Ditching cable tv for streaming

The wife and I are seriously are considering ditching cable TV for streaming from Hulu and Netflix. Netflix has unlimited TV shows and movies for $7.99 per month. Way cheaper than our $130 a month cable bill, that includes internet. We hardly watch TV anyway. Thinking about getting a mac mini to hook up to our TV.

Anybody here done this?. I started thinking about it months ago after reading about it in Mac Life.

Well personally I havent done so,

but obviously if you're going to be saving however many monies
then you should totally go for it,
and Hulu is very convenient since it shows a lot of popular shows nowadays!

But but but...you'll miss the Golf Channel!

I've been trying to convince my parents that they should abandon cable TV for streaming to save money, but there are like 3-5 channels thay can't live without.

Also, I just wish the all the available options would let you use Hulu, instead of being forced to use Hulu Plus.

I am so ready to make the move to just streaming. I watch Stormchaser's on a Wednesday which is available on youtube anyway and that is about all I watch. Moving into the final stages of switching and shall post up on how the whole transition goes.

I've dumped cable for awhile now...actually (other than brief try having it again) haven't had it for about 3 years now.

Netflix, Hulu, and AppleTV are all I really need. Everything is pretty much available online.

Once I can find a streaming solution for live sporting events and local news then I'll be interested in giving up cable. The thing is the cable companies aren't even trying to be price competitive. Some have actually raised prices rather than lower them. They are just motivating people to drop their cable service when they do that.

EndlessMac said:

Once I can find a streaming solution for live sporting events and local news then I'll be interested in giving up cable. The thing is the cable companies aren't even trying to be price competitive. Some have actually raised prices rather than lower them. They are just motivating people to drop their cable service when they do that.

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I understand sports, but what is at all worthwhile on local news anymore?

It would be great to be able to drop cable TV altogether and just stream, however, most cable companies offer reduced prices for bundling. My ISP - Verizon offers a price reduction for FIOS TV if you subscribe to FIOS internet services. Either one alone would cost 20% more. Not saying I enjoy paying around $100/mo. (including taxes) for both services, but just the high speed FIOS alone would be close to $60 (including taxes).

What we did was cancel the hd cable subscription, and downgrade to the regular 13 channels. Our Toshiba tv have a built in tv-tuner, so they automatically find hd channels(plenty of all the cool shows I like). We also Have netflix and xbox live for media stuff...almost forgot about the apple tv!! Xbox live now has espn live shows with all the good games. We went from $170+, which included internet/tv/telephone, to only $57 dollars a month. I can honestly say, most tv subscriptions are filled with garbage shows/infomercials! You start to realize how much time tv actually take up from your life.

schweb said:

I understand sports, but what is at all worthwhile on local news anymore?

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Not a whole lot but do like catching up what's been going in my area. I don't live out in nowhere so there are some interesting news that happens locally. Also there have been times when people I met in real life have talked about some local news and I have not heard about it. I guess it's partly for conversation about local events when I met up with local friends and acquaintances but I find it nice to keep up with local news as opposed to what is going on with the rest of world news I get from the internet.

It's not a deal breaker for me but I think I'm just used to having easy access to it. I can read local news from the internet but I like listening/watching it in the background while I'm doing other stuff like preparing dinner. It's a very quick and easy way for me to catch up with what's been going on in my area.

For example there was recently a bomb threat that drastically effected my morning traffic and possible safety. The morning news had good coverage of it.

EndlessMac said:

For example there was recently a bomb threat that drastically effected my morning traffic and possible safety. The morning news had good coverage of it.

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Are you talking about OSU by any chance?

EndlessMac said:

Not a whole lot but do like catching up what's been going in my area. I don't live out in nowhere so there are some interesting news that happens locally. Also there have been times when people I met in real life have talked about some local news and I have not heard about it. I guess it's partly for conversation about local events when I met up with local friends and acquaintances but I find it nice to keep up with local news as opposed to what is going on with the rest of world news I get from the internet.

It's not a deal breaker for me but I think I'm just used to having easy access to it. I can read local news from the internet but I like listening/watching it in the background while I'm doing other stuff like preparing dinner. It's a very quick and easy way for me to catch up with what's been going on in my area.

For example there was recently a bomb threat that drastically effected my morning traffic and possible safety. The morning news had good coverage of it.

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Just buy a $20 antenna and get the local stuff in HD over the air for free.

I second the idea of the antenna. The only thing I ever watch on cable is baseball, and an mlb.tv subscription works for that. Yes, there are blackout areas, but if you like a team from out of town, it's not a problem. (Of course, if you go to a lot of games at home, you'll hardly miss TV--something tells me this was done so MLB teams could sell more tickets to those who don't use cable).

Everything else I used to watch on cable I've replaced with better (and free!) online alternatives. CNN has its website where one can pick and choose the news stories, Weather Channel's website doesn't make one wait a half hour for the local forecast, and sports scores are always available from the major websites.

My problem with cable is that it's not "a la carte" and one must purchase the entire package of channels when only one or two actually get used. If I only use FSN, why pay for channels I never watch like Nickelodeon or MTV? This is precisely why I will be switching to mlb.tv and a box top antenna for my trusty old CRT television in the near future so I can still get local news, PBS, and the few shows I do watch on the major networks.

Antennas are great. We lost power during the last snow. The Honeywell kicked in and we were warm and watching local channels within 20 seconds. While the DirectTV satellite dish went out due to snow in the trees, but that antenna had us covered.

Now i have a question i talked to my parents and they like the idea. now! for netflix do we have to get an apple tv to get the videos on the tv or is there some box we can get? and same with hulu and is that on apple tv?

Hulu Plus is only $7.99 now. Not a bad alternative to cable.

Hulu - Plus

You do not need an Apple TV for Netflix. Any laptop ( Mac? Do not think there is yet a Macbook with HDMI???. or Windows ) Mac Mini / WII / PS3 / XBOX 360 or an actual home media PC hooked up to your TV will stream Netflix.

So anyway. Tomorrow is the big day. Our cable is shutting off tomorrow and we are going to be using Hulu, Netflix and Skype. We still have our cell phones.

Congratulations. We just had to go back. Not keen on it, but we were having potty training issues with our son, and we wanted him to at least have something educational on the t.v., since we had to pull him out of pre-school.

Sounds terrible, I know, but we needed him to hear conversations and such around the house, and since my wife is there alone, he wouldn't hear anything.

schweb said:

Hulu Plus is only $7.99 now. Not a bad alternative to cable.

Hulu - Plus

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Hulu Plus seems like a HUGE rip off to me. Eight bucks a month and you still have to endure commercials (flash no less) plus, they don't offer any more seasons or episodes than on regular Hulu, from what I can see. I was just looking for all the seasons of House and Lost and there's only one season of House (the new season so only 7 episodes.. how does that make ANY sense) and they still don't have the last season of Lost available.

Why anybody would pay for that nonsense is beyond me. We used to subscribe to Netflix, but they don't seem much better in the TV department. Slow to get new movies, very slow to get good TV shows (even though there are hardly any to begin with) etc... Seems to me that in order to get a decent line up of shows and movies, you'd have to subscribe to at least 2 or 3 different internet services. And with that, you might as well just pay for regular cable plus some premium channels.

But cable stinks too! They keep on whining about losing customers because of the internet, yet they have failed to provide people the services they want. If they were to do an ala carté service, and do it via on demand, with a HUGE catalog of shows to choose from (spanning a couple decades) they'd have nothing but money coming in.

Meh... maybe I'll just stick to books instead.

Doug