I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely used – money that could have been used to pay down debt or increase the balance on my savings account. “$65.82 a month isn’t a fortune,” I wrote at the time, “but it’s a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t get used. If we were big TV watchers maybe the cost could be justified. But we aren’t. And it can’t.”
To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30/month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free.
Here’s an overview of the tools we use, and how much money we’ve managed to save.
The iTunes Store
When we cut our cable bill from $65.82 per month to $11.30, I knew we would save over $50 per month. I also knew that we’d miss a couple of shows we really like. We don’t watch a lot of television, but we do like our Battlestar Galactica. So, I made a deal with Kris.
“If you’ll let me cut back to basic cable,” I said, “then I’ll purchase any shows you want from the iTunes Store.” She was reluctant at the time, but over the past two years, we’ve found that there really aren’t that many shows we want to watch.
Since we started, we’ve purchased eleven “seasons” from iTunes, totaling $398.42 (or about $36.22 per season). This works out to about $16.60 per month. When added to our $11.30 basic cable bill, we’re paying $27.90 each month for television. That’s less than half of what we were paying before.
Hulu
We’ve also found a way to watch certain shows for free. For a short time last year, NBC/Universal and Apple got cranky with each other. NBC/Universal pulled its shows (including Battlestar!) from the iTunes Music Store. What’s a geek to do? Answer: watch the shows for free through Hulu, which features content from NBC, Fox, and many other sources. Crisis averted.
Over the past year, I’ve come to love Hulu. It took some GRS reader encouragement for me to actually explore the site’s potential, but now that I know how it works, I’m hooked. Here’s the basic premise:
Hulu allows viewers to watch new and classic television programs for free. (The site also includes a small selection of feature films.) Each program includes the normal commercial breaks, just as on television. However, instead of being bombarded by two minutes (or more) of commercials at each break, you’re subjected to a single 15- to 60-second ad (that you cannot interrupt). To me, that’s a fair trade for free programs.
Most current NBC and Fox programs are available on Hulu, though each show seems to have its own schedule. Older shows offer full seasons. Some shows, like 30 Rock, only offer the “trailing 5 episodes”. That is, you can only watch the most recent 5 episodes from the series. Others, like The Biggest Loser (which I’m now addicted to thanks to readers at Get Fit Slowly) only allow one episode to appear at a time — and it’s last week’s episode. (So, please — no spoilers about what happened Tuesday night!)
Although Hulu doesn’t directly host content from ABC or CBS, it does index these shows, and link to their source pages. So, for example, if you want to use Hulu to watch Lost, you can do so. When you look for the latest episode of Lost, Hulu will redirect you to the ABC website. This is a nice touch.
For me, though, the best part of Hulu is its library of classic television. When I was sick with the flu in early December, I spent two days plowing through old episodes of Adam-12. (Which was much better than I had remembered.) Hulu also includes shows like:
- Battlestar Galactica (new and classic)
- Arrested Development
- The Bob Newhart Show
- Miami Vice
- Hill Street Blues
- And even The Dave Ramsey Show!
Actually, I just noticed that Gary Vaynerchuk’s video wine blog, The Thunder Show, is available on Hulu, too!
My biggest complaint with the site is that navigation is clumsy. It’s sometimes difficult for me to find what I’m looking for. (The “browse TV shows alphabetically” view is most useful for me.)
Other options
Though these are the tools that Kris and I use for our television consumption, there are other options available. For example, I’m a big fan of the public library for books, but I haven’t used it for TV on DVD, though I’m sure that’s possible. I’m also aware of Veoh and Joost, though I haven’t tried either of them.
Those of you in Western Europe may want to explore Zattoo, a free downloadable app that lets you watch certain television content on your computer. (And, via the comments, Jeremiah Bell notes that Canadian readers can find streaming television at CTV and GlobalTV.)
None of these is going to satisfy those who truly enjoy television. If you must see your show right now, or if you are a fan of live sports, you may have to fork over the dough for a deluxe cable package. I’m content to wait. It saves me money, and it lets me watch shows on my terms.
Score one for GRS Forum Users!
I think we’ll be making this move over the next few years. I really don’t like channel surfing and I feel its kinda wasting time.
Thank you so much for the heads-up on hulu and dave ramsey!
I used to love Hulu as well until they announced yesterday that it will no longer stream to Apple TVs via the Boxee application.
It’s a sad TV day for me.
I would love to do this, if only it wasn’t for sports.
We’ve added a media pc (aka home theater pc) so that we could store all of our own media, dvr our basic cable tv (like you’ve switched to), and watch online videos. The computer (including its stylish home theater case, remote, and 1 TB hard drive) cost us ~$350 to build.
Now if we could just figure out how to cut our internet bill…
Do you watch all these tv shows on your computer though? Isnt that uncomfortable, sitting at a desk doing that?
I have a big screen tv and would want to watch on that!
I like the Netflix “watch instantly” feature, but get cramps at my desk doing so.
LMNOP
We don’t have cable TV at all and get our news and shows mainly from Hulu, Netflix, and RSS feeds.
They are great money savers. Escpecially the “Watch Instantly” feature on Netflix.
Great ideas:) If I lived the in the States, I would definitely cancel my cable! (Even with basic, it’s still $30 a month!)
Sadly, Hulu and other American broadcasters don’t stream to Canada (yet) and most of the shows I like aren’t available in iTunes either.
We’re totally get hosed up here.
We are the same way. We cancelled our cable several years ago and bought an antenna for the attic. We get better HD basic channels than our friends that pay for sattelite HD, and ours is FREE!!! (and we live 80 miles from the city we get the channels from).
We also get TV shows from netflix (although we have the $9 plan). We also watch shows from Hulu. We have found that we just don’t watch as much TV. We end up working on other things instead. We work more (which makes us more money) and we read a lot more (also from the library).
I would highly recommend for anyone to cancel their cable. It’s worth the savings in money and time.
I’ve actually been Cable free for quite some time.
We use Hulu and Netflix exclusively. The only thing I miss is the History Channel and Discovery Channel. I get all of my local news via the internet (I only really care about weather anyways).
Also, if you are in a metropolitan area, you can stick an antenna on your roof and get NBC, ABC, Fox, etc in HD for free. It’s all over the air. It costs $100-$200 to setup depending on your TV and/or other equipment but it saves a lot of money in the long run. I’m in a small town and I still can get NBC over the air if I want.
There is virtually no reason to have cable anymore IMO.
I wish this plan worked for everybody. I could easily live without Comcast IF it weren’t for the Internet. In Ann Arbor Michigan (where I live) there is only one Cable Company. If you want high speed internet you only have two choices: 1) Comcast or 2) DSL through AT&T. Comcast doesn’t let you pay for just Internet. When it isn’t on special, it is about $50 on top of whatever cable service you are paying for.
Although on the surface DSL seems cheaper, it really isn’t for me. To use DSL you have to have a land line. For a basic landline your looking at thirty dollars a month (when you throw in taxes). Then DSL is another thirty on top of that. Currently, I use Vonage for phone services (I can call anywhere in the COuntry for twenty dollars a month).
Hulu is the last thing I thought the networks would put together. It was created (and very well) by Fox and NBC. The key to that model is make it easier for people to access your shows, that way people don’t pirate them. It’s a rock solid plan as long as they keep it up. Not to mention they can make money on old TV shows through commercials too… perfect for everyone as long as you don’t mind a few commercials.
I cancelled my cable for the summer and enjoyed it. When I signed up for an online course, I needed internet access. It was cheaper to get cable tv and internet then the internet alone. When this deal is up I will see what options are open.
Hi,
Great article!
I have been using Boxee to stream videos from Netflix, Hulu and ABC. Sadly, Hulu has been demanded by its “content providers” (CBS and FOX) to be removed on Boxee. I wish it wasn’t so because it allowed a great way to browse shows. Hopefully the media companies will wise up!
Chip Hanna
http://balcomagency.com
JD, Just a hint on Battlestar Galactica, since I’m a rabid fan as well… SciFi.com loads the full episode to watch at 2 am Eastern on Saturday morning after it airs Friday night.
Since we don’t get Sci Fi on our local cable (com*cast), I usually (GEEK ALERT) read through the forum while the episode airs, then watch the new episode the next morning while getting the laundry started.
I think it’s interesting to see how the commenters on the forum interpreted the episode versus how I see it when I watch for myself.
This is a great idea for people who can cancel their cable. I’d cancel my cable if I could. It’s bundled into my condo’s HOA dues and there’s no getting around it. I’d much rather keep my $30.00/mo. The only show I watch on a regular basis is BSG and there are only a few episodes left. I could either download it like you or have a friend DVR it for me.
Even better: http://www.boxee.tv/
A desktop app that aggregates your movies/videos/music on your desktop as well as feeds from Hulu, Netflix, Comedy Central, CNN, YouTube, etc. Even works with a remote control. Get an adapter for your mac/pc to your tv and you’ve got some pretty sweet home entertainment.
Thanks to the digital transition, free over–the-air broadcasts come in crystal clear. My converter box also has a basic “guide” function, which makes the deal even nicer.
Assuming you can pick up the signals, free TV over the air has improved mightily since the “old days” of analog.
For you Canadian readers who are upset over lack of international access to Hulu, don’t fret. You can watch TV at http://www.ctv.ca and http://www.globaltv.com. Both work on the same principle as Hulu, just a quick commercial for free TV.
Forget about cutting my television bill in half, I have now hit 6 years without spending a dime on cable!
Great post JD!
Cheers,
Jeremiah
I’d love to cancel cable, but the only thing my husband watches is pro football. Is there a way to watch NFL games?
I don’t have ANY cable OR broadcast TV channels. I do have a computer hooked up to an LCD TV and use Netflix, DVDs, Hulu, etc just like you.
And watching sports on TV is the reason people invented bars! Or at the very least, I’ll have 5 friends whom will want to watch it and don’t mind me showing up – and I’ll always bring beer/snacks!
I still pay for cable, because I love watching TV. To me, it’s a quality of life issue. I pay $36 a month for about 80 channels. While I try to be frugal in other areas, it’s worth $432 a year (to me) to be able to flip on the TV when I’d like and just relax. Then again, a big part of my television-watching is sports, and it’s hard to get that that elsewhere.
@LMNOP (#6)
We do watch on a computer, but not a desktop computer. We did that once or twice, but it’s not convenient. Instead, we use my laptop, which is very convenient. We can watch in bed or at the dinner table or in the living room. Again, this isn’t going to appeal to true television fans who need their widescreen TVs, but it works for us! :)
Long time reader, first time poster. I don’t have cable, either. Never have. We do have rabbit ears (one time purchase of $15) and a converter box (with coupon, $10) which gets us ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, and several PBS channels, for free. I have lived on a farm in the country, in the suburbs, and in an urban area, and I have always been able to get most (if not all) network stations via my little rabbit ears. I always try to knock some sense into people who say, “I won’t be able to watch Grey’s Anatomy if I don’t have cable!”
We spend our money on a decent internet service, which allows us to stream shows and movies via Hulu and network websites. Even some cable channels stream their shows online, you just have to know where to look. We also have the Blockbuster-by-mail, which allows us to trade in a certain number of movies at our local Blockbuster, which allows us to get a few more movies without having to wait for them in the mail.
These are great ideas, as usual. I would agree with the commenter than mentioned sports. I need my sportscenter fix in the morning before work, and I’d hate to miss a StL Cards game if I can help it. I love the idea of getting everything a la carte though. That’s the way to go.
I’m ignorant about Boxee, though I realize there’s some sort of Boxee/Hulu hubbub brewing. You can read Marc Hedlund’s take on it here.
I would love to ditch cable, but up here in New England, the only way to watch Red Sox/Bruins games is on NESN and the only way to watch Celtics games is on Comcast SportsNet. Those two channels are only available in the Digital Starter service where I live, which starts around $55 per month.
Yes there is MLB.TV for the Red Sox games, but there is currently no way to get it on your TV (solutions like Boxee do not have MLB.TV support yet). MLB.TV though is quite reasonable at $110 for a season for the “HD” version, so that might be an interesting route to go if they can get it onto TV’s.
If there was any way to get live content like sports over the Internet and onto my TV, I would love to ditch cable (except maybe the basic channels). I think the iTunes-like model of purchasing shows and using sites like Hulu is the wave of the future.
You can sign up for TV rss torrent feeds on
http://www.tvrss.net
using http://www.uTorrent.com.
If you don’t find the show there check out http://www.btjunkie.com.
Great movie/audio player
http://www.videolan.org/
I use miro for all my free video rss feeds.
http://www.getmiro.com/
Boxee is dropping Hulu support.
http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/02/18/the-hulu-situation/
Why are you paying for cable at all? Just put an antenna on the roof. I replaced my DirecTV with a MacMini runnign FrontRow and Boxee (together) and now my only monthly expense is the $25 I was paying for netflix anyway.
Do you mean first row sports. where the video quality is about 10 times worse than an old VHS tape?
I cut the cord a couple of years ago and have found one sports live stream that didn’t look horrific. That was a game feed from Opening Day this year.
I would love to find find some live sports streams that weren’t garbage quality.
Outside of the NBC Football stuff last year on nbc.com, I have found nothing.
It’s just easier to download the torrent the next day. Still not much out there for MLB
You can connect your laptop to your television and watch streamed content on your TV. The picture won’t be as good as the signal you’d get from cable, but it’ll save your posture. :)
Matt asked: Why are you paying for cable at all?
This is a fine question, and one with a fine answer: Kris loves Antiques Roadshow. It’s her one can’t-miss show each week.
When we moved into this house nearly five years ago, we bought a fancy new HD TV. (They were newish back then!) But this fancy TV has lousy reception. I bought a $20 HD antenna in 2004, but it picked up zilch. So, in order for Kris to watch Antiques Roadshow, we needed cable.
Now, however, that may no longer be the case. Your comment reminds me that I haven’t tried to get any sort of non-cable reception in a long time. I should do that. Maybe I can cut the $11.30 cable bill, which would give me that much more to spend on comic books each month! :)
I have decided to go this route and enjoy it very much. Watching shows on my terms and I don’t get sucked into sitting in front of the T.V. all night. I use headphone/RCA cables for audio and an S-Video for picture and hook my laptop up to my TV works sweet. As well I can watch in bed on my laptop.
As for Beth. I live in Canada and have found a few ways to get around the US limits. I was using a program called ultra-surf, but this has now been blocked. For the last 2 weeks I use a program called Hotshield – simple download and I only run it when I want to watch TV. I believe they assign you a US VPN. It has worked great with no problems.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one day all TV was thru the net
I only subscribe to Netflix, no tv. I have more time to read great blogs like this one, and books and zines.
It’s another way to simplify my life.
my (somewhat luddite!) husband asked me what hulu was the other day. He stopped me the minute I got to the “you can’t skip the commercials” part. He “watches” tv with the remote glued to his hand, for instance, last night it was Lost and something on PBS during the Lost commercials. It’s kind of spooky, how well he judges when to switch back! Would drive me crazy if we watched more TV, but we don’t. I try to rationalize the $60+ cable bill as, well we don’t spend too much on DSL and have a real bare-bones cell phone bill, and use the library and local rental store, and I do love having Turner Classic Movies when I’m sick in bed or having an insomnia episode…. I do think it’s a case of considering the overall entertainment category, in which cable may not end up being so awful. But, I am surprised that cable prices keep going up when they should be going down now that there’s so much competition from the net.
We don’t have cable at all, which isn’t a big deal. We really don’t watch TV, which saves us money AND time.
We rent DVDs from Redbox every now and again, and we do have rabbit ears on top of our TV which we can use if we really want to watch something(we have a digital converter box too).
Life is a lot better since we got rid of the cable and took the TV out of the living room.
I’m definitely going to look into this once our contract with DirecTV is up this December. We’re paying about $75 a month now and it would be really nice to redirect that money into some investments.
How about a follow up post on how to watch Hulu.com or equivalent on a “real” TV? I assume it’s just a matter of hooking up a couple wires, but is there an HD option? Does it stream from the website or do you actually download the shows first?
Matt said: “Why are you paying for cable at all? Just put an antenna on the roof.”
Because I live in an apartment. I don’t think the landlords would look kindly on me climbing onto the roof and trying to install an antenna.
@Chad (#5) I would love to find out what parts you used and where you got them to make a media PC for $350. How functional is it? Can you do normal PC stuff on it (Word, Excel, games, etc.)? My current PC is on it’s last legs and I could use a cheap upgrade. Maybe J.D. could post the directions or something???
@t – The Footer of this site links to nearly every website you can legally stream TV shows from. I’ve covered how to use tvrss.net to watch shows on your time not the networks but it’s still not legal. It also often requires a decent amount of time to wait if there aren’t a lot of seeders out there, whereas streaming is, well streaming and near instant.
Dear Mike, do have an updated list or links that will be helpful. The two links referred to below do not work anymore. Thanks for your help.
40
Mike Panic says:
19 February 2009 at 7:37 am
@t – The Footer of this site links to nearly every website you can legally stream TV shows from. I’ve covered how to use tvrss.net to watch shows on your time not the networks but it’s still not legal. It also often requires a decent amount of time to wait if there aren’t a lot of seeders out there, whereas streaming is, well streaming and near instant.
Footnote: After I finished composing this article, I learned that GRS reader Mike Panic has drafted a fantastic list of websites that stream full TV shows and movies. This is a colossal list, and well-worth bookmarking.
We have an HD OTA antenna hooked up to a home theater PC running Media Center, as a DVR.
It was a high initial cost at the time, to purchase the computer, but I was due for a new gaming system anyway :). If I take the cost of the whole entertainment system over the last year we’ve had it, the total is about $300/mo – including the PC, HDTV, receiver and speakers. Of course, we paid cash for all that last year, so it falls under ‘sunk cost’.
We can also watch hulu and other online methods of TV delivery, for an additional $0.00/month.
those are great ways to cut your bill down…I used Hulu to actually watch some shows that I probably never would have had time for and am hooked! This has made me hit up Amazon to get the entire series. I agree the navigation is bad and also that many networks are still reluctant to put their content on Hulu.
NBC, CBS, and ABC all have entire episodes on their sites also, along with MTV which has many of its “popular” shows streaming too. These are also good sites as they are easier to navigate IMO.
One more thing about Netflix…if you want to watch the “Watch Now” movies on your TV, it’s very easy to do so if you have either a Roku device, an Xbox or one of the newer Sony DVD players. These devices allow for a wireless internet connection and support the Netflix API. Once you add a “Watch Now” movie to your queue, it will appear in this interface and you can watch it on your TV whenever, no commercials. I’m sure other interfaces will be added (like the iTunes stuff) soon.
I’ve been using a Roku for about 6 months, and it’s been great. We’re still considering dropping cable, but there are still a few must-have channels that aren’t streamed yet.
re: Putting the antenna on the roof –
When we bought our house, it had a DirectTV dish attached to the back of the house, on the wall by the kitchen window – not on the roof. I removed the dish and mounted the antenna on the pole it used. Took me about 30 minutes, and I only needed a short ladder.
We get most local channels just fine. Two of the PBS stations don’t come in very well, but they don’t have anything we watch anyway.
if i could find a way to stream the TLC channel, i’d be a happy camper! until then, it’s the first thing i turn on when i babysit at night and the kids are sleeping. but like for some other people who’ve commented, it’s cheaper for me to get internet and cable service in a bundle package. it would have been like 60 bucks for the internet alone or 42 if i added basic cable to bring my bill to 54. and since i don’t plan on buying that converter box, and it’s 6 bucks cheaper for the bundle, it’s pretty much the logical choice. not that i consider abc, nbc, cbs, and the cw “cable”. they’re no tlc!
@J.D
Actually, you can connect your laptop to TV through SVIDEO port and watch the programs in TV itself. You can get the SVIDEO cable for 10$ in any of the electrical stores (I got it from RadioShack). I stream my favorite shows in the web, but I watch it in TV. I always feel watching it over TV is more amusing than watching in laptop. :)
I don’t have cable. I get the 3 national channels for Canada, and I use the library. I rarely rent movies or buy DVDs. I don’t really watch stuff online either, because I hate sitting at my PC for long times, and have no way to watch things on my tv (no dvd burner and dvd player is too old to play vcd). I do have an Eee PC, but it runs on Linux and nothing seems compatible on it.
(ETA: If someone wants to chat with me privately on how I can watch internet content on either my tv or eee pc, that would be superawesome)
For the sports fan, you might be able to get by with ESPN 360.
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/espn360/index
It is awesome for watching internet sports, although sometimes blackouts apply.
I have been cable free since I was a teenager– for awhile I just didn’t watch TV but then stuff like Battlestar Galactica got around to me and I watch it on Hulu or SciFi. I’m also a huge fan of Netflix.
But why doesn’t anyone ever talk about torrents…? If you have moral dilemmas about being a supportive, paying fan to the shows/movies/content you care about, that’s understandable. But you could probably justify using them for rare stuff that probably no one is making money off of anymore, or foreign works while you tell yourself you’re generating free publicity…
I spent my freshman year of college (well before all the online tv) without cable so I know I could do this! Right now, I have 2 roommates, so cable is fairly inexpensive once we split the costs. When I eventually move out on my own, I plan to try a setup similar to this, but one that involves hooking a computer up to my tv.
For fun I decided to see if I could lower our cable bill. I have Time Warner Cable and spent 5 minutes doing some research on Direct TV. Once I got a handle of their numbers I called Time Warner and selected the cancellation option. Once I was connected with a representative I began to ask her the logistics of cancelling, with no intention to actually cancel. I ended up getting $27 per month knocked off my bill.
I’d love to be cable free, but we actually do watch a whole lot of television and because our cable is wrapped up in a bundle with our landline and broadband internet (and is discounted as a result), we really wouldn’t save much if we cut it and cobbled together something else. And if we ever wanted to go back, we’d be locked into a contract whereas right now we’re contract-free. So I guess it’s worth it for us. But I still wince whenever I see the £57 monthly bill in the post!
Cool post! I’ve seen a few posts over at Lifehacker that really has me considering getting rid of cable as well or at least downgrading to basic. The only holdup is that I LOVE watchign college football. To my knowledge that is not readily available, but I did see ESPN starting to show a few games online through ESPN 360.
Thanks for sharing!
How do you get your Hulu onto your TV? Whats the point of having a nice TV if you can’t watch all your stuff on it?
@Eric (#53)
Well, Kris and I use our nice TV to watch Netflix and other DVDs, so it’s not like it doesn’t get used! However, left to my own devices (if I were not married), I’d actually get rid of the TV. That would give me room for another bookshelf. :)
It’s amazing that you can spend that much in buying shows and still end up paying less in the end – it’s making me rethink how I approach entertainment. Personally, I have been using a Blockbuster online membership to stop the rest of the family from buying movies non-stop.
My wife and I don’t even own a TV. We watch a couple of shows and the occasional movie via download, on my computer. Sometimes we watch TV while visiting family or staying in a hotel, but that’s about it.
TV is like a drug. Some of it can be fun in moderation, but most of it is bad for you, and it’s really easy to take it too far. The advertising encourages destructive behavior, and most of the shows are just mindless wastes of time. We feel no need to pay money for that sort of experience.
It also means we haven’t devoted a room in our apartment essentially to TV watching. I know this sounds strange, but look at the average American “living room” — on one side it has as big a TV as could be paid for, and then there are chairs all around facing the TV, and a small snack table in the middle. It’s entirely focused around the TV. If you’re still doubting, think about the prospect of arranging your sofa so that you can’t see the TV from it, sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s because it’s a TV room, not a “living room”. Save money on your house by not buying an extra TV room? It’s an idea.
OK, so I just finished an article on how to easily watch Netflix, Hulu and more on your tv if you have a Mac, for about 1/4 the price of a Roku (which doesn’t support Hulu or any other site). Like many of you, I don’t like watching shows on my computer, I’d rather watch them on my 42″ plasma. The article is here: http://www.randomn3ss.com/use-understudy-to-stream-tv-movies-to-your-mac-using-front-row/
I LOVEEEEEE HULU!!
I am actually going to be writing a series of posts on how to axe cable television bills. It will be divided into 3 parts… should be posting over the next month.
Do you mind if I link back to your post here so that you can see when I post them?
Wrong URL above! Here is the correct one: http://www.randomn3ss.com/use-understudy-to-stream-tv-movies-to-your-television-using-front-row-on-a-mac/
JD,
With a digital converter box for reception, there’s no need for paid TV. No cable, no video store, no Netflix, no iTunes.
The Multnomah County Library system has everything you could ever want! With you and your wife’s cards you can put up to 30 items on hold at a time. (My family of four could conceivably put 60 items on hold, but it never gets that far.)
They have TV series box sets as well as regular movies. Whenever I think of something my family wants to watch I put it on hold. It may take awhile to come in, but there’s always something that’s just come in for us.
And you get it for three weeks! More, if no one else has it on hold.
Right now we have “Star Trek,” the first season of the original series, “Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull,” “The Matrix,” “Lost: The Second Season” and probably some other stuff as well. We recently watched the first season of “Mad Men” and all the old “Twilight Zones” and “The Outer Limits.”
Sometimes I go to Netflix to see what movies I’d like to watch and then put them on hold at the library.
You’re paying for it anyway with your taxes, so you might as well use it!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
The Non-Consumer Advocate
http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com
It can easily cost $100+ a month just to have wires attached to your house (phone, internet, cable). Glad to know more about alternatives. I use to have dish, but turned it off a couple years ago. I’m now on rabbit ears, but like the idea I can find more if I feel like it.
One nice thing about the Hulu commercials is that while you can’t skip them, you ARE able to open a second browser window and use that. So while the commercials play, I check my email or Facebook or the news, and come back when I hear the commercial end.
If you like hulu, you should also try http://www.fancast.com
Fancast is a website developed from a partnership between Comcast and NBC/Universal. It has most of the same programing as Hulu, plus shows from CBS and also free.
What I really want is for Nintendo to update the Opera browser/flash runtime on the Wii. Then you could use the browser app/plug-in/thingy to watch Hulu or other Flash 9 types of sites on the Wii.
I think it gets down to a cost/license issue between Nintendo and Adobe for the Flash player.
We referenced cancelcable.com to answer a lot of our questions about canceling cable…(also @ twitter.com/CancelCable)
The trick for the free OTA digital TV is to get an antenna that is powerful enough to receive the stations in your area. Here’s a helpful site to figure out what you need: http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/Welcome.aspx
We also decided that we could not live (well, that we couldn’t watch TV) without a DVR, so we picked up a stand-alone Digital tuner and DVR from http://www.dishnetwork.com/dtvpal/dvr.shtml
At $250 it’s not cheap, but it enables us to record our favorite shows that are FREE OTA, ffw commercials, and watch them at our convenience… and UNLIKE tivo, there is NO monthly fee!
So far, the only shows we miss from cable are BSG and Burn Notice… We do, however, have a PC plugged in thru HDMI cables, so we’ve been watching BSG from scifi.com on Saturdays, and plan to watch the new season of BN when it’s available on Netflix.
Between the antennae and DTV Pal DVR we spent $300, the equivalent of 4 months of cable– but we thought it was a fair trade to NEVER have to have cable again!
Excellent timing! We just decided to make this switch because our cable intro price ends this month and it will shoot up. By cutting TV and home phone (going all mobile), our bill will go down $100/month.
We ordered a Dell Studio Slim to connect to our HDTV. It seemed like the best choice for a pre-built HTPC but I’m sure you can build your own much cheaper. It should pay for itself in less than a year. It arrives today so we still haven’t taken it for a test run. Can’t wait!
I am a little concerned about missing UofA Basketball games (go CATS). If I need to go to the pub to watch, I might lose any savings gained from canceling cable.
I love me some Hulu. Among 24, Family Guy, House, and Daily Show, I’m a closet fan of Knight Rider.
Wow. Am I the only one reading this who doesn’t have high-speed internet and thus can’t stream TV online?
We had attachable rabbit ears at our old place to pick up basic TV channels, but it doesn’t work at our new house. We finally gave in and got Internet service at home a few months ago, but are loathe to pay more than the $10 a month we fork out for dial-up. All the packages available to us for TV, internet, and/or phone seem to equal a lot more than our current bills of $50/month ($40/month for phone and separate $10/month for internet). Any tips for the spartan among us?
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but most major networks allow you to watch full show episodes for free on their websites.
I really like the show 24 and Family Guy. I watch both in HD on Fox’s website.
Does anyone know where I could watch episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show? I would LOVE that :-D
When I was living at home and then at college I always thought of cable as a standard, something we just always had. After I got out on my own recently and realized the high cost it seemed a bit crazy. $50+ a month for something I may or not use that often was way too much to spend. I already hate that I have to have a cell phone bill that costs this much.
Luckily I live in the middle of a large city and a rabbit ear antenna works wonderful with the new digital broadcasts. I get all the main networks in really high quality HD with a $15 antenna. Besides that I also do similar things such as ABC.com and Hulu. Every once once in a while we do the cheapest netflix plan as well to get some instant movie watching in!
Hulu has The Dick Van Dyke Show (2 seasons).
http://www.hulu.com/the-dick-van-dyke-show
If the link doesn’t work, on Hulu, click TV then click Browse. You’ll have to click “load all ## episodes” to see the 1st episode in the list.
I work for the American military in Europe. Like everyone else abroad, I can’t get Hulu or Netflix unless I “tunnel” back to the States. I do get the military networks for the price of the receiver and dish ($250 a couple years back) and we also pay for a Sky basic subscription…worth every penny.
Zattoo doesn’t have any U.S. content yet.
I would do the tunnel thing more often, but the crappy copper wires running to my house prohibit high-speed broadband (even though I’m paying for it)
But the electronics in the house are ready to go, if the stars ever align just right.
I love the season pass and queue functions of Hulu. It just makes a list of all the new shows that I want to watch.
I love getting tv & movies from the library! Ours has a great selection, and branch 2 blocks from my office. I put what I want on hold and they email me when it’s ready for me. :)
We also have cable bundled with the internet, but basic only costs $10 and includes everything we would ever watch anyway. We had netflix for a while but we didn’t watch enough movies to make it worthwhile, esp. since I can get almost anything at the library.
And we love hulu for shows we missed and some of those old classics too! :)
@Erica – It sounds like you aren’t much of a TV watcher anyway, so maybe this isn’t meant for you if you can’t justify a $40-50 / month high speed internet bill. In that case, the library for free movie rentals is about as cheap as you cold hope to get.
I’m a big fan of no-cable — and a bigger fan of BSG!
Computer to TV: I regularly use an HDMI cable connected from a laptop to a TV — this can result in a GREAT picture, especially if you are watching shows from ABC, which has HD streaming.
Something to know is that retailers will tell you that you need an expensive ($50+) HDMI cable to have quality reception and this wrong wrong wrong. My cable was $19 from Fry’s, and I would have paid less if I had had the patience to wait and buy it online. Also, make sure your TV has an HDMI input and laptop has an HDMI output!
Libraries: Love them! Go to your library system’s website, get a login etc. and request DVD’s to be delivered to your local branch. They will send you an email when it arrives, and typically will have longer rental periods when you check out an entire season. I’ve lived in a few cities in the past couple years and all of them have had similar systems and great selections available, my husband and I ended up canceling our Blockbuster Online account (which imho, was a better deal than Netflix, but that was about a year ago).
Anybody got any tips on dealing with constant buffering on Hulu? We’ve got the fastest connection possible in our area and it took us (I’m so not joking) about four hours to watch a 45-minute episode of House. While we probably still wouldn’t chuck our service (yay sports!), I’d love the convenience of watching a show whenever I feel like it.
Terrin – One note on replacing cable with internet if you have few internet options-
You can get DSL internet through companies like AT&T with a basic five dollar emergency phone line w/o outgoing calls – ~$35
Or you can get internet through the cable company – ~$50-100 + cable depending where you live.
I’ve done it before and it worked just fine, and I saved about $50 a month.
For those complaining about watching on computer:
Get or use a computer with HDMI out and plug it into your television, then you can watch your shows from your sofa without staring at your computer.
hope this helps. simple solution.
I don’t have cable! I used to buy tv shows off of iTunes, but my internet plan changed and it now limits my usage/month, so I can’t do that anymore. :( It’s probably for the better, ’cause my computer runs better without a lot of tv shows on it!
Anyway, I do get netflix, but that’s only $5/month…2 movies/month! I’m 22, a full-time college student, and I honestly don’t understand how other college students have sooooo much time for tv. (I once had 2 roommates who were constantly fighting over the TiVo and one of them threw a fit when I suggested just getting basic cable…CRAZY!)
I’m fine with my old FRIENDS dvds, although I recently used an Amazon giftcard to purchase Sex and the City, Season 1, for $4! Cheap entertainment. :) I’m trying to buy all my media used now, whether they be cds, books, or dvds.
I currently use Hulu on my big screen TV. We do this by streaming the hulu videos using a software by mediamall called playon.
It streams the shows directly from your home computer – through the network to your networked xbox 360 (or playstation 3 or soon – wii).
The streaming works extremely well, and while the shows still have commercials – it’s free! Hulu is awesome!
Playon also streams video content from youtube, CBS, espn, and a couple of other service. Well worth the $40 cost.
of course for this to work you also need an Xbox 360 – but if you already have one -give it a shot! netflix is also completely integrated into the xbox 360 – so if you have an account you can stream selected movies for no additional cost!
We use the TV Listing at AOL to check our Broadcast TV. You might want to check here:
http://tvlistings.aol.com/listings/md/rockville/broadcast?hid=BCAST511&zipcode=20853&tab=grid
Change to your zipcode to see if you can get any broadcast TV.
We are lucky to have a lot of broadcasting channels freely from the air, from watching Mugnum PI or the old Knight Rider at RTN network to Antique Roadshow on PBS or Cooking/This Old House on the Create channel. Thus we don’t have to pay for the basic cable TV at all. Of course, we are not really a big fan of TV so paying for TV was never in our payment plans. But we have to have internet.
For the phone, my husband and I and his parent share a family cell plan of 700min/month, and 1000 messages for $100/month with Verizon. This is the discount price for federal employees btw.
We don’t have need the land line, however our parent need that when they visit us. So we use VoIP:
– $80 to buy a modem (Linksys SPA3102) which can be used with the normal home phone; this you will use until it dies and pay no more fee.
– Free register for a VoIP account at gizmo5 website.
– $35/year to get a phone number from wherever area code you pick at gizmo5 also. We picked a NC area code for our parent in US so that their friends in NC can call them for free.
What we get are: free to receive any phone calls; free to call anyone in the gizmo5 network; and 2 cent/minute to call everyone outside network in US/Canada – of course we have to buy credits in order to call outsiders. I also got a modem for my family in Vietnam and we can talk to each other for free as long as our internet working, as we are in the same network.
That’s all! You can google the Voxilla website and read more about the modem, configuration and VoIP.
However, we have to pay for internet in order to have our phone working. It’s $48/month – the Verizon Fios internet here.
I saw several comments regarding cable being bundled with other stuff and the price going up when you unbundle. There is a great article on negotiating with the cable companies for lower rates at http://www.erica.biz/2009/negotiate-your-phone-bill/. Check it out.
As for the news, we listen to NPR on radio when we don’t want to watch any screen (TV, computers).
For movies, well, if you have a computer and a DVD player on it, I guess you should be able to find some good uses of these for the Netflix movies. We use Netflix for several months, then stop and wait until our list of wanted-to-see movies were long enough, come back to Netflix to get those movies then stop again – and this circle goes on. We don’t think that there are a lot of good movies to watch every day so no need to have Netflix every month/every year.
TV.com is another hulu.com like option. Hard to do the math because I bet you are saving, at the same time the downloads could easily add up quickly, plus also the hassle each time of setting your comp up to watch on TV if you do that. Can save, but you are still paying regardless.
I wish we could get some decent OTA reception but we are too rural :( We are dumping our dish and taking advantage of basic cable deals the cable co. is offering to lure in new customers. $10/mo or free WYB internet service.
Here is a cool site for checking the signal strength at your location for pre & post digital transition:
http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29
My TV and I are far to close to each other for me to part with it for the glow of a monitor. But I do like hulu for when I am away from my TV and want to watch a show
yah the Hulu Rocks. I don’t even have cable anymore which means no tv. Hulu and other internet pursuits keep me out of trouble and entertained.
Oh yeah, youtube.com is great for free music since I don’t own an ipod either(my kids do though). Lately a lot of the youtube.com videos have started playing one song after another by the same artist so you can get 10-20 minutes of music without having to change the video. Can’t beat that-totally free AND legal.
A timely post….I was just searching prices for internet/cable services for our move. Its expensive! Maybe this will wrangle me in and I wont spend extra money for extended cable.
Here is another idea in case someone else didnt mention it in the 89 comments prior: Netflix is starting to offer current tv episodes to stream online. I am not sure how many they offer like this, but I know CSI is one of them. Now you dont even have to wait for the DVDs! A nice feature!
Another cool app for Xbox 360 is called TVersity. It is a free download and once installed on your pc it allows you to access any video/music/picture files that you have on your computer and also youTube vids on your tv through the Xbox 360. Also, the 360 will read avi, mp4, and wmv files from a flash drive as well. Pretty nice for BitTorrent users.
‘Geez Louise!
Want to reduce your television bill? Do what 90% of the world does:
Watch free over-the-air TV!
That’s what we do.
Anyway, IT’S MADNESS TO PAY FOR TV!!
Think about it: What is the purpose of Television?
The purpose of television is TO SELL YOU THINGS.
And you want to pay people good money for the right to have people sell you crap? Get a life!
Read this book:
“Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”
http://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Elimination-Television-Jerry-Mander/dp/0688082742
Ah, I have read Four Arguments and The Plug-In Drug and many other books about the dangers of television. One of my primary papers at college was on the dangers television poses to children.
That said, I’m aware of the dangers, and still think that television can be an excellent source of entertainment, just like the movies. The great thing about these alternatives is that they curtail (and, in some cases, eliminate) advertising, eliminating that concern.
There are so many free ways to watch your favorite shows now with the technology out there. I have never paid for television in my life. I currently receive over the air TV to a Digital HD TV Tuner in a Linux powered DVR machine I built. So I get any over the air channels, I can record any of them to watch later, they look perfectly clear because of the HD Tuner and I have all of my movie collection on the box, viewable at my fingertips. Best thing I ever did in the TV realm.
Miro (getmiro.com) is a nice option for PC viewing of any type of online video.
We’re in an area with minimal OTA, but recently found that Dish Network has a $20/mo “Dish Family” plan with just enough news and kids’ programming to make everybody happy. It’s not heavily advertised, but it’s there. Hulu and Netflix make up the difference. Downgrading Dish and Netflix to minimal will save us $324/yr.
These kinds of websites are a blessing for those of us living away from home. I use to spend $15 every Wednesday just to buy a ticket to the movies(add the cost of popcorm
n to that.), and several dollars more to rent DVDs of my favourite TV shows. Since I have found out that I can watch programs such as the Daily show and others via the internet, I have been able to stay away from the video store and movie theatre for over a year. That amounts to a lot of moeny saved.
Why are you paying for cable at all? Hah! Just had to repeat that. Our family has been TV-free since I moved out from my last room-mate in 1997 or so.
I find I’ll surf, and have the TV on for no good reason if I have it, so just cut it out completely. I’d rather read a good book anyway, or write. There are so many studies out there about brain function dropping when TV is on and such, I’ll just do without.
Our local library has a great system, and quite a few movies. I can’t remember the last movie I rented. And I think I went out to a bar 3 times last year for specific NBA playoff games. So say $50 a year for video entertainment – and meals.
Now I’m curious about Hulu, but I doubt I’ll do much other than poke around.
Kill your TV. They’re great for potting plants.
I took a similar path to lower TV bills using our Tivo HD (with antenna only), Netflix, a Roku Box, and BitTorrent. I wrote it all up on my blog:
http://www.cheaplinks.net/articles/39.php
Joel
I LOVE HULU.
They have good movies (The Professional is a great movie, Natalie Portman is great in that movie. You should watch it if you can JD! You’ll love it!)
THey have good TV. What’s not to like
I don’t have cable. Ironically I have 3 TV sets in my living room, none of which are plugged in. I know – Odd.
-Nate
My boyfriend had a Windows Media Center laptop that his roommate stepped on, destroying the screen. He lent it to me, and I hooked it up to the big TV with an S-video cable and headphone-to-RCA-jack (you can probably do this with ANY computer that has the right outputs). Instant big-screen TV of Netflix Watch Instantly, Hulu, Youtube, Google Video, anything you can access on the Internet! No fancy programs required, and it’s FREE!
The only cable stations I watched regularly were Turner Classic Movies (which I do miss) and TV Land (which I don’t, since they’re playing modern and reality show crap now). With this and free OTR digital, I am NEVER getting cable. :)
I have a question… I you buy all you television from the iTunes Store, how did you discover new programs?? Just but picking titles out of a list?
Timely post!
I have been exploring options of phasing out our cable for months now– I was considering a high powered antenna ($200 one time) and some form of online service like Hulu . . . I hate my cable provider with a passion!
I love this idea, but what if you have multiple tvs in the house? We’re a family of 4 and often watching different things at the same time. A computer for each tv gets expensive and it’s a little more hardware than I’d like to keep going.
I’d be perfectly happy to go without cable but my girlfriend watches a few shows.
The odd time I do watch TV it’s just whatever happens to be on the Food Network at the moment, I would never make a point of seeing anything.
@deb
There are solutions for the multiple TV problem. They are somewhat technical such as having a RF Modulator and broadcasting your own channel that your TV’s can tune into. The one I particularly like is installing basically a back end to transmit over wireless internet and having a dumb terminal (simple PC with TV tuner)at each TV that connects into the backend and gets a feed. This will lower the cost of having to buy a PC for each tv significantly. Slim/dumb terminals are very small and inconspicuous. MythTV is the application I use for this setup. I am sure you could contract a geek via craigslist or something to do this for you if you lack the nerdiness to set it up yourself ;) It is a very hobby/geeky oriented setup and many geeks I know would set it up for free + the cost of equipment just for fun. I know I would lol
I like hulu too, but recently I’ve discovered fanscast.com. Most of the Hulu shows seems to be on fanscast as well, but there’re less ads. On fanscast, there’s only 1 commercial at the beginning of the show, but on hulu, there can be commercials every 10 minutes, which is a lot more annoying.
disclaimer: i’m not affiliated w/fanscast.com in anyway. just want to share another source of free tv!
Hulu.com and ABC’s service are god-sends. If my apartment complex wasn’t giving me cable for free, I would have cancelled it because everything I watch is online for free.
I cut cable all together after I got my digital receiver. $70 a month was just not worth it for the 5 stations actually worth watching. And in Los Angeles, there are lots of options for HDTV stations on with the digital tv that come in perfectly!
I just hate it when people get all moralist about TV watching. People are actually allowed to spend time doing what they enjoy. Just because you can’t find something good on TV doesn’t mean others can’t. And I’ve watched some shows with fabulous writing. You know, like books, just acted out.
Great article JD. I am about to cancel my cable television, or at least lower it to the cheapest basic cable which is about 14 bucks a month, if I cancel all the way and keep just the internet connection my bill goes up by 17 bucks, so it makes sense to pay the 14 and pocket the difference.
I just purchased a refurbished Mac Mini for 500 dollars. I am going to hook it up to my TV and use it to watch all the online content that is out there. The Mac Mini is a great cheap media center PC to hook up to a TV and the form factor is great. It will also double as my music server, and anything else I need it to do it will do. The savings by getting rid of the digital cable with have the Mac Mini paid for in a few months too.
With the whole Hulu/Boxee thing going down, the only way you will be able to watch Hulu is on a computer via the web browser since broadcasters don’t want an easy way for people to watch Hulu content on their TV because it will take viewers away from the actual broadcast and will lower the ad dollars they earn, that is where the controversy is coming from and it makes sense to a degree. What they need to do is also track the number of people watching streams from Hulu and the other sites and factor that into what they charge for advertising. The cable companies are also putting pressure on the networks to take shows off the internet because people are doing what we are all doing, either canceling our service or limiting it. If cable TV operators were smart, they would offer an a-la-carte system for TV. Allow me to pick what channels I want for about 2 bucks each. I would do that in a minute as there are only about 10 channels I care to watch anyway. Anyway, back to my setup. There are tons of programs for the Mac that will allow me to do this all with a remote control so I don’t even need to hook up a keyboard or mouse unless I need to update or things like that. Keep canceling that cable TV people, it is the only way to get the cable companies to adapt to what WE want instead of us adapting to them.
I haven’t had cable since 2003. Hulu/netflix have so many shows that cable seems unnecessary unless you’re a sports fanatic or you NEED to watch cables series as soon as they air. People are also addicted to their DVRs (and to paying $120 a year to have it). I think a lot of people don’t think about the long term ramifications of their monthly monetary obligations. Not having cable for 5 years was instrumental in saving money towards our house down payment.
Watching TV on your computer screen isn’t much fun but it’s easy to get around this.
1. Buy a refurb/reconditioned computer at TigerDirect. I got one for $120! No way could I easily build one for that cheap. If your tv has a VGA input, you’re all set. You’ve got easy access to Hulu and Netflix Watch Now. I was going to go the “build your own pvr/dvr route” like Chad@#5 but this was easier and cheaper. I can’t imagine how he pulled that off for $350. I’d like to see the parts/price list for that. I also came around to realize that I don’t NEED a dvr/pvr solution. It’s just one of those “nice to haves”.
2. XBMC (Xbox media center), an operating system for the old xbox allowed you to watch Hulu up until this week. Darn it! This was a great alternative to #1 if you have an older TV sans VGA input.
JD: I love my antenna. I get all the local HD channels. $35@buy.com
http://www.buy.com/prod/audiovox-amplified-directional-indoor-hdtv-antenna-audiovox-amplified/q/loc/111/90144642.html
For those in Canada (or other countries) without access to Hulu, you might want to check out this article about a free vpn program (called Hotspot Shield) that circumvents Hulu’s exclusively US IP policies:
http://patricksoon.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-watch-hulu-in-canada-hack.html
I also have basic cable ($10/month), but use my Tivo to download shows off Amazon Unbox (@$1.99/episode)
Internet is $10/month for 768KB (slow), so streaming’s out, but I can still download episodes overnight.
I think this sounds great. My BIG resistance (yes, my husband has been bugging me to death about this lately) to cancelling cable is not for the shows that I love so much but the shows that my KIDS love so much. What would you suggest for the kids??? Thanks.
For the kids? A soccer ball, some books, and a few board games …
We have Blockbuster.com, and we’re satisfied paying $19 a month for movies and TV. The catch is that you’ll always be a season behind on your shows. We just have to make sure friends don’t discuss current season spoilers when we’re out together.
I use the rabbit ears to watch real-time television once per year, for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (It’s a family tradition.) Once the digital conversion makes that impossible, we’ll be truly cable-free.
included in my best of february 2009
http://haveless.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-of-less-is-more-february-2009.html
Joining the conversation a bit late, but…
We pay $4.99 per month for basic channels from Dish Network (actually, with taxes it comes to $5.35. Honestly, I could cut that out – there is literally nothing on television I’m interested in. Certainly nothing that would be worth hundreds of dollars a year, which would equate to many, many working hours of my life.
Lots of great comments, I quit reading around #15. We bought an s-video cable (from s-video.com) that turns our 52″ TV into a monitor.
We turned off our satellite a year ago. we watch all the major networks, plus USA online. We also watch Hulu and use Netflix instant download a lot.
Our internet plus satellite bill was $132 a month. Now our Netflix bill and our internet bill are $63 a month.
Here’s an even better idea for saving money and improving your life – get rid of your television. Haven’t had one for more than 15 years.
I can’t say goodbye to the old tube just yet. With that in mind, we had to purchase cable to receive any channels since the HD switch. We tried everything and couldn’t get any channels through our new converter box. I think we’re just too far out in the boonies. We bought a package deal so we could also upgrade from dialup to DSL. Thank goodness for speed! I’m comfortable paying $30.00 a month for the DSL/Basic Video package we get right now.
The cable bill is just another one of the unnecessary things most people can cut-back on.
I mean, it’s not like you can watch television many hours on a single day. Getting on-demand showing is a better idea, I think.
Thanks for the tips.
J.D.,
Hulu sounds great. It’s not available for viewing outside the US yet, (I live in Mexico), but I did leave my email and name for when they expand.
If you know of any such service that allows North America viewing outside the US, I’d be delighted to hear about it!
-Romy
A point I’d like to stress is the availability of video from public libraries. In the two cities I’ve most recently lived in, your library account gives you access to online catalogs of videos available not only from the local library branch, but also from other participating libraries. You can search for and reserve titles, have them delivered to and pick them up from your local branch, and keep them for a week (you may also be able to renew them online, in my case for up to 3 weeks total). In one city, the service was free; in the other, it’s $1.00 per video, excluding children’s titles, which are free.
You can’t get much cheaper than FREE. Here’s a point I’ll capitalize: LIBRARIES ARE FANTASTIC, FREE (THAT’S FREE!) RESOURCES PEOPLE DO NOT USE. USE YOUR LIBRARY!
This does require returning your videos on time or paying a fine, so if you don’t actively maintain your account, the library deal might not be for you. Otherwise, make the effort. It’s good for you, and also good for your library.
Thanks.
My wife and I watch a lot of movies, but not a lot of TV. We cut out all but the basic cable and purchased a modest LCD HDTV. We also have an Xbox 360, and have a Netflix subscription. The Xbox allows us to watch Instant Watch Netflix on the TV.
One of the best things about the new TV is the digital tuner. The cable company wants $13 a month just for a digital box to recieve the HD, but my TV recieves all the HD channels without the rental box.
OT
I didn’t remember you are a fan of BsG, I recently discovered it and i love it – wonderful stuff. So say we all. :)
I too use hulu. If you love Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, & the U S Marshall to hide/move persons who are to testify & other popular USA network shows, go to USA network.com. You can see last weeks episode & all prevuous shows, with about 2-3 30 second commercials during the whole episode. Love It. Stopped cable too. It was rediculous with all the taxes added on that is not helping us at all. Good site. Good How-tos.
I have Directv and it’s ridiculously expensive. I tried cutting back to the family programming but geez, that’s pretty much locals plus Nickelodeon. I’m thinking about canceling it altogether…
ME and my gf just cut the cable and switched to watching tv online. We really dont watch tv all that much and were spending about $40 a month. We now pay $0, just plug your laptop to your plasma and go to hulu. Another thing is that we watch less tv now becuase of the hassle of getting into the website and all which is great cause now we are reading more and being outdoor
I know this is a late response to this thread, but I only saw this post with the 2009 top ten thread and thought I’d add some info for folks.
I also got rid of cable TV (though not cable internet) and I am also a big sports fan (mostly soccer and baseball). I saw that lots of people have posted how they would miss the sports, so here’s my suggestion for those of you into soccer and baseball:
Soccer – ESPN360 carries a ton of games. Go to ESPN’s web site and find the link to ESPN360 and have a look at their schedule. They also carry college basketball, football, and even sometimes stuff like Cricket. They had some US Open tennis matches on there as well this past fall.
European Soccer – Again ESPN360 carries some La Liga games, Bundesliga, Eredivisie, Coca-Cola League (England’s Championship division), etc. The best deal though is to go to UEFA.com and buy the Champion’s League/UEFA Cup REPLAY package. It’s about $40 for the season and you can watch EVERY champion’s league or Europa league match, or highlights the day after the match. The games are posted at midnight central European time, which is 6 pm Eastern and 3 pm Pacific, so you can virtually watch the match the same day and you won’t have to pay for cable + special sports channels (GolTV, etc.) to watch the champion’s league. This works abroad too, btw. I subscribed when I lived in Botswana…that’s how I watched EURO 2008. It’s certainly not HD, but it’s good enough for me.
Baseball – MLB is the only other league I know of that has put all its games online. I subscribed to MLBTV when I lived in Botswana, so we could keep up with the Red Sox. Back in the states, I downgraded to just the gameday audio ($15 and you can listen to the radio broadcast of any game through the season and post-season…you have the choice of home or away broadcasters). But you can get streaming video if you subscribe to it (I think it’s around $80 a season)…there may be blackouts though. Games are also available through the archives, so you’ll never have to miss a game. Just to reiterate, MLBTV.com is available internationally too.
Other than that, there’s live streaming of some sports on websites like justin.tv, which is definitely good for European soccer matches you can’t find online elsewhere. Not sure how legally kosher that site is though…
And I agree…Hulu is fantastic. I started watching the Daily Show on Hulu instead of off the show’s website because Hulu has fewer and much more tolerable ads (many of them PSAs). And for the trekkies out there, CBS.com has all the original Star Trek series available online :). I watched all 14 episodes of Firefly on Hulu.
One last comment…USE YOUR LIBRARY!!! Libraries have TONS of TV shows and Movies on DVD and IT’S ALL FREE!!! My wife and I LOVE mysteries, and our local library has tons of great British mystery series, a great selection of movies (even very recent ones). Once you get into the habit of going to the library, the 7-day lending period
(or whatever it may be at your library) for movies is not a big deal and our library accounts can be accessed online, so we can re-new items with a couple of mouse clicks if we find we haven’t watched a movie by the due date. I watched the entire BSG series by borrowing the DVDs from my library.
You know TV isn’t one of those things that I miss when I just don’t pay for it.
Personally, as long as the TV can play an occassional movie I really don’t care about the rest.
No one seem to bringing up the most important point, Hulu is going to start charging to stream shows, They’re not making enough money off of commercials. You can find tons of information about this by typing “Hulu charging” into Google. Even though, I love the thought of all of this for free and I am currently using a lot of these features, they may only last another couple of months. When Hulu starts to charging it will maybe be $5 a month then it will increase and increase until it becomes the cable bill all over again. The problem isn’t the cable/satellite companies, it’s that networks ask for a 4-10% increase in revenue from them every year for the past 8-10 years.
If you think that the cable/satellite providers aren’t trying hard to fight this just pick a provider and type it’s name and a name of a network, you’ll find tons of results. In the past 5 years I know of 7 attempts by providers refusing to pay the huge increases. The channels would start huge campaigns and scrolling texts under shows reading. ” Your provider is going to remove, (insert favorite show), and that you need to call them up. The providers get hammered with calls about disconnecting service and going with other providers that did pay. These increase end up in your monthly bill and make it go up every year.
Check this site for exhaustive details on how to watch TV after you cancel cable. If you live in the woods like we do, you might have to cut back to basic.
http://www.cancelcable.com/
This got us re-evaluating our cable service. We have the full digital package yet watch very little TV. In fact maybe 1 hour a day tops. I’ve been seeing an Ad offering $9 per month for all you can watch movies at Netflix. So I called our cable provider to see about switching to basic cable, which still gives you 70 Channels. This combination would bring the bill down to half or more. And if we can’t find something between 70 channels then read; now there’s a thought.
I’d like to cut my TV bill out completely. Unfortunately, my cable internet is cheaper with a TV package than without.
I love HULU. Excellent quality. In my blog, Dollars Not Debt, I talk about my path to debt freedom. Fun stuff!
Dollars Not debt
What company do you use for internet? Do you still have cable?
You could eliminate your television bill completely, including the electricity to power it up, by cutting your television in half. :-)
Don’t forget, too, if you can’t afford the extra bill for paid television, you can also go to Walmart, or any electronics store & buy what they call a converter box, & get local channels completely 100% for FREE. All you have to pay is the electric you use for the tv & box, which is barely anything. I get over 15 local channels & we haven’t paid a dime for them. The only downside is, you’ll want a tall antenna so your signal is stronger, & sometimes, like dish, with bad storms you’ll temp loose the channels, but when its clear they’re back.
JD, I’m sure you have a ton of stuff to do, but I’m hoping you’ll update this post sometime soon. HULU now charges a fee, and Netflix changed since this post was written. What are you doing now to watch TV?
I use a roku which streams my internet to my tv–the roku has all of these channels (news, hulu plus, netflix, etc) so I can watch whatever I want. I paid 70 bucks for the roku and there are no monthly fees or anything. I borrow netflix from my sister and paid her 25 bucks for the year–we just have the streaming option. It was one of the best decision I’ve ever made :)I would never go back!
I’ve always enjoyed your site and suggestions for getting our finances in order. Thanks for the time you spend on assisting your readers.
very good
As a New England resident and rabid Red Sox fan, the only reason I keep cable is to get NESN for Red Sox games. If you have a computer IP address in the New England “market” area for Red Sox MLBTV will block your access even if you are traveling since it goes by your IP, not where you are, so that is not an option for me. Is there any way to get NESN via Hulu or any other internet provider? If so I will drop cable like a bad habit (which it is). (I know Direct TV has NESN and that is another option I am considering.)