Trading in our cable tv

[fishorama]

Our cable box died on Wed. Husband tried all the "fixes" but no. He tried actually talking to a person, but some how couldn't even get past all the security crap. Go to an ATT store. He just wanted a new box but got a sales pitch for Direct TV Streaming. I looked & that actually has all the channels we watch regularly now & more! I check every year but would have to go to a higher (expensive tier) to get them. So we decided to go for streaming. Still a learning curve but we're getting there. The voice remote is now working but seems to shout very loud at us. & we don't have phone calls show on the tv. Kind of a PITA but we ignore most calls anyway.

Smart phones last year & now tv streaming! What is our anti-tech world coming to?!?

& then a new cable box came today, even though we'd cancelled that service...I'm just so happy my husband is dealing with all this. That was part of my job for many years: phone trees, getting to the right person to fix issues & lots of patience.

 

[Fishmanic]

No more cable for me. My monthly tv viewing expense is between 0 and $14. My internet access monthly bill is $35. I did sign up for a month of access to Red Sox games for $30 but will drop it at the end of the season.
I find I have more than enough interesting programs to watch via antenna or streaming. There are so many movies and tv programs you can access via free streaming sites like Pluto, Tubi, Roku channel and many other free sites.
I dropped cable about 12 years or so ago and have saved an estimated $25,000....not chump change.
I spend more time surfing the web, social sites,TFF, and YouTube than I do watching TV.

 

[GaryE]

We still have our online version of cable without cables, because my mother in law isn't going to change those ways at 92. She needs her shows, and her TV is on all day. I barely watch TV, but the cable companies have become so desperate it's cheaper to have internet with their cable than internet alone. So statistically, we'll look like old school cable TV watchers, but practically, it wasn't worth canceling.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Our cable box died on Wed. Husband tried all the "fixes" but no. He tried actually talking to a person, but some how couldn't even get past all the security crap. Go to an ATT store. He just wanted a new box but got a sales pitch for Direct TV Streaming. I looked & that actually has all the channels we watch regularly now & more! I check every year but would have to go to a higher (expensive tier) to get them. So we decided to go for streaming. Still a learning curve but we're getting there. The voice remote is now working but seems to shout very loud at us. & we don't have phone calls show on the tv. Kind of a PITA but we ignore most calls anyway.

Smart phones last year & now tv streaming! What is our anti-tech world coming to?!?

& then a new cable box came today, even though we'd cancelled that service...I'm just so happy my husband is dealing with all this. That was part of my job for many years: phone trees, getting to the right person to fix issues & lots of

I've been on the Direct TV streaming for about a year now. I like it better than traditional cable tv.
There are lots of neat features. Unlimited DVR capacity. Lots of cool channels. I particularly like the Earth X and the other animal channels.

 

[OldFishKeeper]

I signed on to Dish Network years ago because they were the best for our RV days. We don't do that any more so I should check out what the others have said here. One problem is we have zero antenna HD here. Another is my wife likes CNN.

 

[anewbie]

I have no cable tv, no sat dish, no local stations. Now what was the questions? Btw AT&T sucks, COMCAST sucks, verizon suck and well they all suck.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am old school and dislike streaming video. We have the triple play via Verizon FIOS. Cable TV with 3 boxes and a whole house DVR, a top tier TV package which includes HBO and Showtime and then two land line phones which are via the Net not using copper lines.

I am a channel surfer and do not want a voice control remote, they are way to slow for how I watch. The voice controls are Blue Tooth and my remotes are line of sight old style ones. The latest voice controlled boxes suck. I will not pay for other streaming video like Netflix etc. We are an Amazon Prime household which gets us Amazon TV. The only Amazon programming I have ever found that was worth watching was The last thing I watched from Amazon was The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Season 5, which they added not using the original writers, was pretty bad.

The only other thing I watched from Amazon was the only season of the Rings of Power (the LOTR prequel) and the very short recent series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Most of what Is worth watching on Amazon Prime I can find on cable. I have to watch Prime stuff on my PC and it is a PITA because we do not have smart TVs. That means I watch from my desk and on a smaller screen than my TV. I hate small screens which is one of the many reasons I do not own a smart phone. Smart phones are making humans anti-social and doing real damage to younger kids.

I may give a shot at watching The Accountant 2 on Prime as I enjoyed the original which I saw on cable years ago.

 

[Fishmanic]

I am old school and dislike streaming video. We have the triple play via Verizon FIOS. Cable TV with 3 boxes and a whole house DVR, a top tier TV package which includes HBO and Showtime and then two land line phones which are via the Net not using copper lines.

I am a channel surfer and do not want a voice control remote, they are way to slow for how I watch. The voice controls are Blue Tooth and my remotes are line of sight old style ones. The latest voice controlled boxes suck. I will not pay for other streaming video like Netflix etc. We are an Amazon Prime household which gets us Amazon TV. The only Amazon programming I have ever found that was worth watching was The last thing I watched from Amazon was The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Season 5, which they added not using the original writers, was pretty bad.

The only other thing I watched from Amazon was the only season of the Rings of Power (the LOTR prequel) and the very short recent series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Most of what Is worth watching on Amazon Prime I can find on cable. I have to watch Prime stuff on my PC and it is a PITA because we do not have smart TVs. That means I watch from my desk and on a smaller screen than my TV. I hate small screens which is one of the many reasons I do not own a smart phone. Smart phones are making humans anti-social and doing real damage to younger kids.

I may give a shot at watching The Accountant 2 on Prime as I enjoyed the original which I saw on cable years ago.

No smart tv? you are living in the past. Time to get with the program and get a smart tv. Or at least add a Roku streaming stick to your present tv if you have a USB port. Watching Prime videos over a small computer screen must really be horrid. I have one smart tv in the rec room. It has a 50 inch screen and I sit 8 ft away so it's plenty big. And I have it hooked up to a Yamaha receiver with Boston Acoustics T930 speakers from 1990. My 4 other tvs are not smart TVs but all of them have Roku sticks so I can access streaming. Also all TVs have antennas over which I get over 40 free channels (only about 10 are worth watching). If there is a vintage movie I want to watch, I can often find it for free via a streaming site or if it's a more recent movie, I can pay a few bucks to stream it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I like the past Also I am analog at heart and a privacy nut. I do not text. You can either email me or call me on my voice line.

My PC screen is a 24 inch diagonal screen an I am about 24 inches from it. I dislike having to use a laptop or tablet screen and absolutely hate smart phone screens as I need my reading glasses to see them. When I put them on, the rest of the world is out of focus.

We get a ton of channels on our Cable besides the two movie channels. Those are actually free to us as part of a deal we have with Verizon. We have the "Verizon Fios Extreme HD package includes approximately 315 channels" Add to that the multiple Paramount+ with Sho plus HBO Max and it is more like 400 channels. Note, this includes HD and SD and I rarely watch SD. This costs us$86.37/month. Where they get us is for the equipment- DVR + 4 cable boxes which costs us another $56/month. But our TVs are pretty cheap.

We have a FIOS triple play and get 2 phones and internet as well as cable for $260/month split between my brother and me. I am retired and when here at my desk during weekdays I usually have the business channel on. Most of my income comes from my investments. I used to be a broker and financial planner, Then I worked in pension

consulting for the big plans. My last few years I was also a Registered Investment Advisor. Also, I get caller ID in the TV to see it on the phone I need glasses.

ps. I do have a flip phone used only for voice. I pay by the minute spend about $100/year. I had ATT disable texting on the phone to avoid paying for the spam calls that would come in if I had not had them do that. I also drive a 2013 car with no touch screen or built in GPS. I have an old Garmin Nuvi. It is only turned on when going to new places. I rarely give out the phone number. Only family and close friends. It is turned off 95% of the time and only need to charge it about every 2 weeks.

I do not do touch screens because I keep fish. I am down to13 tanks from 20-28 tanks. I was born with naturally dry skin. Having my hands in tanks so much only makes that much worse. 9/10 times I put a finger on a touch screen, nothing happens. Another reason I do not use a smart phone or tablet. I check my emails 3-4 time/day and may take some time to answer them.

Btw, I could still navigate using a paper map if I had to

 

[Fishmanic]

I get my home phone service via a magicjack. I have it hooked up to a base cordless phone with 5 extentsions. I pay about $4 a month for the phone service and I can also use the phone via an app on my iphone so I can make most calls via WiFi on my iphone instead of using cellular service. I pay $6 a month for my cell phone service which offers 2 GB per month of data which can rollover to the next month if I don't use it all and I also get unlimited text. If, in the rare instance, I need to make a cellular phone call, I pay a penny a minute. I rarely use the iPhone for cellular phone calls but make many calls over WiFi via the magicjack app. My total internet service bill from Verizon with over 300mbps of speed is $35 a month which includes the router/modem.

 

[Uberhoust]

Ditched the cable over 20 years ago. I have gigabit internet access, required for work, and run some various streaming services such as Netflix. When I get tired of one service I suspend or cancel it and use another one for a while. Has been working well for us. We also haven't had a land line for phone for 12 years now.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

We have 2 land lines as I mentioned. My parents built this house in 1961. We still have the same phone number they got then as one or the land lines. The second one I installed for myself when I was living here full time in the 1980s. My office was in NYC when the head of my division waned to move out operation to CT. This house was earer to that than NYC and I was put in charge of the move. So I needed to be closer to CT.

While I call what we have now is not a land line as it actually comes over the net via fiber optics not via our old copper line.copper.

I do not and will not ever own anything made by Apple. When I tried to avoid WIndows10, I did about a year on a Mac Mini. It turned out to be a $2,000 paper weight. I have an old laptop mu computer guy was able ti get windows 11 onto. I had not used it since 2023. But, I have filed my taxes using Turbo tax since it was as DOS based program and bit owned by Intuit. They stopped supporting Windows 10 so I needed 11 to do mu taxes. the lap top is only turned on for from about April 8 -17 so i can do my taxes and deal with any issue which might cause the Fed or the State not to accept my digital filing. So far that has never happened.

I bot the laptop in 2023 because I was selling off all my plecos at weekend fish events among other ways and I needed a way to go when away from home. So. I got a laptop. I did the Keystone Clash in 2023 and that was the first time I took the laptop on the road. It was also the last. I stumbled onto a couple of buyers who almost cleaned me out and they came here and picked up the fish.

Btw- I got my first PC in 1987. It ran on an 80386 chip and DOS. In the next year or so that chip was upgraded to an 80486 and also got one of those new huge 10 MB hard drives as well. Memory was 1k back then, I got my first version of Windows, 3.0, NIB for free. The PC software guy who was part of my company's external team who did the migration from an off site mainframe to and in-house PC network was given two tickets to the Microsoft presentation of Win 3.0 for coders in NYC. He offered to take me. Mircrosoft handed everybody coming in a free, NIB copy of Win 3.0.

 

[fishorama]

We don't have a smart tv (yet) & still have a landline. We aren't really smart phone users, we rarely remember to carry them around. My husband texts sometimes. We don't give out our #s except for a very few people & would have to change our contact info with doctors, family & friends, etc. I tell my family if we're home & not on vacation call the landline. Someday we will know how & use them more but it's very low priority now. Baby steps, lol

We don't use Apple products either. I did inherit FIL's I-pad but that was no longer supported years ago.

 

[GaryE]

My TV calls itself smart, but I suspect that's the Dunning Kruger effect. It offers me a sea of stupid entertainment, whether that's digital services or streaming. When I'm done in and half brain dead by late evening I may turn it on and look for documentaries, since I'm a nerd. The pickings are slim.

When people say 'cable TV' I think of brown rooms with shag carpets and checked couches. It was a great innovation in its time.

I technically have a landline because it's a better deal here if you get fibre optic cable, internet and a landline bundled. That seems odd, as I haven't had a landline phone for many years. Those deals probably inflate the stats for providers, making it look like the old tech is more relevant than it is.

I save my 1970s tech for my fishtanks, which do have a throwback feel to their filters.

 

[fishorama]

Uh oh! All is not happy in our new streaming land. My husband could not log onto our ESPN+ Direct acct for Philly baseball. It includes MLB but kept getting now input your credit card on both. No! They're both included as part of our package but we'd have to create a new log on for each. He thought sine the ATT guy put it (them?) on his phone, he could use those same user & pws. He was able to make Disney+ & Hulu+ work but those are not high on our watching list. There was a Beatles 3 part show on Disney I think. I'd seen most of the clips but my usually "not a Beatles fan" husband said he'd like to watch it later. Hmm? We'll see if that happens.

1 other odd thing, we could not do closed captions on a show ("Sherlock" with Cumberbatch). He didn't know what channel he was on, but cc was not available on whatever app. We often like cc with fast talking or slangy tv, especially Brit shows. Loud doesn't mean we understand, lol.

I hear you @GaryE , about needing the fav channels on. Like you MIL, my husband likes the tv on even just as background noise almost all the time. Often my fav channel is "off".