Episode: 2219
Title: HPR2219: The Musings of a Novice Cable TV Cord Cutter
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2219/hpr2219.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:52:21

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This is HBR episode 2,290 entitled, The Musings of an Obvious Cable TV Cord Cutter.
It is hosted by Ranger and in about 58 minutes long, and Karim a clean flag.
The summary is my adventures with dealing with my local cable TV provider and my hardware selections.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello everybody, this is Reg and it's the ramblings of a novice
cable TV cord cutter.
I recently became a cable TV cord cutter.
It wasn't a calculated move.
It was an impulsive act that was caused by my recent dealings with Cox Cable,
my cable TV and internet provider.
In my town, Cox Communications provides the bulk of cable TV and internet services.
If you don't use Cox as your TV provider, you do have access to Direct TV and Dish Network.
If you need broadband and don't use Cox, then you have access to AT&T DSL service.
In my area, AT&T DSL is not a viable option for internet services.
If you use the various video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime video,
DSL speeds are just too slow for a reliable 720p and 1080p viewing.
I've been a Cox Cable customer since 1990 and have been generally satisfied with their service.
Cox, like many service providers, offers a general get your foot in the door package of cable TV
internet and telephone for $100.
With that bundle, you get a various mix of channels, local and cable, and music channels.
You don't get any services like HBO or Showtime, and a DVR is not included.
With this package, you also get a certain number of email inboxes and user accounts that you can use.
I'm not sure how much you can use. I only use about two or three of those extra email accounts.
As a Cox customer, you also have access to 50 gigabytes of online data that you can use.
In addition to your TV and internet services, Cox also provides a VOIP telephone service.
I just throw that in there to complete the bundle. I don't use the VOIP telephone service.
I found that when it was connected, all I would get were sales calls on that line.
I eventually kept the electricity plugged into the phone, but I unplugged the data connection to it.
I'm satisfied with this bundle, and over the years that initial $100 bundle has gone up in price
to about $127. Remember, if you're looking for one of these initial bundles,
don't forget to add in the various rate service charges and taxes.
When you get quoted a price, make sure you ask those additional charges are going to be,
so you can know the exact price you have to pay every month.
My main complaint with Cox has been their use of internet data allowances.
If you do a lot of video streaming like I do or downloading,
the 350 gigabyte data allowance that Cox has for its customers can go real quick,
especially almost at the end of the month. You see your data usage always creeping up to that
350 gigabyte line. I must say that Cox never charged you for any usage, so you could get that
350 gigabyte data allowance every month. They would send you emails saying you need to watch your usage.
The times I've gone over it have never been throttled with my data, speeds or anything.
I've never been charged. I just get an email and said, hey, you might want to check your network
connections. Make sure you don't have any outside users using your service.
2016, in October 2016, I should say, Cox scabled notified all of its customers that it was
increasing the data usage allowances from 350 gigabits up to one terabyte per month for most
of their users. In my opinion, this was in response to Comcasts upping their data uses to one terabyte
for some of its customers. I live about 150 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia.
And in Atlanta, there are Cox scabled, Comcasts, Time Water and Google Fiber.
No one service has a monopoly. I've seen in some neighborhoods where on one side of the street,
somebody might have Cox scabled. Next door, somebody might have Time Water. Cross the street,
somebody might have Comcasts and down around the corner, somebody might have Google Fiber.
So they have freedom of choice in Atlanta. In one of Robbins, you either have Cox scabled
for your TV service or you put up in antenna or you use direct TV or dish.
I believe, in my opinion, that one terabyte data allowance was Cox compensating their customers
with that increase in data allowance because of Comcasts and Google having one terabyte limits
for their customers. It's just in my opinion, I don't know.
In addition to the one terabyte data allowance, Cox instituted a penalty if you exceeded the
one terabyte limit. The first time you went over, Cox would send you an email warning you
that you had gone over and that you need to make sure you check your data usage using the Cox
cable app for Android or iOS or you go online and use your computer to check your data usage.
On the second offense, Cox would issue a warning via email, charge you $10
for every 50 gigabits of data you used over that one terabyte limit.
That can become very expensive if you have a lot of people in your family and you go over each month.
So that was the main limit, that one terabyte limit. That one terabyte data usage allowances for
all customers except those that have subscribed to the Cox Gigablast bundle. With that Cox Gigablast bundle,
you got two terabytes of data usage and uploading download speeds of one gigabyte.
So you got one gigabyte up one down.
The Gigablast bundles are not available in all Cox service areas. I'm not sure it's available
in my town. The main reason Cox has a Gigablast bundle is an answer to those services in Atlanta,
Georgia. Like Google Fiber, Cox has to be able to answer those questions that customer says,
well, how come I can't get one gigabyte up and one gigabyte down speeds.
In August and September, I believe I read, in Atlanta, Comcast started offering one terabyte data
allowances. And so Cox had to compete with Google and Comcast. And so they increase their data
usage. That's why you have the Gigablast and the increased data of allowances.
That one terabyte data usage allowance was generally welcomed by most customers.
You know, most people are not going to use one terabyte data every month.
And so if they were like me, they were happy, especially since previously we only had
350 gigabytes of data usage. After two months of the increased data allowances,
Cox dropped the, you don't get nothing for free card with the FYI Bulletin included with
their December 26 bills. That FYI Bulletin said most Cox customers would receive a rate
and services fees increase come January 5th, 2017.
The amount of your fee increases,
dependent on the services you subscribe to from Cox and would vary from customer to customer.
As a Cox customer since 1990, I knew about the one and two year price lock contracts that you
have to agree to receive service. My current price lock was supposedly good until February 2017.
Every year I went through this dance with Cox Cable around contract renewal time to keep my current
services without a substantial increase in cost. When I received that notice in December,
about a possible price increase I called Cox to confirm my price lock.
The Cox employee I spoke to assured me my price lock was good. I told a service rep that I had past
documentation concerning all my billing and all my notifications and notices that I received
and that I had made concerning my price locks. When and where and how to use your price locks.
I even had in my Google Calendar notifications to email me and issue a pop up on my cell phone
when I needed to call Cox Cable about my new contracts. On January 3rd, just on a while here,
I picked up my cell phone, went to the Cox Cable app to check my data usage for the month of
December 2017. With the Cox Cable app, we can tell you what your current billing information will be.
You can troubleshoot your cable TV box or your cable modem that's issued to you by Cox.
You can also read information concerning Cox Cable and you can check your data usage.
The first screen that pops up is your current billing data. What you're going to owe Cox at the
end of the month. When I saw that screen, my mouth is dry. I couldn't believe it.
My monthly bill had increased from $127 per month for December and would go up on January 26th
to $160 per month. The only changes to my service was that increase I received at the end of
October 2016 of the increased data allowance. Nothing else changed.
I knew that I was going to do my yearly dance with Cox about the contract. Like I said,
I had it marked in my calendar. I just hadn't expected that I was going to have to do it in early
January. So I got on the phone. I called Cox. They answered you, oh, hello, sir. Thank you for
being a loyal customer for someone so years. Like I said, I had been a customer since 1990 and they
they just love it when a long-term customer calls them. Oh, thank you for being a customer for
26 years. blah, blah, blah. May I help you? What was your problem? And I told them what I've
just stated about the price going up. Apparently, my price lock was no good anymore.
Cox didn't want to honor that price lock. It was only good for an additional one month. I know
that but I wasn't willing to start arguing or negotiating with Cox about an increase in my
cable services. I spoke to five different Cox cable retention agents that day. That's what they
call now retention agents about providing a viable price for the current Cox services I was
receiving. Between those five different retention agents, I've received information that I could
have a bill as high as $189 for the same services I was currently receiving down to a low $105
if I got rid of my cable TV channels and just went with the local stations. Still keeping the
telephone and keeping my current internet services. For whatever reasons, Cox didn't want to
renegotiate with me that day. Every year I've done it, you basically call Cox tell him,
hey, my contract will be up in a month or so. What can you offer me? And they try to work with me.
You tell them how much you can spend what you can afford and they'll meet their price most of
the time. For this time, first time since 1990, they weren't willing to negotiate for my services.
So I said screw it and canceled my TV and telephone services. It was an impulse out of the blue,
I just said screw it. So now I was in a bind. I had thought about becoming a court cutter but
never seriously thought about it. My Cox cable bill went from $127 down to $60 per month. I liked
that. I was saving some money. I have a Netflix account and an ACORN TV account. I've used Hulu plus
in the past and Amazon video in the past. I have access to a family members Hulu account
via their password and so I knew I could watch most of the stuff I wanted to watch on
TV. I've used HBO now when Game of Thrones airs on HBO and most recently with Westworld. I just
subscribe to that when those shows are on the air. In the past year when those shows came on,
I would cancel my Netflix account for the time Game of Thrones or Westworld would be on.
I'm a very frugal guy. I don't believe in duplicating a lot of services and so what the heck you know
the main thing with using online streaming services is you don't get locked in for long periods of
time. You get billed month to month if you don't want to use a service for this month or the next
month you don't pay. You go back, you sign back in, reactivate your account and they charge you
for the next month. They keep your data online and in their databases, supposedly for six additional
months after you first sign out. So you could play the swap game like I do. Use Hulu plus one
one month then switch over to Acorn and other month or Netflix and other month in HBO now and
other month. So I had no main problems with using my video streaming. My main concern
was that I wasn't going to be able to watch live sports and mostly that was going to be on ESPN
or view the weather channel. Each morning I have a set routine. I get up about 5.30 a.m.
Turn on the TV. I flipped the ESPN checkout sports center. Flip over to ESPN2 and watch Mike and
Mike or I flip over to the weather channel and watch the personalities there till about 9 o'clock at
a morning. After you've been doing that for a few years you just get into a routine and it's
kind of hard to change. I could get around ESPN. I've got the tune in app on my Android cell phone
and you just open up the tune in and search ESPN and there's a thousand ESPN radio affiliates
on ESPN and a lot of those play what is happening on the ESPN TV show. They just play the video feed.
So I wasn't too worried about ESPN. My main concern for the ESPN was I wanted to see the college
football games that we can for the college football playoffs championships and the upcoming NFL
football wild cards. In the past it wasn't too bad with ESPN. The broadcast channels like
Fox Network, CBS and NBC and ABC all had the contracts for big live sporting events but in the
last few years ESPN has been offering billions and billions of dollars to the sports networks
for exclusive or extended access to what was then the pro owned by the broadcast networks.
Now ESPN has those contracts and you can't watch those on the broadcast networks anymore.
So the NFL championship playoffs was my main concern or the college football playoffs championships
but like I said I got around that using the tune in radio app. For those of you that don't know
what tune in is, go into Google Play Store or the iOS store. tune in offers music services,
radio sports services and different access to audio. It's free or you can pay for premium.
I don't know how much premium is with the free version of the app. You get commercials
but the commercials aren't intrusive. You just go ahead and click it and search for what you want.
You can set up favorites or not but I basically just use it to listen to certain ESPN radio stations.
On my cell phone I also have an FM transmitter or receiver and my local tell has a ESPN FM radio station.
So all the stuff that you see on ESPN I can listen to on my Android phone for free.
So like I said I wasn't worried about ESPN.
I've used my TV which is a 32 inch Panasonic 2006 TV with a Roku LT box since early 2012.
I've had access to a lot of streaming services because I was a cost cable TV commercial customer.
By being a cable TV customer you have access to a lot of cable streaming apps that you can view
with the Roku box or Fire TV or your Apple TV or whatever.
The main thing that is a problem is that the TV networks started a few years ago,
a one authentication thing where if you wanted to view ESPN let's say or another channel
that you normally watched with cable TV like USA Network or TNT or TBS on your Roku box or your
Apple TV you had to authenticate with your password that you use for cost cable they would check it
and then say yes or no if you were a costable customer the password would go through and they
would authenticate and you could stream whatever show as you wanted. By not being a cost cable TV
customer anymore I couldn't use those apps anymore so I had to delete those apps on my Roku box.
Just didn't work I was out of luck. If you do use a Roku a lot of the TV apps are most
of them are free. Some of the broadcast apps like CBS and ABC and the CW Network don't require
authentication. Your usage may vary you have to check which ones you have and which ones you use
but I know that a lot of those cable TV apps that I add on my Roku are no longer viable because
it would not authenticate me with my cost cable TV subscription which I did not have anymore.
Also around the time when I received news that I was getting an increase in my data usage allowance
I was contemplating upgrading to a new Roku model if anybody knows about the Roku LT
it was introduced in 2011 by Roku it's the $50 model it was the cheek model but it streamed at
720p had Wi-Fi connection didn't have any ethernet ports had the old RCA connections on the back
and HDMI connector. I used the HDMI connector with my old Panasonic LCD TV and I had a nice 720p
pitch all the time. The only thing I didn't like about the Roku LT recently is that the interface
usage is very very slow like when you get to that interface usage and you're clicking left and
writing up and down through your Roku apps you can see how slow it can get.
So I was thinking about getting one of the new Roku boxes you know they have them starting at
$50-$60 going up to $99-$120 or to get one of the Roku sticks for $39-$40.
Even at this last CES that was in January this year Roku introduced a whole new line of Roku boxes
so you know each year they come out with a new line of boxes with faster chips
just like the computer industry does. So I was interested in getting another Roku box moving
my Panasonic TV back out into the den where it was used before and maybe getting a new TV to go
along with the Roku. But beginning of November I remember seeing something on the Amazon website
that they had or would have for the Thanksgiving holiday a TV called a TCL Tangle Charlie Lima Roku
TV. TCL is a Chinese or Korean company and they entered a contract a couple of years ago with
Roku to put a Roku interface a Roku user interface on their TVs. So basically you have a TCL TV
with the Roku interface. This makes it a smart TV. My model is the TCL 32-inch 720p Roku TV
and over Thanksgiving Amazon was advertising this TV for $139-$140.
I almost bought that TV back Thanksgiving but I'd never pulled the tree. I put it in my wish list
and continued to think about it. Then after this my dealings with Cox I said you know what
I do want a Roku box but if I spend a hundred bucks on one of the new Roku's
and why not just get that Roku TV. So I said the heck with it. It's a 2015 model
and I ordered a Roku TV with one of those amplified TV antennas that you can get for Amazon for $20
This was a Friday night. I ordered it. They told me it was arrived the next Thursday
and lo and behold both items showed up early. I got Tuesday morning and there they were.
So I got my Roku TV and my amplified TV antenna for $180-$180.
So I said okay I'm good to go. I'm good to go. So I got the amplified TV antenna and that's
going to give me all my local stations. In my town, all the local broadcast stations,
there's about a total of 21. You get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW and PBS. In addition you got
common TV which shows science fiction, old science fiction. Sometimes you get some new science fiction.
Various iterations about TV, me TV, my TV, a couple of religious stations,
both Spanish and English, for a total of 21. So I was covered. I knew I was covered. I could
watch all the live broadcasts I wanted to. I was still worried about my ESPN and my weather
channel. So I took the Panasonic, took it back out into the den, took the Roku, my old Roku
up to it and it works fine. The only thing is I don't spend any time in the rest of the house.
I spend all my time in my office. I put the new TV back here on my desk and it sits alongside
my 21 inch computer monitor and keyboard. I got a couple of hard drives sitting next to my
Cox cable modem and my ASUS router and I have a Lenovo laptop also on this desk with a USB hub
with 5 USB ports plugged in and the TV is connected to the computer via HDMI and the monitor is
connected to another port. So I'm good to go. I can use my TV for streaming videos. I can
view downloaded videos that I have on my computer and the best thing about it, I don't have three
remote controls like I had with my other TV and the Roku and HDMI switcher box that I used to
switch between the different inputs. Everything in the Roku is built in. So you've got one TV
comes with four, three or four HDMI ports, USB ports and you go from there.
Many of you probably have used Cody, formerly known as XBMC. I've used it with varying degrees
of success and the last couple of years XBMC became Cody. Cody uses various plugins. You can
install it on computer, Windows, not sure if it Mac as a version and Linux and it allows you
to stream and download various content. Like I said, I've had various success with Cody and XBMC.
I didn't need another box to manage or more stuff to worry about with my current Linux boxes.
So that's why I've always opted for a Roku box. Roku is just a dumb box with embedded Linux and you
can just sign into it, upload and download and Roku checks, make sure it's updated every day or
every week or whatever. So you don't have to manage it. Now back to ESPN. My dilemma is still big
one. You know, a lot of sports is a big thing for a lot of people and you become accustomed to
certain things. Eventually you realize you don't need all those channels.
And so like I said, I got around the ESPN live sports thing using the Tunian radio app.
That was fine. I hooked up my TCL Roku that I ordered. Like I said, it's a base model.
It's a 32-inch 720p 2015 model. That's why the price was so cheap. It has a much lower profile
than my old Panasonic TV. It's lower profile, slimmer, thinner, lighter and weight and very thin
bezels. No more of them big, one and a half inch, two-inch bezels like them. Oh, early 2000 LCDs
had. It works for me. One thing I realized, everybody doesn't need a 55-inch 4K TV.
I can't even find a place to put a 55-inch 4K TV in my office. So I don't need that.
Maybe if I had a family or wife and kids, I would put it out in my den. Yeah, that'd be fine. But
for me, nice little 32-inch TV is fine. 720p is fine. I don't need 1080p or 4K.
TCL is a Chinese or Korean company. I'm not sure. I didn't bother to look it up.
And they make smart TVs. A couple years ago, they decided to join in a contract with Roku
and use the Roku UI for their smart TVs. When you first turn on the TCL Roku TV, you see the
standard Roku interface. Except you look at it and see where all your apps are on the right-hand
center part of the screen over to the right-hand side of the screen. But the first
app you see is the HDMI port that is available on the back of your Roku TV. Next to it is the
antenna. These appear just like the apps do on the Roku TV. So you don't have to deal with multiple
remotes like I was talking about before. Looking for what input controls what device. I remember
with my Panasonic, I had Chromecast hooked up, I had the Roku hooked up, I had the TV itself plugged
into the streaming switcher, which was then plugged into my laptop computer. And every time I wanted
to switch inputs, I would always have to find which remote to use. And then if I was watching
cable TV, I would have to use the Cox cable issue remote, you know, one of the big old 12-13-inch
remotes with 100 buttons. So you always had to have your remotes around. Well with the Roku TV,
you get the regular standard Roku app. And that's it. You don't have to worry about anything else.
The remote is very simple. You got a on-off button at the top, a back button, a home button,
a left-right up, down, okay combo, tight pad. You got a rewind button, a star button for
options, a plague, reverse, a forward button combo, and then down it towards the bottom of the
remote. You have four additional big buttons that are labeled Netflix, Amazon, CBS, News, and Sling.
Press one of those four buttons and it takes you directly to that service that you pressed.
I have seen other Roku remotes that have their four buttons labeled differently with other services.
I have not found a way or I don't know if you can program these buttons. I know now that press
Netflix with this remote. It takes me directly into my Netflix. If I press Amazon,
since I don't have Amazon Prime anymore, it'll take me to the Amazon app which I can install.
The third button is CBS News. It does the same thing with that and the fourth one is Sling TV.
So very simple remote. On the right hand side of the remote, you have a volume increase button
and a volume down button and a mute button. One thing I don't like about this remote is it
doesn't have a headphone jack. If you look at some of the newer Roku remotes, they have a
head jack port, headphone jack port. So you can just plug in your headphones and listen to your
TV through your remote. That went a big problem with me.
But you know what? Later that week after I had the TV set up,
I got a notification on my Android phone that my Android Roku app needed updating and when
I updated it to the new Roku 4 app, Roku that done a great upgrade to their Android app.
With that app, you can view all your channels you have installed. You can view the Roku channel store.
You can set up your TV via the app. You can fix the picture settings with your app.
You can use the keypad keyboard on your phone to enter passwords and authenticate
without having to use the on-screen keyboard on your Roku box or your Roku TV.
That's especially nice if you got last pass like I do. You're doing a new setup and you have
to authenticate your Netflix account. All you do is hit your last pass app and it pops open and
asks you do you want to use this for Roku or Netflix. You click whichever one you want and it fills in
whatever after you've put in your four number code or whatever and it fills it in automatically.
No more using your remote control with the on-screen keyboard that Roku provides. It's very nice.
It's a very nice app. Also with the new app, you can stream video, music, audio from your phone
to your Roku devices with the phone. Sort of like a Chromecast. Chromecast I should say.
This TV can't be built in with the Roku media player so you can play videos and pictures and
music or whatever via your cell phone. This is a nice little handy object. So I like it a whole
lot. And then to top it all off, you can use your cell phone and the app and plug in the
headphone and listen to your Roku TV via your cell phone. That's just gravy for me. I like that.
So that new updated app was pretty good. So Roku has come through for me.
I stated that I ordered a TV antenna. I have to buy a TV antenna. It's a little flat black
mat with a 10-12-foot cord that you connect to your antenna outboard of your TV. Find a nice
place in your house. I'd say go as high as you can go towards the ceiling to pick up
all your channels. I could say that in my location we have 21 broadcast channels and I get everyone
up very good. All the big broadcast networks come in the 1080i and a lot of those
other channels like comment and bounce TV and me TV. They're like 4 ADP. They don't broadcast
in 1080p or 720. They're very low broadcast and that's why I don't worry about them too much.
Once you fire up your Roku, it asks for your network access credentials. That's the first
thing you input. With the new Roku phone app, it's easy to do. Otherwise you have to use their
remote control to use the on-screen keyboard on a Roku TV to input your credentials. Easy peasy.
Nothing. No big problems. Everybody has done it if you got a Roku.
Next, after you have put in your network credentials, you have to put in your Roku account
information. Basically you just sign into your Roku account via that online keyboard and
all your Roku apps that you used on another device start populating your current
Roku device. So you don't have to go in and download all new Roku apps every time you get a
new device. It just automatically populates. Sort of like the backup function on Android or iOS
device. Once you sign in with your credentials, all your apps and information come populating
to your new device. One of the things you have to remember is that if you have a Netflix account or
a Hulu account, you will have to sign into those accounts. The app is downloaded, but you have to
sign in with your credentials. But you're only going to do that once. Now all you have to do is
select what you want to watch. So you're sitting there at the Roku menu. HDMI port is up there
antenna is up there and all your apps are up there. What do I want to watch? You just click each
one and it'll take you. I can watch videos from my computer via the HDMI port. I can watch
live broadcast channels via my antenna or I can watch streaming networks via my Roku apps.
It's a very nice all-in-one place. If you don't want to watch TV but you want to set up the picture,
settings, picture settings are no problem. You're not going to get
extreme picture settings like you get with one of those 55-inch Roku TVs.
The picture settings for the 32-inch TCR Roku TV I have are just like regular old
settings for current TVs. You get a decent picture out of the box, but don't expect to be able
to extremely fine tune what you want. You know some guys buy a disk and compare it to their
computer screen and go through this video and compare the the blacks and the whites and the
reds and the blues and all. Don't expect to do all that. You got a $160 TV just be happy you got a
TV desk working. You can access TV brightness, picture mode, picture size, audio effect, sleep timer,
captioning, SAP and accessibility settings. And then at the bottom of the screen in the picture
settings you have advanced picture settings and that concerns backlight, brightness, contrast,
sharpness, color, tint and color temperature. There's also a reset TV settings option available.
You screw things up so bad and you got to get back to bare metal. That's what you hit.
I played around with the settings. I got a decent picture, but I really didn't like what I was
looking at. I thought I could do a lot better. So I did a Google search and found a few settings
on the Roku forums and read it. These are just some settings that people have used that
owned this 32 inch Roku TV and they found these perfect settings for them and they just submitted
them to these forums. I suggest if you have a Roku TV do a search like I did. Grab a copy of some of
these settings and just fine tune your settings like I did. Eventually you'll come up with something
but you have a good base to start at with some of these user-supplied
TV settings. Make yourself a hard copy, put it in your desk and you're good to go.
Set it and forget it. All in all I'm happy with my cable cutting. It was about time. Like I said,
Cox got to me that day and I was tired of messing with him and so I just said screw it.
I'm currently subscribed to Netflix. I have access to Hulu Plus and I have access and use
Acorn TV. Hulu Plus is $7.99 a month for the basic option I think and you can get the no advertisement
option up to $12.11.99 or something like that. Netflix calls $9.99 a month for the standard option.
Acorn TV, I don't know if anybody knows about Acorn TV. Acorn TV offers BBC, ITV,
Channel 4-type programs. All the stuff you used to watch on prime time PBS,
Masterpiece Theater type stuff. I like Acorn TV because I'm a crime TV addict. I love watching
me some crime TV, especially BBC type crime TV. Back in the 90s I was a big prime suspect fan with
Ellen Marin. I recently realized that I hadn't seen prime suspect in a long time. NBC tried to reboot
a couple of years back and it was awful. But I wanted the original prime suspect with Ellen Marin.
Netflix didn't care who Lulu didn't have it. Amazon had it but I didn't have access to Amazon
Prime. But as I did at Google search I found that Acorn TV had Amazon Prime had all the episodes.
From the 1990s all the way up to 2006-2008. Thanksgiving was a wonderful weekend.
Because I watched nothing but Acorn TV that weekend. So that's how I learned about Acorn TV.
And the thing is it cost $4.99.
When Game of Thrones and Westworld roll around again I'll grab my HBO now account and reactivate it.
That's $15. But when I do reactivate HBO now account I'll probably drop Netflix or Lulu Plus.
Duplication of services for a lot of these streaming services including Amazon TV. That's why I don't
use Amazon. So say some money. The best thing with these services is you just subscribe month
a month and aren't obligated to a one or two year contract like you are with cable TV.
You don't have to be a slave to cable TV industry anymore.
My last piece of advice and I seriously offered this to anybody contemplating
cord cutting is to do some research. Don't just go off like I did. Spare the moment
and cancel your service. Do some research first. If you do some research you talk to your family
members or other family members and your friends and ask them questions. If they've tried it
do you think you can try it. Maybe use your family as a guinea pig and try it for a weekend
without using cable services. Buy a cheap antenna. You can get these in amplified antennas for
$10 to $50. Just get a cheap one and see how well your local stations work.
I also found a good source of information from the Cord Cutter News website.
You can book market. I subscribe to it with my RSS newsreader. I get wonderful information
every day from them. One of the big things I found out from Cord Cutter News, we all know about
Sling TV and their options. If you don't want to go with just cable TV or standard streaming apps
but you want to see your cable TV shows like AMC, USA, whatever. Right now you can use Sling TV. They've
got different bundles for prices going from $20 to $50 I believe. Direct TV has a streaming service
with two or three bundles. Prices range from $30 to $50. Sort of like Sling TV.
And then there's PlayStation View which has the same. All these are about the same price.
Offer about the same services. Different bundles offer different things. If you get the most
expensive bundle you get most of the channels. So if mom likes ESPN and dad likes watching
Walking Dead you have ESPN and AMC. The kiddies want to see the Disney Channel. They can watch
Disney Channel. So you have those options. Even some of them have the weather channel I find out.
But remember if you cancel your cable TV and you subscribe to Netflix and Hulu and Acorn and HBO
in addition to what your internet service cost you each month. And then you throw in Sling TV
or the Direct TV streaming service or the PlayStation View streaming services.
You're going to come very close to the amount you were paying each month with your cable TV.
So think about what you're doing. And one last thing. As I was reading some of the reports out
of CES last week and a week before Hulu announced their own live version of live TV. So sometime
this year if you don't use Sling or PlayStation View or Direct TV streaming you will be able to
use your Hulu Plus account pay maybe $40 a month and watch ESPN and the weather channel and AMC
and TBS and all those other channels. So everybody's getting into the game. That's the thing now.
That's the hot thing. Right now is a good time to be a cable cord cutter.
A few years ago it wasn't such a good time. You just sit there and you could see whatever your TV
could allow you to watch. Now if you got favorite shows on your favorite channels then go for it.
But remember subscribing to all these different bundles and
streaming services, the price will add up. That's all the ramblings I have for now. Sorry if it
was a lot a little long. I know it was close to going an hour. This is Reg from Central Georgia
in the United States of America. Y'all have good one. Bye.
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