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The cord is cut

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cdavis11

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 31, 2009
289
65
It took Hulu Plus coming to Roku, but it is done.

Here's my setup -

Cable internet through Time Warner (the only reasonable option in my area)

Apple TV for Itunes content, Netflix

Roku XD for Hulu Plus, backup Netflix and MLB during the season.

No antenna, no OTA recording at all - we're doing it all with the streaming boxes.

There are a couple of shows that we might miss - The Amazing Race for one. Though it's available at a good price on Itunes ($20 for the season).

That's it - we're saving about $60 a month with this setup.

The setup (roku/apple tv) is duplicated on 2 tvs - my 50" plasma in the main living room and a 42" lcd in the basement. Both Apple TVs are on 5Ghz N only network segments, as are the Rokus. Everything is working extremely well so far.
 
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cdavis11

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 31, 2009
289
65
Initial outlay was minimal - 2x Roku boxes @ $99 each and 2x aTv 2Gs @ $99 each.

Payback on the gear in <7 months, plus the benefit of not paying for 200 channels of garbage I don't watch.
 
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thejoshhoward

macrumors member
Aug 2, 2010
80
62
Chicago, IL
That's awesome! I love reading about other people's setups. I'm trying to cut the cord, too. But I can't find a good way to watch live sports without cable/satellite. Mostly, I want the NFL. OTA isn't well received in my apartment, unfortunately.
 
Tilpots

Tilpots

macrumors 601
Apr 19, 2006
4,195
71
Carolina Beach, NC
thejoshhoward said:
That's awesome! I love reading about other people's setups. I'm trying to cut the cord, too. But I can't find a good way to watch live sports without cable/satellite. Mostly, I want the NFL. OTA isn't well received in my apartment, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

DirecTV offered the NFL this year online for non subscribers for $350. Too rich for my blood especially with CBS, Fox and NBC carrying about 4 games a week that I can watch already. Also, if you get your internet thru a cable company, the basics are usually only about $10 a month, so no antenna required.

And congrats, OP!
 
randy98mtu

randy98mtu

macrumors 65816
Mar 4, 2009
1,455
140
Great to hear stories of people doing this. I would like to try, but the wife and our baby sitter would have a hard time with it. My thought is taking out my $78/mo for Dish would give me enough to buy every show we ever watch through iTunes. I think I could comfortably do it, with OTA HD to fill in some live stuff.
 
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cdavis11

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 31, 2009
289
65
randy98mtu said:
Great to hear stories of people doing this. I would like to try, but the wife and our baby sitter would have a hard time with it. My thought is taking out my $78/mo for Dish would give me enough to buy every show we ever watch through iTunes. I think I could comfortably do it, with OTA HD to fill in some live stuff.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I was in the same boat with wife and babysitter(s).

The wife was an easy win - saving money always gets her interested.

The babysitters were easy to train - just show them the Apple TV side for kids movies and that's that. With everything set up on a Harmony remote, navigation and starting up the system is easy. Takes me <5 minutes to show a sitter how to operate the system.
 
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magillagorilla

macrumors member
Feb 18, 2008
30
0
Additional food for thought: you can always negotiate down your rate on sat/cable.

I went through the exercise of penciling out savings/costs a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion that the one box solution that I was hoping for just wasn't there for me quite yet and it didn't make economic sense from prospective of the cash outlays that I would have to make to get what I wanted (something to record OTA). To see the forest for the trees, you really need to look at a 3 year span, account for additional equipment purchases, and (obviously) the cost of buying season passes via Itunes.

Cheapest solution that fit all of my needs was a lower sat TV bill and some use of APTV. Called DTV customer retention and negotiated $30/month of my bill.
 
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magillagorilla

macrumors member
Feb 18, 2008
30
0
Additional food for thought: you can always negotiate down your rate on sat/cable.

I went through the exercise of penciling out savings/costs a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion that the one box solution that I was hoping for just wasn't there for me quite yet and it didn't make economic sense from prospective of the cash outlays that I would have to make to get what I wanted (something to record OTA). To see the forest for the trees, you really need to look at a 3 year span, account for additional equipment purchases, and (obviously) the cost of buying season passes via Itunes.

Cheapest solution that fit all of my needs was a lower sat TV bill and some use of APTV. Called DTV customer retention and negotiated $30/month of my bill.
 
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EvilC5

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2010
504
0
Hanover MD
this is great stuff to read. I dont know if I can ever cut the cord completely because of the wife acceptance factor, but I have already cut my bill by ~60 dollars per month by getting rid of the movie channels and going from 7 cable boxes to 3, with an apple tv on 6 of my tv's and my mac mini hooked to the 7th with my hd dvr. I have been taking shows that we record on our dvr, and use EyeTV to record them on my mini, then transcode them to ATV format to watch on any of the tv's. at some point maybe I can get rid of 2 more boxes and just keep the dvr to cut the bill by another 10-15/month.

netflix+eyetv+handbrake encoded dvd collection=smaller cable bill!
 
D

dbwie

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2007
606
258
Albuquerque, NM, USA
cheapest system of all

Get a slingbox and put it on a family or friends cable system, on an open coaxial outlet they are not using. Then sling it over the internet to your laptop, iPhone, etc. Offer to pay a small fee (e.g. a portion of their cable bill) if they aren't really generous friends. Haven't tried this myself, but I think it should work? :D
 
netdog

netdog

macrumors 603
Feb 6, 2006
5,760
38
London
I cut it when the first AppleTV came out. Next to go is the phone line.

You'll never look back. You won't miss a thing and you'll save pots of money.
 
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EvilC5

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2010
504
0
Hanover MD
dbwie said:
Get a slingbox and put it on a family or friends cable system, on an open coaxial outlet they are not using. Then sling it over the internet to your laptop, iPhone, etc. Offer to pay a small fee (e.g. a portion of their cable bill) if they aren't really generous friends. Haven't tried this myself, but I think it should work? :D
Click to expand...

its probably easier to splice into your neighbors coax outside his house....either of which would probably make the lawyers at the cable company cry.....:eek:
 
Z

zed

macrumors 6502
Feb 4, 2002
392
24
Atlanta, GA
Cut the cord a few months back with absolutely no regrets. It does help that I get all of the major networks OTA. The hardest part was saying goodbye to TiVo, he was a dear friend for a long time :)
 
From A Buick 8

From A Buick 8

macrumors 68040
Sep 16, 2010
3,114
127
Ky Close to CinCinnati
I also cut my cable bill this month, still use them for internet (which i overpay for) but we saved about $30 a month. We dropped the home phone line a while back.

We have two ATV's we are using netflix, OTA recordings through my EyeTV hybrid and my persoanl collection of DVD's.

A big driver for me was when the cable company went to requiring a cable box for every TV.
 
randy98mtu

randy98mtu

macrumors 65816
Mar 4, 2009
1,455
140
cdavis11 said:
Thanks.

I was in the same boat with wife and babysitter(s).

The wife was an easy win - saving money always gets her interested.

The babysitters were easy to train - just show them the Apple TV side for kids movies and that's that. With everything set up on a Harmony remote, navigation and starting up the system and easy. Takes me <5 minutes to show a sitter how to operate the system.
Click to expand...

Ugh. Mine are both apparently technology challenged, as they see the Harmony as one of the most difficult remotes to operate. :confused: I told them it's only because we have a gate in front of the TV to keep my 19 month old from pushing the glowing blue Samsung power button over and over and over and over...

Good to know it can be done. I have 2 more months in my Dish contract anyway, but I'm going to start working on the wife. We could buy all her MTV shows to have and to keep for less than 1 month of Dish.
 
DavieBoy

DavieBoy

macrumors 6502
Jan 8, 2009
421
1
New Jersey
dbwie said:
Get a slingbox and put it on a family or friends cable system, on an open coaxial outlet they are not using. Then sling it over the internet to your laptop, iPhone, etc. Offer to pay a small fee (e.g. a portion of their cable bill) if they aren't really generous friends. Haven't tried this myself, but I think it should work? :D
Click to expand...

I'm so generous that I bought myself the slingbox pro with the concept of letting friends use it when I wasn't. It is going all the time between the friends at the office and the other friends who cancelled their cable accounts.

The only thing that bothers me is them hogging all my bandwidth, but I never actually noticed what I was doing was slower because of them.
 
dukebound85

dukebound85

macrumors Core
Jul 17, 2005
19,131
4,110
5045 feet above sea level
thejoshhoward said:
That's awesome! I love reading about other people's setups. I'm trying to cut the cord, too. But I can't find a good way to watch live sports without cable/satellite. Mostly, I want the NFL. OTA isn't well received in my apartment, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

look into this for ota

http://www.filmon.com/tv/?mid=13

essentially takes the free OTA content (HD included) and streams it via internet live

I love it
 
C

cdavis11

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 31, 2009
289
65
DavieBoy said:
I'm so generous that I bought myself the slingbox pro with the concept of letting friends use it when I wasn't. It is going all the time between the friends at the office and the other friends who cancelled their cable accounts.

The only thing that bothers me is them hogging all my bandwidth, but I never actually noticed what I was doing was slower because of them.
Click to expand...

I tried that same Slingbox trick a couple of years ago for my hometown baseball team. I had it installed at my parents home, 1500 miles away. It worked fine for one season, with a few hiccups.

Support was a nightmare - I ended up paying the geek squad in my parents town to come over and get it back up and running a couple of times. It finally ended in frustration, but it was a low cost experiment.

The Roku box MLB stream was pretty good last year, and that took care of my baseball needs. I just wish Hulu plus would come to aTV - it would be a simple one box solution at that point (I hear airplay will stream the Iphone/Ipad MLB app).
 
randy98mtu

randy98mtu

macrumors 65816
Mar 4, 2009
1,455
140
stompy said:
Really? What do they think is hard? What model do you have?
Click to expand...

I have the Harmony One. Like I said, I think they just get confused when they hit watch TV and there is a problem. The problem being a baby gate in front of the TV, so the Dish box and the Receiver don't always get the signals. I keep telling them to hit HELP and change the angle of the remote, but if it doesn't just "work" they won't bother. I guess I just need to try to move the boxes up or somewhere else where the signal gets to them better.
 
MikePA

MikePA

macrumors 68020
Aug 17, 2008
2,039
0
dbwie said:
Get a slingbox and put it on a family or friends cable system, on an open coaxial outlet they are not using. Then sling it over the internet to your laptop, iPhone, etc. Offer to pay a small fee (e.g. a portion of their cable bill) if they aren't really generous friends. Haven't tried this myself, but I think it should work? :D
Click to expand...

Anyone can save money if they simply decide to steal all their utilities which results in the other customers picking up the tab.
 
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