Monday, December 06, 2010

Cutting Cable!!

Oh cable, you have been my friend for a LONG time. I remember going to friends' houses in elementary school and my eyes being glued to "Nickelodeon" & "The Disney Channel". The mom's would ask "Does your mom normally let you watch THIS much TV?!" We got cable in High School, I had cable through college, and living in Philadelphia. My studio apartment didn't have much furniture, but it had a HUGE arm chair that sat right in front of the TV. Ahhhh bliss! ;-)

So WHY cut the cable?! It all started when we switched to the Comcast bundle this past spring. I didn't like the TV program guide ... they make it so hard to find shows and half of the time you aren't subscribed to the show. They have On Demand, but a lot of the shows that you see on the guide you also have to pay additional charge. I felt like they were trying to gouge us for every additional charge .. etc. and I was a paying customer! We started looking into other options and realized we don't watch much shows that aren't on the broadcast channels.

This is what we did:

Phone:
Google Voice Phone Number - (Not a phone line) - This is a phone number that I give people. It has very good customized voicemail. (speech to text that is sent to your e-mail, personalized greetings depending on the caller). You can have it forward to all your phones at once. When people call it, my cell phone, home phone, and computer starts ringing. Good thing for me because I can never seem to find a phone before it goes to voicemail. You can text people on their phone. You can easily block numbers .. etc. It's free right now. There are apps that you can get on a smart phone and can call people for free (similar to skype).

Magic Jack - Home line - It's not ideal. It has to be plugged into your computer. $40 for the majic Jack and $70.00 for 5 years of service. I had to change my phone number because they don't port numbers. Other options: ooma - I didn't go with ooma because of the $250 up front fee. Ooma works like vonage, (plugged into your cable modem, then into your phone base) and has only $12.00/year fee. They can port your number for $40 fee.

TV:
We bought an antenna. ($60) Pete put it in the attic and attached it to the cable that runs to our TV.
Hulu.com (free) - you can watch a lot of shows online. I may look at paying for hulu+ which comes in HD and you don't have to watch commercials. We'll see though. I hook up my laptop to the TV if we want to watch a show.
Netflix ($9.99)- I LOVE netflix. We have one blueray player that can stream netflix and there are a TON of tv shows and movies that you can stream. I also like getting the DVD in the mail. It feels like a present.
(reading between the lines, I will NOT be watching LESS TV, I just will be watching it differently: Live TV, online, or streaming to the TV)

Internet:
Still with Comcast. Sadly, our town only has 2 options for high-speed Internet and Comcast has the faster speeds. The other companies that I would look at if they are in your area is: Utopia - Fiber options in your area; Clear - Internet & Phone wholesaler.

So now we only have our Internet bill & Netflix (I pre-paid for majic jack). Even though we did buy some new equipment, we will be saving $90 a month.

If I, a licensed TV bum, can cut cable, anyone can!!




4 comments:

Becca said...

What a great idea. you'll have to bring your majic jack device up here some time to see how it runs off a DSL line. I wouldn't mind finding a different home phone solution.

ComcastCares1 said...

Sorry to know you are no longer a Comcast customer. I work for Comcast. If you ever change your mind in the future, you can reach out to our team. We're here to help! :)

Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_can_help@cable.comcast.com

Weizhong said...

Does that mean our 10 year long schtick of impersonating Cable Guy is "cut" as well?

You guys are the early adoptors of what many tech experts predict to be the wave of the future. The prediction was premature given that less than 1% of users have officially jumped ship.

THE INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY!! YOU'LL BE CHANNEL CLICKING IN NO TIME!

Mike Wirthlin said...

Cathy - great post. Believe it or not but RayAnne and I have gone 17 years without cable. We finally broke down and ordered cable for the WorldCup and for BYU football (Comcast owns the Mountain). After the sorry BYU/Utah football game, I was so mad that I decided to break our short 6 month tie to cable.

We use Qwest and are paying $93/month for our phone service and our crummy 1.5 Mb/s internet service. I am out looking for a higher speed service and it looks like Comcast is my only choice (the other DSL services around here get terrible reviews).

What do you pay a month for comcast internet? You didn't list the price on the blog post. I am considering getting internet only and maybe even a comcast internet/phone/basic cable package. What do you think?