How to cut the cable cord...

a reply to: Bluntone22


The Licence fee is around £100 now I think. Free if you're over 70 or 75.

Holy hell dude, your cable bill was $200 a month?!

Nope, OVER $200 a month, around $250.

The box fees per month, and internet were over $100 just there.

Then, we had a landline phone, and basic cable. Plus, we'd typically have at least one pay channel group (depending on what show we were into, like HBO for Game of Thrones, or Showtime for Dexter, etc.)

Now, we can see all of that and more, for just the $20 a month. So yeah, I'm over it.

originally posted by: Painterz
a reply to: Bluntone22


The Licence fee is around £100 now I think. Free if you're over 70 or 75.

Each television of per household?

And how often? Monthly? Annually? One time fee?

Enjoy it while you can cos as soon a the demand stops for cable your free TV will stop. You only get it because the caveat for the cable company to install their network was for them to transmit free to air signal. The minute they lose the majority of their revenue do you honestly believe they will still transmit free? Where do you think these free signals come from?

Couple of bits of advice when using set top boxes like the Firestick and other such things, check the network capability of the device to make sure its suitable for your use case. I have a FireTV and it only has a 100 Mbit Ethernet port so it sometimes hiccups on rather large files when the rest of my network is 1000Mbit. If you are using a hardware device like the previously mentioned Firestick or Chromecast in conjunction with an in-house streaming solution like Plex often the hardware devices don't have enough power to properly decode high quality streams. Also SlingTV is a pretty awesome streaming option if you are into sports, I have been able to watch hockey games w/o any blackouts at all which is really fantastic compared to the NHL.tv streaming service where I had to use some DNS jiggery-pokery to get around the blackout rules.

I've got a cheap amplified directional antenna with a built in rotator up about 30 feet that gives me 25 local broadcast channels, most of those are 50 miles away. With really good conditions I can get a lot more channels. I've got a tower for free from a friend who dismantled it from his new house I've yet to put up that will get me more stations. I've got a 25db directional WiFi antenna on order that will hopefully connect to the local free hot spots. The WiFi adapter, cable and antenna all cost me around $33. Until then I can get fairly high speed from my smart phone hot spot, it's not all that cheap though, $10 per gig data.

With all the advertising on cable, screw them, I've gone without for 15 years and never looked back.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

One thing to keep in mind with doing those long range wifi connections is that your antenna is only half of the equation, it might pump up your outgoing signal but unless the other side has a similar antenna pointed your way you will still get weak connections on the receive side of things.

Checked into Sling, but really, it's just streaming cable. It's still packages, despite their advertising, and you still pay for channels you have no interest in.

As for enjoying it while I can...yep, plan to. As they change their model as demand drops, we'll likewise adapt and change how we get TV, no biggie.

originally posted by: Helig
a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

One thing to keep in mind with doing those long range wifi connections is that your antenna is only half of the equation, it might pump up your outgoing signal but unless the other side has a similar antenna pointed your way you will still get weak connections on the receive side of things.

Yeah, thought about that. It would have to get through to the router inside the buildings. However, it's also an experiment for starting a local mesh net. The equipment was technically free as the money came from an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas. The antenna was only about $15. If it doesn't do much more than pirate off the neighbors, that would be cool (for me, not the neighbors, LOL).