We Cut the (Cable) Cord
I’ve got a dirty little secret.
I love TV. I love it more than most good moms should.
You know what I mean. Good moms don’t let their kids watch TV. Good moms are so busy making a beautiful home that they don’t have time to watch TV.
Bad, lazy moms love TV.
Well, sometimes good enough moms like TV too.
I’m home a lot with my kids. My husband works many evenings. We don’t have tons of disposable income for babysitters and nights out for entertainment. Our TV is it most days.
But, we’ve gotten picky about TV.
When we first moved here we got a great teaser intro rate for our bundled internet/cableTV/telephone service. During that time we got used to some things that we decided we “needed” in our media package. Things such as caller ID, extended basic cable, and the kicker…a DVR.
To put it plainly, we wanted no mystery phone calls, and we didn’t really care for watching TV live.
Every few months the Rev. would ask me what we were paying for our cable and phone. I would tell him, but shrug. We are eight people in a house, we “needed” our phone line. And really, I NEED my TV. But then, the day after Christmas, we started to really think about how we use these services. Our landline telephone was becoming a phone that I was mostly screening telemarketers from. We have three mobile phones in our household…enough to always have one at home, and enough that anyone who really wants to reach us certainly can. (Plus we pay way too much for that service as well…that will be my next research).
And how were we watching our cable TV? We were recording movies and shows we wanted to watch on a DVR and watching them on our time frame. But sometimes we would mess up and forget to record a show, or start a series in the middle…or be delayed by football. We never watched live TV…ok, maybe rarely.
We wanted to be in control of our TV. We wanted to watch movies and tv shows on our time frame. And we were sick of paying over $100 a month for the privilege.
I made the call. I dropped our cable and our phone line. I picked up Hulu+ and Netflix streaming with really small monthly fees and we bought a Roku box.
Roku + Netflix = Instant Movies on your TV starts at $59.99
Not only does that little box take up a lot less space than our old DVR box, it also eliminates the need for us to set recordings. If the show or movie is available on Hulu or Netflix, then they are there…when we want them, on demand.
There are some things to get used to. The Roku has many other free and fee based channels to choose from, but now, there are no local channel options for news etc. and for now, I don’t see a great Roku option for football fans. (Which I am not, but my visiting uncle is).
All in all we are saving over $100 a month on phone and cable. We have reclaimed our TV. We’ve actually discovered some fun new television shows that we did not even know existed. We’re actually watching less TV. Our kids are not bombarded by frightening news. We have more control over what they watch, and most of it is commercial free.
We’re still trying to figure out the best ways to work our system, and I’ll share the things I learn with you. In an ideal world, there would be a DVR type screen that would pop up with all of our favorite shows and movies when we turn on our television, but for now there is not.
I hope to share some our fun discoveries as we go along as well!
Chime in! Have you cut the (cable) cord? What were the pros and cons for you? Is this something you are considering as well? I’d love to hear from you!
I tried to downgrade our phone once… Since the hubbs NEEDS like 40 bazillion sports channels, it doesn’t pay to downgrade the phone w/o downgrading the cable and that would never happen…. Oh well… then there is the whole HD debate. We do not need a high def reciever for ever high def TV we own. So far 1 doesn’t have a box attached to it….
I was wondering about getting a roku
We have never had tv or cable- just a tv for dvds and the internet! I see no need for actual cable unless one has to watch live sports (I prefer news on radio and internet)
Right now my girls are enjoying the Dick van Dyke show (they are 11 and 12)- we use Hulu and Netflix for older stuff (plus after they are asleep- we can watch stuff like Psych and Chuck)
priest’s wife recently posted..Once more, with feeling…
I can’t live without cable TV. I have always loved watching different sports channels as well as movie channels. Hearing this Roku + Netflix seems a great idea. I think I should try to have this for my TV.
When we moved to the country we did not connect our cable. At the time we thought it would be incentive for us to finish the renovations we wanted done. After a month though we realized that we didn’t miss having cable. We do watch some local programming on occasion, but it is rare. We also watch most our programming via Netflix as well, or online. It’s been 5 years and we rarely miss having actual cable.