goodbye cable?
- Started
- Last post
- 59 Responses
- desmo0
I havent had cable tv in well over 5 years. Do it and enjoy the savings!!
- i_monk0
In November it'll be one year since I had cable, but for years before that upwards of 90% of what I watched was downloaded.
- ismith0
When you can get Hulu, Netflix, CrunchyRoll, Amazon Prime, Mubi, aaaaaand your sports package of choice for less than your average cable subscription... why the hell not?
- lemmy_k0
I haven't had cable for years. I use Pirate Bay for most stuff and an antenna on the roof with a good tv tuner card (cheaper than a months worth of cable). Tuner card works like a dvr in Windows Media Center. With the $ we saved on cable the first 3 months, we built a nice Home Theater PC.
- Frosty_spl0
I like Formula 1 and MotoGP races. They aren't shown anywhere but cable. So I pay 140/mo. ugghh
- mantrakid0
- PS3 hooked up to tv via HDMI
- Mac App "Playback" streaming my HD contents to PS3 on demand.
- Mac app transmission downloading torrents of shows and placing them automatically into organized folders according to show title. (or just placed in a folder for myself, my wife or my kid if it's just 'delete after watching' shit.)
- Mac app called "TV Shows" that essentially polls a list of shows I setup for new episodes every 30 minutes and downloads the torrent when a new episode is found.Then... New episode of favorite show airs, New episode gets added to transmission automatically, transmission downloads into the pre-set folder automatically & new show is ready for my viewing from the PS3 next time i sit down and see what's ready for viewing.
no need for cable.
- also, ipad/iphone has an app that streams the same content from the Playback media server, so can watch on there 2mantrakid
- nb0
Cable TV (in North America) has been a joke for well over a decade. If you're just getting rid of it now or even a year or two ago, you should know that you are way behind the curve.
- mg330
Why is it a "joke?" Cost, programming, both? We have cable and I've never considering canceling it, or succumbing to a rats nest of trying to figure out where to watch certain shows.
- 74LEO0
<- I do this. once they cut the line on analog television I was done. If anything the 911 / fire fighters should have the best. I also remember growing u and my parents raving about cable and no commercials now cable is the standard and still you cant curse, there are commercials and it isnt free.
Good lucky trying to just keep the free channels. you will be on the pone arguing with them that you are just using the standard free channels.
- nb0
Overpriced, and dumbed down to the point where it should be insulting to the viewer. The boom in number of channels back in the 90s forced networks to come up with content. How many CSI-type dramas can you produce? How many sitcoms? Not enough, so you get programming where a camera crew follows around a bride for two weeks and fabricates a narrative around a few choice moments. Or a game show where you watch people exercise and talk about their diet. Or, you'll think you're getting a witty education on current events with The Daily Show even though it's probably the most formulaic (not to mention condescending) program of them all.
I'd bet most of your TV time right now is spent watching things you aren't interested in. How often do you notice yourself sitting there going, "ah, there's nothing else on"?
Cancel it for a few years and then try watching it again. It will seem completely foreign to you. You won't understand the commercials or the shows, and you'll wonder when the news turned into Entertainment Tonight. My initial reaction when going back to TV after a few years was "wow, TV really sucks now!" Many of my friends experienced the same reaction. But, of course, TV always sucked. It's just hard to tell when you're accustomed to it.
If you can't be bothered to find the shows you want (DVD, netflix, hulu, torrents) then you probably don't care about those shows as much as you think you do.
- What's wrong with The Daily Show?fredddddd
- Don't forget Deal or No Deal. Dumbest show ever.fredddddd
- http://joketropes.co…nb
- teh0
^ agree with nb
just go get seeded for your favorite movie or show and hulu has most of them also. only thing that sucks are co workers being spoilers.
- frost2150
I havent had TV around 2 months. Haven't missed a single show I watch since everything is up on the net. The only thing I'm missing is LIVE sports, but not enough to get cable. I will only get cable once they make it so I can buy only specific channels I watch.
- plash0
i did this last year. XBOX with Netflix and Hulu.
i can't wait till the networks start cutting the cord.
I want HBO:GO ; take my money!
- sublocked0
I want to do this...but I will miss out on all the basketball on TNT & ESPN. It sucks league pass doesn't include those broadcasts.
- dyspl0
dropped the cable.
only have netflix, and just subscribed to lynda, I figured spending time on tutorials wouldn't be worse than staring at hardcore pawn....
- mg330
My wife and I had a bunch of conversations about getting rid of cable over the past couple weeks. I've been doing a lot of reading, research, etc. about all the alternatives, thinking about what shows we really watch, and figuring out how we'd do it.
We're going to go the month of January only watching what we could get over an HD antenna (which really comes down to nightly local news or evening talk shows, along with Netflix, Apple TV, and Hulu.
Concerns:
- Keeping track of multiple things I regularly watch that will be on different platforms or apps now. The convenience of a single menu for cable TV goes away.
- Wrapping my head around not using a DVR to record shows, and instead having to go look for them in different apps.
- No centralized menu of live programming / unsure of what live programming exists. For me that might be limited to nightly local news and CNN.
- Unsure if certain things are available immediately after they air, how long they last, etc.
- Don't want to get into situations where TV series are only available months after they conclude when they are released online or on disc.If I can figure that stuff out, we've decided that a big positive for us is less mindless TV browsing and rematching stuff we've seen so many times (sorry Seinfeld!) and average movies that we tend to watch multiple times a year when they're on (looking at you, Miss Doubtfire, and Stuck On You, and Overboard...). We could instead watch more things we have't seen, get through certain series faster, or, just not watch TV at all and instead listen to records, read, stuff like that.
Has anyone here had the same concerns with switching? Anyone have some feedback on successfully transitioning and just streaming everything?
- Take the $ you will save from cable and get a PC with Windows 7. It has Media Center and it will address most of your concerns. Pirate Bay will solve the rest.lemmy_k
- Isn't the new apple tv supposed to address these annoying issues? (searching across apps, etc)SteveJobs
- go without tv for a month and find other things to do. if you still miss it then go back and try the online stuff.dorf
- utopian0
Comcast has more Internet complaints to FCC than ALL competitors combined.
When it comes to customer complaints filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast is getting some bad marks.
The review of FCC complaints by the website Ars Technica shows there are more Internet service complaints about Comcast than for AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable combined.
Out of the nearly 12,000 complaints against Comcast, almost 3,000 were about availability; more than 1,500 were about online speeds. The most common complaints were filed about billing.
Comcast replied in a statement saying the company responds to each complaint and attempts to resolve it, then reports the outcome to the FCC.
If a complaint shows that the company made a billing mistake, the cable provider says it will issue credits or refunds.
Comcast is slated to soon hire about 150 Philadelphians to work from their homes on customer service calls.