Do you have cable?

[Suellen]

So I have had cable since they invented cable. I remember our first cable box was corded to the tv and had 14 punch buttons and a switch so you could getup to 28 channels depending if it was in the up or down position.

Over my Christmas break vacation to WDW with my girls ~ my husband brought back our cable boxes and installed two apple tv's and subscribed us to netflix streaming for 7.99/mo.

I was a little worried I'd miss some shows I like a lot... but I've been able to watch everything on antenna tv or on my iPad (thank you ABC) or even on my laptop.

I have to say ~ we are loving it and we save $130 a month!

So if you have cable or satellite... what keeps you hanging on?

 

[pilesoflaundry]

We have satellite and the only thing keeping us hanging on is football and sometimes it's nice to just randomly flip through and find something.

How much is an apple tv?

 

[Suellen]

$100 upfront. You can rent shows from itunes for .99

 

[pilesoflaundry]

That's not as expensive as I thought.

 

[Fantasmic23]

So I have had cable since they invented cable. I remember our first cable box was corded to the tv and had 14 punch buttons and a switch so you could getup to 28 channels depending if it was in the up or down position.

I remember those boxes!! My brother would always eat Hostess cupcakes and get chocolate crumbs in between the buttons. Now I have to find a picture of the box ...

Woohoo! This is the exact one we had!

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...=3&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:29&tx=368&ty=-297

 

[Handbag Lady]

I have cable and even though it is just basic, it allows me to watch everthing I want to watch.

But, it is worth looking into. Can you watch Mythbusters? AMC, things like that?

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We have cable...if we didn't we would have satellite.

We "hang on" b/c our lovely HOA is under contract and thus will be "providing" us cable for the foreseeable future.

If we were let out of that jail sentence, we would have satellite and what keeps me hanging on is my husband.

Honestly--I could drop most of the technology in my house. But my husband's head might explode from the lack of things that do stuff and show us stuff.

We watch much less tv when he is out of town. It is lovely.

 

[Suellen]

I have cable and even though it is just basic, it allows me to watch everthing I want to watch.

But, it is worth looking into. Can you watch Mythbusters? AMC, things like that?

To be honest ~ I've yet to rent anything from iTunes... but if you have an iTunes account I am sure you can look it up.

Streaming Netflix has TONS of stuff ~ Mythbusters is one...my husband as been watching them. They are all older seasons though.

I've been surfing the Netflix tv shows for about 3 weeks now and that along with the basic ABC, NBC, CBS we get as been more than enough. There are a few shows I can't find online that iTunes has (Downsized for one) that I will rent once they have new episodes again.

The picture of the cable box is very similar to the one we had not quite.. *that one actually looks newer*! LOL!

 

[shortbun]

I have to have my current AMC, HBO, Showtime, USA shows. Cable is the only way for me. Glad you don't feel the need to be current. Renting and watching a whole season from three years ago would not suit me for three years because I'm current on everything-DVR and skipping commercials allows for so much more quality time!!!

 

[LuLuO]

We recently cut the "family tier" from our subscription which is saving us $30 a month. I really want to get rid of it once and for all. We have a netflix subscription and a hulu subscription and a roku and a wii. We get darn great reception for local channels with an antenna. But DH is very leary of getting rid of cable because he has a hard time with any kind of change like that. Cable is something he's had for almost 20 years and it is hard for him to give it up. Honestly I don't think he'd miss is. It would cost us about $130 in a cancellation fee to turn it off and he is using that as an excuse.

The only issue there may be is our Internet. We have a bundle (phone/Internet/cable) but I know that we have options in that area too. Our cable company offers Internet only service as well as Internet/phone bundles. Trying to convince DH is not easy though.

 

[Suellen]

Well first of all they aren't from three years ago. They are last year. One season behind.

Secondly ~ I was like that ~ I was the first person anyone I knew to have the DVR (summer of 2002) and we had two in the house when I returned it. So I am no stranger to how they work and how convenient they are.

I've simply found shows I never watched and some of those have several seasons to watch.

Dexter for one ~ I've never watched it and now I have several seasons I can watch all at once.

iTunes has current seasons for .99 episode or some other amount for a whole season.

 

[cglaura]

After I received the Roku, I looked into canceling cable, even though I have it down to the lowest $12.60 basic plan.

Turns out, as a cable subscriber I get a discount on my internet, so I actually save $2 per month by having it! $57.50 basic cable & performance internet vs. $59.99 performance internet alone.

I'm loving the Roku though. I find so many shows I forgot about that I once loved. I'm currently on a Mary Tyler Moore Show kick.

Along with Netflix I'm trying Hulu Plus. That is $7/month. They have recent / last aired shows available...as well as previous seasons. For example, last night I watched the January 11th airing of Parenthood. It does have commercials though like tv...not like Netflix.

Their navigation is a little confusing, but I'm getting used to it. Just have to decide if I want another bill each month or not (I'm in the free trial month). But the only next tier up for my cable is $79...which would make my bill $123. They did away with the intermediate/expanded cable and now you go right from basic to starter digital. No middle ground. So $7/month would still be saving over more cable channels.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

I have satellite, and will continue to do so until I can watch NFL and MLB over the Internet legally. Even then, there is stuff the Internet just doesn't provide, or provides late.

 

[beaucoup]

I think my husband would die without cable. I'm good with Netflix via mail & Wii.

 

[tvguy]

Well, this post prompted me to go to the Apple TV site to see what they have. They certainly have a lot of shows, but other than the Daily Show, I didn't see any I watch. And most of it I could DVR for free off my TV with rabbit ears.
I have Dish because it's cheaper than cable. Switched 11 years ago. I'm one of those folks that would love to have ala carte TV. But they don't let you cherry pick channels.
I'd save a ton of money there and get just what I want.
Now, full disclosure, as my logon implies,I work in TV. Most of what I watch I can receive with rabbit ears. My kids do get a lot of use of the Dish channels.
I also live in the last major city to get cable (they started wiring in mid-1986), so I was nearly 30 before I every experienced cable for the first time, first on my block with it.
And that's ironic, because growing up we heard about cable (or PAY TV as it was called in those days), and never understood why anyone would pay for TV when you could get it for free.

 

[Pigeon]

We don't have it and don't want it. We do have Netflix, which is nice and we watch a little, and it's very reasonably priced. But with two kids in a bunch of activities, and who both take music lessons, we just aren't sitting around watching TV all the time. I also think TV is pretty much just a waste of time with no redeeming value, so I wouldn't want cable in my house.

We did have it for a few years when we lived in a place that got zero reception without it. It was OK, but I really don't miss it.

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

We don't have cable. We have a digital antenna.

It's free, and we get all the basic channels. Most of what we can't get on the TV we can get on hulu or from websites. I do miss a few channels, like HGTV, TLC, etc, but I like that I am saving about $100/month.

 

[palmtreegirl]

We've had an antenna for about 3 years now and love it.

 

[bicker]

Both Apple TV and Google TV has uncertain futures. Between risks associated with future licensing and with future broadband pricing, it isn't clear whether either will be a good investment at this time. Really, everything is cloudy these days. I don't recommend buying a new TiVo anymore, either, because the future of CableCARD is clouded by the FCC's AllVid proposal and the calls for the FCC to relax CableCARD regulations, such as the integration ban. While that doesn't directly affect TiVo, it could reduce the quality of CableCARD service provided, overall.

While still the safest investment, even putting up a rooftop antenna is not necessarily rock-solid. The FCC just this week made a couple of statements toward the direction of both allowing current television stations to rent out their bandwidth for use in mobile devices, and also repurposing yet-even-more spectrum away from broadcast television and toward supporting mobile devices. While over-the-air television will almost surely never go away, the number of choices it provide may not remain as high as it is now.

I think this really plays well for cable: It represents a pretty low long-term risk for consumers, since the cable company generally is willing to pay the full weight of the up-front costs, and the consumer just pays monthly fees, and unless they deliberately commit to a term commitment in return for a discount, the customer can walk away at any time, without any remorse about any big investment that they would have made in buying equipment.

 

[Nayan]

I have cable and am not willing to give it up. We are huge sports fans and some of the programming we like just isn't available online. And even if it were, the quality isn't the same (we tried watching a show online and it was awful).