It’s time to cut cable TV!
It was about 4 years ago when I decided to cut cable TV – and I won’t lie, the first few weeks were kinda rough. After that though? SUPER WORTH IT. I wish I did it years ago. I’m sure you’ve seen lots of articles floating around the ‘net about how to save money on cable (“call your provider, threaten to quit and they will lower your bill!”), but why not just stop paying them all together? It’s just a little more work, but you really won’t miss much if you decide to stop funding Comcast (or whomever has a monthly bleed on your soul/wallet).
I admit, there is no one solution that will fix everyone’s entertainment needs, but here is what I found works for me. I used to have Comcast, and I got tired of how much I paid every month – and how the price seemed to arbitrarily change every month! I had already started dabbling with sites like Hulu because they offered some anime I hadn’t seen before, I had a netflix account for streaming movies, and I already paid for Amazon Prime because i’m a sucker for something that ships to me for free in 2 days. My original plan was to use these tools, and cut cable for a few months while I saved up to buy my house. After I got over the shakes of not being able to just click and surf food network whenever I wanted (I was a big fan of Good Eats!), I never looked back. So here is my setup:
I still have a weak spot for procedural cop drama. When i’m feeling under the weather I want a big mug of coffee, blanket, and watch CSI, NCIS, Mentalist, or other ridiculous silly cop dramas. Thankfully, most of these shows are streaming directly on CBS (as well as Elementary, Big Bang Theory and more), so as long as you’re willing to wait a day or two after they air. I know that other networks have similar setups (ABC, etc).
Hulu is something that I use, but I don’t use hulu plus. Since most of my TV viewing is done through a PC tower or a laptop, it wasn’t worth it just so I could watch on a mobile device. Once you create a profile, search for shows, and click on the ‘favorite’ button, and then you can create a queue of shows – tracking what you haven’t watched of those series! I find it useful to collect shows there like The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Agents of Shield, Castle, and more.
The price of Amazon Prime ($79 for a year) I think is well worth how much we save in shipping items, and what movies and TV shows stream for free with a prime account. With the added bonus of being able to share your prime account with 3 other people, you can share the free shipping portion, but only the main account gets the free movie streaming. Not only are there some really good movies and TV shows offered free on prime, (plenty of the recent marvel live action movies, Batman The Animated Series, lots of the DC Animated movies, Sherlock Season 1 and 2) Amazon makes it very easy to get a season pass for a new series and purchase each episode as they come out. So while we don’t have BBC America, we just pay for each Dr. Who episode the day after it airs (and have the added benefit of zero commercials).
Miss having movies at hand easily? This takes a little more leg work, but I think it’s worth it. Redbox Instant ($8 per month) allows you to stream a selection of movies for free, and then you also get 4 movie rentals from a redbox kiosk. (Full disclosure, I do work for the parent company of Redbox, but I receive no compensation for any of you who might decide to try out Redbox – my opinions are my own!) This is pretty nice if you are close by a redbox machine daily so you can pick up a movie on your way home and drop it back off the next day!
Netflix everyone already knows about – sometimes a pain to keep connection if you’re out and about (It seems like I can never buffer enough when i’m using airport wifi – which is not Netflix’s fault I know but still super irksome), but well worth the price. My personal favorites on Netflix are the growing collection of TED talks!
Clearly HBO enjoys being pirated, because none of the above options allow you to purchase Game of Thrones (current season) while it airs. You CAN buy HBO Go with just basic cable and internet if you have Comcast in select markets for a price of anywhere between $25-$80, depending on where you live and if you go past the introductory offer. Personally, I provide dinner over at a friends house who has HBO and we all watch together, and weep when every character we’ve ever loved is torn to shreds.
What do you think? Do you use something else? (I know Roku is a thing, but I don’t know a single person who uses it?) I’d love more ideas if you’ve got them!
