I loved this post over on Cubicle Sherpa:
It didn’t take as long as I thought it would to convince my husband that we should ditch the cable. We had just switched back to DirecTV from ATT-Uverse, and we were still forking over nearly $150 a month in cable bills. I’d heard about the Roku on MoneySavingMom.com in April.
Boy, did it get me thinking!! With some minor research, some number crunching, and a few weeks of convincing [hubby], we vowed to take the plunge and see how well it would work for us.
One of our biggest fears…
“Will there be anything to watch”?
Let me tell you- we actually have more to watch now than we did with cable… Read the rest of the post here.
It just might inspire you to consider ditching cable once and for all. 🙂
I’ve never paid for cable. I get my network shows over the air and have Roku players and Netflix and Hulu Plus subscriptions, on which I find an overwhelming amount of options. I have the most basic Roku players that were $49.99 with free shipping. Netflix is $8.47 and Hulu Plus is $7.99 per month. I have the most basic cable internet that my provider offers ($29.99) and I often use my ipad to read blogs while using the Roku. I already had the internet service, but even including it, I pay $46.45 a month and that’s about $100 less than what the OP is shelling out. There are a lot of sports channels available on Roku. There is no harm in trying it out and seeing how it works for you. I am absolutely thrilled with mine!
Anyone know if you can get Sprout on Roku?
No, Sprout is not on Roku; that is the reason why I still pay for cable and for a few other channels. I think PBS Kids and Disney is through.
We went satellite free about two months ago and love it! We have a Roku, and also subscribe to Amazon Prime and Netflix. Plus we also have an OTA antenna where we can pick up some local HD channels! It really works well for us, and I love that we’re saving a ton of money.
My husband is excited that Aereo should be available in our area hopefully sometime this fall/winter. It’s a service available in three metro areas and growing. You pay like $8 a month and you’re able to watch all over-the-air HD channels through their service, along with a DVR-type service. We live in a rural community, so this would help us gain access to even more over the air channels, which means my husband can watch football.
Here’s more info on Aereo if anyone is interested in how it works:
https://aereo.com/
We have thought about this since it is so rare there is anything on tv. Currently our internet is through our cable company. Anyone know if there is cheaper high speed internet then the cable company? I husband hates DSL (too slow). I am thinking the only option is cable internet, which I think is about $40 alone?
One thing to keep in mind, and we found this the hard way, is that hulu is not the same as hulu plus. Hulu Plus is all you can get on Roku boxes. It is their subscription service. Hulu is free and only available via hulu.com on a computer. Some shows are on both. Some are on one or the other. Some stuff shows up on hulu a month after it airs on regular tv/cable (like Burn Notice).
Roku boxes do not have a web browser so if you want to watch something on hulu.com you have to huddle around your laptop or hook it up to your tv via an HDMI cable.
For sports, MLB.tv is an option. If you’re willing to wait until a few weeks after the season starts, they drop the price by around 50%, usually around Father’s Day. But you’ll never get your local team on it due to blackout rules. So you’re golden if you’re a fan of an out-of-market team (unless they play your local team and then I guess you can turn on the radio).
Hope this helps!
one other thing: you can earn a free month of hulu by doing Bing Rewards. You just redeem your points for it, they send you a code and you log into your hulu plus account and enter the code.
Oh how I wish I could do this! My kids prefer to watch Netflix on tablets and I don’t care for tv, but my husband, like so many others, is a huge sports fan and would be so unhappy without it. We were desperate to cut our expenses with another baby due next mos so we switched from cable to satellite and have internet through a phone company. It is a bundle package and we’ll save almost $60 per mos the first year and after the promotions end, it will be a $40 per mos savings. We also switched from Verizon to Pageplus and saved $100 per mos on cell service by cutting back to conservative plans which really match our usage. The bundle package gives us a landline so I bought a phone (haven’t had a landline in AGES) and use that for all my calls when I am home. If I decide after a year to cancel service on the phone, I can still make 800 calls and receive calls for free so I’ll probably do that, but if I keep it, it only costs $5 more. It was the best way that I could come up with to save money and keep my hubbie happy. 🙂
We are thinking about dropping Direct tv since the bill is now over $100 a month – but I love my Bravo shows! Also how fast internet connection do you need?
We had. 1.5 mbps DSL connection, and it allowed us to stream on one device, but that was it. Now at 3.0 mbps, we can stream to two devices, and somebody can surf the internet. It doesn’t support HD (usually), but SD is good quality.
My internet bill will increase by $25 to upgrade to 4 mbps, so still will be saving about $48. May use this to see if Directtv will lower my bill to keep me as a customer! lol
Thanks Kristine!
Check and see if your fave Bravo shows are offered on any of the pay sites (namely hulu plus). I am addicted to RHOC – I know, I know – and I can watch the full episodes on HP!
OMG! Any RH…except DC – didn’t like them…and not real fond of the Miami ones either – some of their faces scare me! lol
Ok what about the baseball games? I have a house full of sports nuts….. If the cable is cut??
MLB has a pass you can buy and watch on Roku, and PS3. Not sure about other gaming consoles.
Sounds good, but what about the internet connection? Currently, we have cable internet, and thus cable (although we have the cheapest package available). I don’t need to have an internet plus phone deal because we only have cell phones, and I don’t want a house phone again. Suggestions?
We only have DSL available for our house. We also have a home phone because we’re on a 13 year old plan with 6 year old flip phones!
We have cable internet through a provider without having cable TV. It costs us $35/mo and that’s without a contract.
We have cable internet for $35 month at our apartment and streaming with Netflix and Hulu Plus is usually fine. Sometimes on the weekends and weeknights when lots of folks are at home watching cable/using the internet it can get slow; we’ll get an error saying its buffering or to try again later. We wait a minute and try again and pick up where we left off. I I watch something at 10am on a Friday morning before work, no problems.
We ditched Dish two weeks ago. We had Netflix but also added Hulu Plus for an additional $7.99 a month. We stream through our Wii, our blu-ray and then we bought a few Rokus (we have 6 televisions). Honestly none of us miss Dish, not even my sports-loving hubby or my young girls (7 and 9)! My husband watches sports stuff on his iPhone or iPad. ESPN website has stuff to watch. We were paying $130 a month for Dish. Now we pay $15.98 a month for Netflix/Hulu. I never thought our family could make the switch, but it’s been so easy!
We’ve been lucky so far. We disconnected our cable in November and returned the box, but they have yet to actually cut the basic service connection. When hubby called to check it actually had been disconnected the girl told him their biggest concern was the digital box and they would eventually maybe get around to cutting it off completely, so enjoy it while we can. We rarely use it, but he was thankful during hockey / the playoffs.
We canceled Dish about a year ago and haven’t regretted it. We have an antennae for catching the local news and that is about all we watch any more. I used to waste so much time watching TV and now I am happy to have reclaimed that time to pursue other interests. My kids do watch some shows using the Disney ap and PBS Kids ap on the IPad while I nurse the baby.
If I could find a way to watch my HBO shows we would think about ditching cable. Right now we have phone/internet/cable as a bundle for $140 a month. I’m not sure we would save a lot by dropping the cable. It’s something I should check into. Another problem we have is that an antenna would be out of the question since we live in an apartment.
Purchase them a la carte/season pass from Amazon or iTunes. Compare the cost of that versus cable, there may be significant savings. I rented some True Blood from my library, then purchased a season using gift cards from Amazon, and one from eBay.
You can watch HBO and Showtime shows at projectfreetv.com. I am able to watch Game of Thrones and Dexter (all 7 seasons as well as the latest). It’s an excellent website. It shows every tv show there is out there plus movies all for free!
I have said here before I am one that would thought we couldn’t ever ditch cable. We did and honestly, I don’t miss it or ever plan on having it again. We have the Roku and live in the country but still get an antenna signal for local channels.
you say here you live in the country, am planning on leaving fla, for pennsylvania country, what do you use for internet, and do you get good download speeds, when I lived in country here in fla, had to use wildblue and they are awful, was so glad to move into a city and get real internet. the cable we can do without as long as we can get good internet access at a decent price any ideas
I tried both the Amazon & Hulu free trials, they were pretty good, but i still prefer the selection of Netflix. Since we are gone all day, work & daycare, there is no time for t.v. or any type of service. Plus we don’t have high-speed internet, just Cricket broadband and when we were on the free trials, it still buffered alot. I check our local news online and still read the newspaper. There are no sports fans at home. With the exception of Netflix and Redbox, I guess all these wouldn’t work at all for us at the moment and i must say that we don’t really miss t.v. that much, because the kids love all the movies and shows i rent for them on Netflix.
How much for the Roku? Can you get Fox news? My Mom is an avid Fox news watcher and HGTV. Is it hard to hook up the Roku to your TV??
Roku starts at $49.00 to $99.99. We have one 2XD in the bedroom. We have one Roku 3 in the living room. The new Roku 3 will only work on the newer HD tv’s. They are not difficult to hook up. Yes, you can get some FOX news. Most of it is not live, but you can watch some programs about 1 hour after they air. No HGTV on there yet. I watch DIY on Hulu Plus streaming via my computer. Some programs will only stream from a computer on Hulu Plus. My husband loves his Roku 3 and Netflix. Our grandkids love it too! No commercials on Netflix!!! Hope this helps you.
Same here with Fox News, movies and Ohio State football. Hubs winds down after work with the news and on weekend mornings the same. He watches movies in the evenings especially on weekends after working all day. Other channels we watch very little of. I record Beth Moore and Joyce Meyer every week as well as a few favorite preachers but I can access their resources on line so my main concern is Fox and seeing OSU and movies for Hubs (which I could do without but we all have to do what works for our individual families). So does anyone know if Roku airs Big Ten network and/or Espn showing Ohio State games and Fox news and movies?
Okay replying to myself here 🙂 A few suggestions if you feel stuck like me. Call your sattelite provider and tell them you want a discount or you’re switching to another one. I do this a few times a year. I call directv and get a few quotes then I call dish and let them know I’m switching if they don’t match it. Sometimes they offer me a 3 month deal, sometimes a 6 month deal and it has always worked except for 1 time. That’s when I had directv a few years ago and they wouldn’t budge after giving me discounts a few times so I did what I told them I would do.. I switched providers. I’m never snarky, even when we made the switch I thanked them for their business and made the change. BTW I do this with my trash removal service once a year too. Unfortunately I can only get one cell phone company’s service here but Verizon is putting up a tower a few miles from me so I’ll be contacting them as soon as it’s done and negotiating with Sprint to see who offers me the cheapest plan.
Cheryl,
I call my cable company every 3-6 months and complain that I will be cutting cable. They usually give me a deal, this time it was for 12 months!!! I have more choices than I had when I was paying full price and the deal is for 12 months. I have 3 Roku Boxes and love them. I also subscribe to Netflix, Amazon & Hulu Plus…there is so much out there that I have been still considering cutting cable.
What an awesome idea for saving money! I’m always looking for new ways to cut expenses, but I’m assuming you need high speed internet for this? We live in the middle of no where and can only get satellite internet. With little data usage available, I don’t think we would be able to stream videos. Any suggestions for this situation? I’ve looked and can’t come up with many options other than just using an antenna.
We have been married for over 35 years and only had cable for 3 months in all that time. If you never had it you don’t miss it! The 3 months that we did have it all we did was watch TV and I had it turned off for that reason.
I’m stuck with the same “sports” problem. Along with football (and some baseball, although that is much less) my husband loves Supercross/Motocross (dirt bikes). Not only do they not have them on “regular” tv, we have to get a higher level package to get the channels that show it!
I know there are some illegal/”gray” ways to watch it online, but beyond the legal issue, the ability to get it is hit & miss.
Our TV/Internet promotion expires next month, so I’m looking at alternatives. Mostly, I’m not happy though.
With the money you save on cable, your husband could go out to watch particular sporting events at sports bar or restaurant – and maybe even make a date or a guys night out of it~
Best thing my husband and I ever did for our family was unplug cable tv:) It has had great financial and spiritual benefits 🙂 I would encourage people to try to take “fasts” from cable and all media entertainment for periods of time….you might find it freeing and may not want to plug back in!
We did this when we moved to our new home this past April. My husband likes to watch his college sports in the fall, but they rarely played his teams on cable this far away. When he bought a special sports package one year he still missed most the games he wanted to watch. If his sports were available on cable I don’t know that I would’ve been able to convince him to ditch cable.
I’ve been trying to convince the dude of this for ages. The only holdout is sports. If he could get the sports channels that cable offers, he’d go for it in a heartbeat. I keep watching for sites like ESPN 3 to up their offerings.
We have never had cable. The guys in my family watch some sports on the internet. We get most movies from the library and maybe pay $20 a year in late fees to the library.
Sorry, I didn’t mean this as a response to someone else’s post, just a post in general. 🙂
I suspended Directv for the summer and we just use Netflicks on a PS3 game system. I did it to save money mostly, but also so we don’t waste time all summer in front of the tv.
Question for readers: is there anyway to get out of Directv when you have the contract? I think I had to sign up for two years.
I’ll be in the same boat in September. I’m hoping to get out of the contract, but even the early termination fee would be cheaper than paying another years worth of service, which is what we’ll be at when we get reconnected.
we JUST suspended our DirecTv last week to see how we can “handle” it.. but something tells me it’ll stick! The only thing that stinks is not getting the local news stations, but we check in daily online 🙂 We currently have Hulu Plus and Netflix.. that’s all we need! Plus pandora comes free with the Roku, so we dont need the music stations anymore either.
If you will get an OTA antenna you can receive all of the major network channels, plus many more channels. We got rid of DirectTV 4 years ago. We absolutely love our Roku Neflix and HuluPlus We go directly to the websites to watch some of our favorite programs if they are not available on anything else. We would NEVER go back again!
forgot all about the antenna’s. When they were first distributed, we tried with our TV, and I’m not sure if its the location we’re in or the antenna we had, but we just couldn’t get the signal. I’ll have to try it again. Thanks Becky!
We get quite a few channels with our antenna bought off Amazon, and the HD picture is even better than what it was with our cable box.
If you can, get a large outdoor antenna. Home Depot and Lowe’s carries them. Ours cost $89, but it was so worth it. The little indoor antenna did not work for us at all. Took me about 5 years to convince my husband, but we couldn’t be any happier. We get all the local channels in HD for free. The quality is so much better than OTA channels when we were kids. The HD upgrade on cable was killing us and if we went to basic cable with no HD box we lost all our channels in HD. My husband can watch most of the sports he wants on local channels, but when the game isn’t available locally then he listens on his radio or watches the highlights on his phone. There is also a ton of sports bars he could frequent. I didn’t think it would last, because my husband was the guy who watched every sport on TV – it could have been croquet. LOL I asked him a few months ago and he said he isn’t missing it. It’s been over 2 years now. I am a happy wife, because sports aren’t on my TV 24/7, at least until football season. LOL
Go to tvfool.com, enter your address, and it will generate a map of what stations you can receive, and their distance, which will let you know what kind of antenna you may need. We receive around 25 channels with our indoor antenna, but we have it mounted in the kitchen window, with the coax cable going down through the counter, across the basement, and up through the livingroom floor to the tv!
There are also attic mounted antennas, if a large outdoor one isn’t possible, for whatever reason.
That’s great and all, and I personally would LOVE to do this, but any advice for convincing a sports-a-holic husband to ditch the cable? There’s not an alternative that I know of that offers sports viewing, aside from watching them somewhere else!
I’m in the same position. We are sports fanatics. Watching a ball game together is a huge part of our family time. Life without baseball and football would just not be the same!!
I’m glad I’m not alone! I know we could save a TON of money without cable, which we are all for, especially since its the only area left that we can cut back on (and there is a NEED to cut back!). But the one thing in life my husband loves as his “wind-down” is sports, and I can’t take that away from him. 🙂 I’m looking into Roku though.
My husband can’t live without MLB or NFL, so I had to bargain with him. We pay for MLB to share with is family, so we can watch the games on Roku with the MLB app. I have yet to try it with the NFL pkg we used to get, but having the MLB pkg was enough to get his attention and we could switch:)
This was also my husband. So we spent $20 on a digital antenna and get the networks/local stations. So he can get most NFL games, not as many baseball games as he would like, but still ok. We did this almost 2 years ago and haven’t looked back.
The great thing is that when we travel we can also watch shows on the laptop where we are staying… so we were in a condo with 90 plus channels w/ nothing to watch, so we turned on netflix ont the laptop.
MLB and NHL can be watched on Roku (after purchasing the season pass/package, of course!). NFL is on PS3 (after purchase, again!). I’m not aware of NBA, and college is hit or miss on ESPN3.
We watch what we can get over our antenna, for football season, and the first half of NASCAR.
Amy,
My husband loves to watch the games too. Check and see if you guys get ESPN3 with your internet provider. Sometimes, we have to wait to watch the game until it is over, but a lot of times we can watch it live.
Alicia, don’t give up. I convinced my husband (not a huge sports fan, but he loved the movie channels) which was next to impossible. We have been cable for almost a year now, and the whole family doesn’t miss a thing.
Check out Roku.com. Roku has just added a ton of channels, most of them free, and I think they have some sports channels now too. See if he is willing to compromise. If not, that’s okay too! God Bless!
Thanks, I will look into it!
I’m in the same boat!
Us too. I only watch 1 or 2 shows, that I’m pretty sure I could get other ways, but my husband loves to watch college football and basketball and pro football.
Must husband was big into sports watching as well especially football. He found that after giving up cable that he had more time to actually play sports than watch them. He ended up running some 1/2 and a full marathon. After he made the change, now watching sports all the time doesn’t interest him as much.
It depends on the sport he’s most fanatical about. For my fiance, it’s football and baseball. We haven’t found a solution for football (other than watching it at his mom’s or at a sports bar, or hoping the antennae will pick it up on a local station) but for baseball he shares an MLB TV account with a friend. So he pays $10 a month during the season and has access to more baseball than he can actually watch. His friend doesn’t even live near us, he’s halfway across the country.
I was sure it was going to be hard to convince him to drop cable because of sports, but it’s been almost a year now and just last night he made a comment about how happy he was we didn’t have it any more.
I have the same problem! My husband told me I can be as frugal as I desire, I just have to figure out how to keep milk in the fridge, cereal, soft toilet paper, and all University of Louisville and Penn State (where he went to college) football and basketball games on the TV (and it has to be good quality to boot). Milk, Cereal, and TP are easy, I just can’t do the latter without satellite considering those are colleges we don’t live near anymore!!!! I think that sometimes when we hear about how you can’t save oodles of money by cancelling cable, it may just be one of those things you have to search for the best deal. If we got to the point where we didn’t have the money, of course it would go. There may be some things that you can cut that you really don’t need. I know plenty of moms who don’t have cable but keep their hair highlighted with fancy cuts. However, I wait until Great Clips has a sale and keep our satellite. It just works better this way for us and I have learned to accept that and be happy with my choice!