when they lose enough subs.

The irony of your position is that without net neutrality, as long as you are getting your internet from a company that also provides TV content, "cord cutting" won't matter.  They can raise your internet price and/or cap your downloads to make up for whatever money they are losing on the TV side.  Comcast and Time Warner will exempt their TV services from the download cap, as will AT&T and Verizon.  And the vast majority of U.S. markets have exactly two choices for broadband internet.

But I'm guessing you don't subscribe to the false Democrat narrative about the importance of net neutrality.

Are we changing the subject and interjecting politics in order to deflect just to argue? I don't recall anyone bringing up democrats or republicans in this thread. Please stay on topic. Again, if Sling can sell a skinny  à la carte package with 3 different ESPN channels and Lifetime for $20 a month then the big cable companies could also. Actually they could probably do it cheaper since they have more subscribers to leverage. The fact that there are several companies doing it kind of refutes whatever numbers you found. 

Fair enough.

Companies like Sling, Netflix, Hulu etc. are able to exist because companies like Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T are prohibited from putting the screws to them, due to current net neutrality laws.  These laws are presently being dismantled by an entity that is outside the scope of this discussion.

So I'd say that while your plan works just fine today, it won't work if/when Comcast is allowed to charge you extra for Sling/Netflix/Hulu traffic but provides Xfinity TV services "at no extra cost," which is their goal in sans-net neutrality circumstances.

I understand your argument about the internet side. While it is related, it's a separate issue. I was specifically talking about your statement that a la carte packages wouldn't work and would cost the same just with less channels. The existence and cost of services like sling, DTV Now, and others kind of proves otherwise. Dish even has the flex pack for $45 which is satellite based which would render the whole internet issue moot.

I'm now three days in and I wish I'd done this long ago.  The biggest downside is that you can't easily switch between stuff to channel surf.  So, the idea of half-assed watching news while half-assed watching sports, while jumping to see what's on Discovery is dead.  That's taking some getting used to.  TV watching has to be more deliberate.  Although, I think that may have advantages of its own.

Also, you do have to be kinda tech saavy...but not very....to make this work.  There is a fair amount of switching between apps to load up what you want.  This is especially true if you're using multiple channels, like an antennae, XBOX, and laptop connected through HDMI simultaneously.  Then you're not only managing which device input you need, but also which app to choose on which device.  Not an issue for me, perhaps a minor issue for my wife and kids, but a major issue when grandma is over to babysit.

Dish Network's Flex Pack - as you point out, satellite-based - is an outstanding example of what I'm talking about with a la carte service.

For $35/mo, you can get the Flex Pack with ~50 channels, including TBS, TNT, Discovery, History, CNN, and many other popular "basic-level" channels (but not the ones I list below).
Want local stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox)?  $10 extra.
Want ESPN, ESPN2, FS1?  $10 extra.
Want Disney Channel & Nick?  $10 extra.
Want Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Weather Channel?  $10 extra.
Want SiriusXM music channels? $7 extra.

Or you can pay $50/mo and get all of the above plus several dozen more channels.

But that's you who want's everything listed below. Not everyone is going to load up on all the add ons. My TV is on from about approx. 12pm-8pm Monday-Friday. And probably all day on the weekends if I'm home. But the majority of the time it's just background noise and I'm only half watching what's on. In the package that I have, AMC, Comedy Central, FX, SYFY, TBS, TruTV, TMC, and The Weather Channel are the only channels I have on 90% of the time. There is literally nothing else on that I want to watch when I look through the guide. I have the NFL2go to cover the games and Kodi to cover basically any movie ever made.

So basically, I could get Sling Blue for $25 and have all the channels that I currently watch plus a few that I don't currently get and then add 9 Showtime channels for $10 and have a lot more of what I want to watch for $35. Also, remember that the $50/mo from the cable operators is going to be $60-65 by the time they add all their bogus fees and taxes.   

The $50/mo I cited is the basic Dish package with 190+ channels, so the fees and taxes will be identical to the Flex plan.  If you add just one of the channel groups for the Flex plan, you are at $45/mo and saving a mighty $5 to lose over half your channels.  If you add two channel packages, you're now paying more for fewer channels.  This is EXACTLY what I was talking about with a la carte pricing.

This isn't addressing the question.

If the question was, "How can I watch stuff for free?" then the answer is, "Pay only for internet access and use various internet sites to stream/download everything else."  But everyone already knows that, so that's not a very useful question.

I think this conversation is interesting, because of what Dave said in his last post...


For me, I think this is all I do - channel surfing.  I search the guide for a movie or something decent to view, but if I had to flag my own content from Netflix, I'd likely just turn the TV off and do something else.

I wonder if it takes a certain type of "watcher" to tolerate this...?

You can still channel surf with an HD antenna.

I just had the worst service call from our carrier, Spectrum, that I think I have ever seen. We had one bedroom that did not have a cable jack in it and just moved someone into the room. Based on the roof, it is easiest to drop the cables on the exterior wall and then through the block and into the room rather than just doing a wall fish. The guy had a perplexed look on his face from the start and as he starts taking his equipment out he walks up and tells me he lost his drill somewhere and doesn't know where. I knew right then and there I was not getting cable installed into that room today. I'm almost halfway convinced that he just didn't want to do the job. Hopefully whoever they reschedule with tomorrow is a little better (which won't be hard) than this guy.

I seriously don't understand why any cable channel other than the commercial free ones (e.g. HBO) should cost a single penny.  CBS and Fox are able to broadcast Sunday afternoon football profitablely by selling commercials there is no reason ESPN can't be profitable doing MNF with commercials being the sole source of revenue. 

If all channels were al a carte very good chance many would be free or very low cost because the more subscribers the more ad revenue and that is where the real money is.

^^^ That is counterintuitive if you ask me. Being ala carte would not be a good way for most channels to show more subscribers in order to drive up ad revenue. Let's use Lifetime as an example. How many of us single guys currently have Lifetime on our programming? I know I do and I never watch a single thing on it. If I were going ala carte it would not be on my plan so therefore they will lose me and anyone like me. They show more subscribers in number counts by being included in a package.

Well in Lifetime's case maybe show some shit that a more mainstream audience would actually watch. If you ask me, there are too many niche type channels that most normal people don't watch. They are subsidized by forcing the non watching people to subscribe and pay for them on their packages. An à la carte type system would fix that by forcing the channels to compete on price and content. If you have crap that no one watches your price is going have to reflect that. Likewise, if your prices are too high in relation to the competition you will have to lower prices or lose subs. Either way, some channels would cease to exist after a while.

Which is exactly why Lifetime would be free.  If it was free you would sign up, if it cost $3 per month you would not.

Even if the Man Hate Lifetime channel was free I would not sign up. Too much bullshit in my guide already. They can also keep OWN, SoapNet, Oxygen, BET, and WE. A $3 bill credit for each sounds about right, lmao...

The problem is that someone has to pay to get the product to your doorstep.  Broadcast channels achieve this all through advertising, but there are several things necessary to do so:

1) affiliate stations to broadcast the signal in many markets
2) broad-based programming that has something for everyone

Cable channels are on cable because even if they put in the work to develop the former, they would not have the latter, as nearly all cable channels' market strategy is that they have specialty audiences that are interested in something particular (with the rare exception of channels like TNT and USA).  This is why "good" viewership ratings on cable would be considered garbage for broadcast TV (see: Monday Night Football on ABC vs. ESPN).

So in a world without cable fees, even if a cable behemoths like ESPN, Fox News, or Discovery went through the work to build out a broadcast affiliate network like Fox did in the late '80s, they would struggle to stay afloat because their target audience isn't wide enough to generate sufficient advertising to stay afloat.  Smaller cable channels like NFLN or HGTV would have no hope to survive.

The entire reason the cable channel paradigm works is because of bundled stations.  Without channel bundling, you run into the same problem as broadcasting: the only people who pay for it are the people who want to watch it.  That means that channels either a) become much more expensive or b) cease to exist.

You are severely underestimating the price impact of having millions of people who do not watch your preferred channels chip in for your cost.  At the end of the day, with a la carte pricing, it would look like the Dish Flex plan: you would be paying the same amount for far less channels.  And to the extent that services like SlingTV exist at seemingly low prices, they only do so because 1) SlingTV doesn't have to transport the content to your doorstep, only to the internet, and 2) those content providers are currently being backstopped by cable income.  Replace all the TV channels with Netflix etc. and it's no mystery what Comcast/AT&T will do to the price of your internet service.

There is no workaround when the companies that provide television are the same ones that provide internet.  This is not a coincidence or happenstance.

I do a lot of channels surfing,mostly because there is a shit ton of crap on that I have little to no interest in watching.

I think talking to most of my underlings,most of them get some free internet,and extremely basic cable package (locals+weather channel,and maybe 6 or 7 other channels) free in their apartments.Add their lifestyle,the streaming services (especially ones the can watch on the go) just makes more sense than buying a big cable package.

I started my free trial for Netflix so I can start cutting back,I had it years ago.

I'm afraid the answer would still be no.

Trying out Sling TV on my new Fire TV.  It's pretty awesome, I get all the channels I want and DVR for $55

Yesterday marked the first time I actually tried to watch something that I didn't have access to: Bills v. Jets. 

It was NFL Network only (sometimes, those Thursday games are also CBS or NBC).  And even though I have access to an Xfinity login to watch that channel, it's limited to watching over the home wi-fi, so I was locked out.

I probably could've gone online to look for a stream, but I didn't want to really watch the game anyway -- just check in on it.  ...Not worth the effort.

This where if I go full cord cutting worries me... :-\  I'll have 15-20 minutes either when I'm waiting for something else,or just waiting,etc...I'll surf and watch different things for that time,check in on a game,some random show,documentary,etc..

I have access to FoxSportsGO, which covers FOX games, including FOX Sports 1.  I get Sunday football, local hockey, and local basketball.
I have Watch ESPN, which gets you Monday Night Football.
I have NBC Sports, which gives you Sunday Night Football.
I have CBS All-Access, which gives you Sunday Football.

Football-wise, I'm missing EVERY game that you'd get from Sunday Ticket, the Red-Zone experience (which I admittedly miss) and NFL Network, which is only an occasional (and usually not very interesting) game.