Cord Cutters?

GimmeSlack12 said:

What is everyone paying for internet access?

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We have Cox in San Diego and pay $55/month for 15/5. However, we usually have download speeds of about 22mbs.

I work from home 9 hours a day and rely on the internet solely to connect to my desktop in Maryland. Also, 99% of our tv viewing is Hulu and Netflix. With the internet being used in some form or fashion 16 hours a day or more, we stil only manage to use about 180 GB per month. Cox has an unpublished limit of 250 GB for our tier; however they don't yet charge if you go over.

cxc273 said:

Our Dish satellite DVR died while we were on Christmas vacation and we decided to discontinue service and not replace it. We had been talking about it on and off for a few months, but it seemed like divine intervention.

Our house was already set up for a digital transition. I have an older Mac Mini with a 2 TB hard drive acting as a media server. I ripped our collection of DVDs and Blu-rays so we can easily stream movies and show to our Apple TVs in the living room or bedroom.

I was already an Amazon Prime and Netflix (disc only) member and we added Hulu Plus as our main method of watching network shows. There are one or two shows we watch that aren't on Hulu, which we'll just buy through iTunes.

Sports is probably the only thing I really miss. But with the NFL season's winding down and little interest in basketball anymore, it shouldn't be too painful. I did watch some NFL playoff games through some not-so-legal websites, however. I may sign up for MLB.com once baseball season starts up.

We weren't paying all that much for Dish service -- it was about $42 a month. What was really disappointing was the lack of decent programming overall. Most of the channels I used to enjoy -- History, Food Network, HGTV, Discovery, TLC, VH1 -- have become reality TV networks.

In a perfect world, it would be nice to have a customized experience -- picking the channels or shows you like -- but I don't see that happening anytime soon. I'd be really happy if Hulu Plus offered all current network TV (a lot of CBS programming is currently MIA) and if I could somehow pay for streaming access to all NFL and NCAA football games.

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If you can stomach watching NFL games the day after they happen the NFL GamePass is a great way to go. $40 for a season and you can watch on iPad or computer and skip commercials. I'd pay good money to stream RedZone or even just NFL Network games though! Football will be all I'll miss but with GamePass at least I can still watch the game. And being a fan of a team that's sucked for the last decade it's saved me some time lol!

cdavis11 said:

Here's my setup:

Attic mounted OTA feeding 2 hdhomerun tuners.

EyeTv using those tuners to record OTA and feed to iTunes. IFlicks and scripting running to automatically tag shows as they come in and email me that the are ready to view.

InstaTvPro running on iPads to watch live TV through the HDhomerun tuners when I choose to watch the evening news, or local programming of some kind that I don't record.

ITunes feeds 3 stock Apple TV devices on televisions in 3 rooms. Also used for Netflix and AirPlay of Hulu from a MacBook Pro laptop.

OTA antenna also routes to main TV in family room for HD sports on broadcast TV.

Etvcomskipper running on EyeTv recordings to mark skip points for commercials, allowing Apple TV viewer to skip through most commercial breaks on OTA recordings.

Applescripts also set up through iCal triggers to delete recorded shows from EyeTv queue, delete any TV show with a playcount of 1 or more from iTunes. I don't save TV shows.

Hazel running to watch iTunes TV shows folder and trigger iflicks tagging/email notification script.

I'm extremely happy with my setup. We've been cable free for over 2 years and would NEVER go back.

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This is awesome. How does one go about learning to write scripts? Difficult??

GarrettL1979 said:

This is awesome. How does one go about learning to write scripts? Difficult??

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Not really. Just do some googling around, find a couple of snippets of Applescript code and learn from there. It's like learning anything, trial and error.

It was a fun process.

ILikeTurtles said:

I tried cutting the cord about a year ago. That lasted less than 5 months. IDC what anyone says, the convenience of cable (for the time being) is worth the $100 a month. All this "do it yourself" crap is for the birds....or the tech-heads.

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It depends on what you like to watch. We cut the cord two years ago and never looked back. My system to replace it is simple - an Apple TV with a subscription to Hulu and Netflix, all of which I had already. That's it.

We only ever watched a small fraction of what was on cable anyway, so we weren't looking to replace that same experience. For the current season of the few shows that we like to watch (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead), I just buy them on iTunes. Otherwise, we wait until they come out on DVD and get them via Netflix.

Cable is convenient, but it is also a rip-off for people who don't watch that much television.

StinDaWg said:

lol, I always love when people exaggerate their OTA channels. You are likely getting all the major networks- NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, PBS, plus a handful of local public access, possibly some music channels, shopping, and weather sub-channels, and duplicates of channels from nearby cities. It's great that you have a strong signal for OTA, but 74 useful channels is completely exaggerating, when it's more like 10-15 at best.

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I get Al Jazzera OTA. That's not bad.

The only downside is live events - sports. They often are only on cable.

SuperMatt said:

$70 a month for internet access is a crime. It's a monopoly and apparently there's nothing we can do about it. I suggest working with a neighbor and sharing one monthly charge, then sharing your wifi password with each other. You're on the same pipe anyway, and your cable company throttles the connection when multiple people are on at the same time anyway.

Sadly, anytime anybody tries to start a competing internet service, the cable lobby comes out and pays legislators to make it stop:

http://boingboing.net/2013/01/03/telcos-lobby-north-carolina-to.html

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Sharing a neighbors Wifi is a stupid idea and can open up a can of worms. Also the cable company doesn't throttles the connection when to many people are on, it's lack of bandwidth.

There are also other options also, cable aren't the only ones offering internet.

When I had cable it was the phone/internet/TV thing for under $100.00. After my 2 years were up the price was about to double. I dropped my phone service and had internet and basic cable for $70 then they tried to raise it again I dropped the cable and just kept internet. 5 years later I have not missed the cable because I rarely watched it and my high speed internet is $50 monthly.

In my Master Bedroom I have my iMac 27" with an external blu-ray player. I watch Netflix, Hulu and my collections of DVD and Blu-rays. I have a small Bedroom which is my Media room with my 40" HDTV/TV2 and in the Livingroom I have a smaller HDTV 32" with TV2 and GoogleTV.

We cut the cord in August. I wanted to do it earlier in the summer but waited for the Olympics to end.

We have an ATV3 in the living room and a XBOX 360 in the extra room off the kitchen.

Pay $70 a month for Internet from Verizon. Netflix streaming is our primary source of content. We have the DVD service but they just end up sitting on the kitchen counter and we mail them back without watching out of guilt. We must get Netflix's best fullfillment algorithm because the next DVD seems to show up the minute we mail the one that sat off. We will likely drop DVDs in the next month or so.

Let the Hulu + trial that came with ATV3 convert to a subscription. I let it convert out of lazyness but the excuse to the wife was so we could get some of the current shows like "The Office" and "Modern Family" during the weening off of cable. Now that time has passed we will likely drop Hulu once I figure out how to kill off the subscription. Plus, now that we've gotten a taste of older shows for the subscription channels, the network stuff just seems lousy.

We also have a Xbox Live subscription which is a hold over from my "no kids, stay up until 1am playing Halo 3 days." It's nice right now for the Netflix app. although XBOX Live will likely get dropped next time my subscription comes up. I don't game at all anymore and my daughter gets to the Netflix kids content through the ATV3 in the living room or through our iPads or iPhones. The XBOX 360 will stick around because ironically, is the only remaining optical drive in our house.

The TV in the room off the kitchen also has a digital antenna. We use it to get PBS for our 3-year-old daughter.

Obviously our TV consumption and time has changed but much of that is driven by the fact that we have a 3-year-old and an infant. Nonetheless, my wife and I select TV shows on Netflix and iTunes and run through entire seasons over the course of a month or two. We are all caught up on Breaking Bad. Working our way through Arrested Development. We will probably start Lost and Dexter at some point. Holding off on Game of Thrones until I finish the books although I imagine I'll be watching those alone on my iPad.

Not into stick and ball sports so not having ESPN or live sports is a non-issue. I am into motocross and going without live Supercross on Speed has been tough.

Hopefully soon we can just 'buy' the Speed App. through ATV. That's what we all want obviously. Same goes for the Olympics.

That's what everybody wants. Just sell me the Apps. (networks) I want. Let me add them and drop them when I want. Hopefully if enough of us drop cable we will see this become a reality.