Yesterday was a momentous day in our house - in addition to the election:
We cancelled our cable service!
We will save $100 a month while still viewing all the same programs. (insert happy dance here!)
What finally sent us over the edge was Time Warner sneaking in a $4 a month charge for renting their cable modem. A cable modem, mind you, that the installation technician REQUIRED us to use even though that is not Time Warner’s policy (I could do a whole other blog post on this saga alone). Of course, this $4 was in addition to horrible service and sporadic signal.
Here’s how we did it:
For about $80, we purchased a HD antenna that plugs into our digital ready television giving us all of the local stations - AND in better quality than we were receiving via Time Warner. Note that each television needs one of these - but you literally just plug it in and have the TV scan for channels.
Programs that aren’t local or we don’t view live are streamed off the internet for free through our AppleTV - which we purchased a couple of years ago for about $100. For example, if we want to watch last week’s episode of Big Bang Theory, we go to CBS.com on our apple laptop or newer iPad and have it stream the video to the AppleTV.
We plan to subscribe to Hulu Plus for $8 a month - but we haven’t had a need to yet.
We still have Time Warner for our internet access - because we don’t have any other options where we live - and believe me, we’ve searched. We did purchase our own modem.
$100 a month - that’s $1200 a year! If you are even considering such a move, I highly recommend it. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. Or let me know if you’ve done the same and how it went.
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| Here's our HD antenna - it's about the size of an apple ipad. |
10 Month Update
We still love being cable free. The only big change from the above description is that we purchased Roku from Best Buy for about $80. It's a box that plugs into the back of our tv (similar to Apple TV - but with many more channels). If you want to get your Geek-on - then check out Plex, which turns your computer into a server and then speaks to your Roku - so that you are able to stream previously aired shows from ABC/CBS etc. straight to your tv. It works similarly to a dvr but it only keeps the last five episodes.
We still love being cable free. The only big change from the above description is that we purchased Roku from Best Buy for about $80. It's a box that plugs into the back of our tv (similar to Apple TV - but with many more channels). If you want to get your Geek-on - then check out Plex, which turns your computer into a server and then speaks to your Roku - so that you are able to stream previously aired shows from ABC/CBS etc. straight to your tv. It works similarly to a dvr but it only keeps the last five episodes.
