In March, it’ll be 3 years since I divorced Dish Network Satellite TV.
We had good times.
We had bad times.
I’d like to say I miss it, but just can’t.
High cost, high maintenance, and unreliable.
Should have left a long time before.
I stayed, because of loyalty.
That loyalty was misguided, and uninformed.
I’ll never find anything as good… it would tell me.
It’s a waste of time to even try… it would remind me.
Haven’t we been together for a long time?.. it would guilt me.
At first, I felt guilt, and even physical pain when thinking about what I gave up.
I was scared, and kept thinking I just made the biggest mistake.
This lasted 3 months, making me wish I could find my library card.
Then my daughter asked if I could record a TV show on NBC for her.
I showed her how to do it.
She said… cool.
I am coming up on my 2 year mark in March of this year. I have to say I agree with @Radojevic, I was hesitant at first but after about 3 months I realized it was all misguided and I didn’t really loose anything. Between my Tablo and Plex, TV life is awesome. Not to mention the kids are actually spending more time outside now!
I’ll be turning cash-positive this month. Including the $35/month YouTube TV subscription (covers all my “premium” cable channels I gave up), the $6.xx/month Ooma for my landline, and the now $55/month for my 75 Mbps fiber Internet connection, that’s still way less than the $197/month I used to pay Frontier for the bundled services.
I keep reminding my wife of that when she complains.
LMAO, thank you for that laugh!
My TV all the time bride allowed me to dump Comcrap a few months ago. Our 4 TV but middle channel package was $100 per month and always heading for $120 (+$20) per month. Loved telling them to pack sand!
We got almost every cable channel we watched with Directvnow 60 channel pack for $35 simple per month, $5 per month guide from and 50 channels from local ATL from three antenna setup on the top of my second story roof (least favorite part of this.) Bought a lot of equipment do do all this: $300 worth of antennas (using two of five bought) two distribution amps (2x$30) , upstairs and down, 3 firestick HD ($100), 1 Roku stick ($40), all kinds of mounting hardware, poles, wiring, preamp, used Tablo 2 tuner ($125) 2TB hard drive ($70) , probably all told $700, so I am 14 months away from break even. I now can only record OTA, and though no record on DTVNOW, we never recorded the cable sltuff.
Getting the right combination of antennas to merge signals from Low VHF, low power UHF, and a weak distant must have station from the other direction was the real challenge. Had to pick antennas literally by which frequency range their strength was in. They are all compromises. www.tvfool.com and dub dub dub hdtvprimer dot com and dub dub dub antennahacks dot com were invaluable.
So we are a happy work in progress! Shovel99
Amazing how quickly my family adapted to this new (and old) way of watching TV. As part of this effort, I created a 1GBit hard-wire network in my house, and increased my ISP connection (at a lower cost). It’s only been a couple months, but we simply DO NOT MISS our old pay TV. The kids love the Rokus, and the fact that every TV in the house now behaves the same way for streaming and for broadcast. Thanks to all the upgrades, we get all of our TV and streaming with absolutely no pixelation or buffering delays. I credit a great antenna and hard-wiring everything to a 1GBit switch. It will take six months for my investment to pay for itself, then big monthly savings to follow!
I was so amazed at how well this all works I actually hosted a cord cutting event in my neighborhood (we have 800+ homes in our development) to share what I learned, including a demo of the Rokus and the Tablo. It was so popular I’ve been asked to do more events!
Note: I am asking folks in the cord-cutting community in Denver to pressure Altitude Network to create a streaming channel or jump on a sub-channel with one of the established broadcasters. There is no easy way to get Denver Nuggets, Colorado Rockies or Colorado Avalanche games without a traditional payTV subscription (SlingTV and DirecTV Now do not appear to offer Altitude at this time). My feedback to Altitude TV included a reminder that viewership is going to continue to erode as cord-cutting becomes more and more common. Hopefully their bean-counters will see the importance of doing this sooner rather than later or face steady decline in advertising revenue.
My biggest surprise is how little TV I watch now. Even my Tablo is barely used (I watch at most one show a week now, though my wife watches a few more). I still watch a lot of sports, but that is live.
But I do use my Rokus, PC, and iPad a lot to consume media. I watch a lot of Netflix and Funimation, as well a ton of Youtube videos. So all that time I used to watch “tv” is just being spent on streaming media instead.
i’ve heard there are poseur cord-cutters lurking who remain secretly married to comcast.
also, some of you are probably married to comcast with tablo as your side-boo and you keep telling tablo that you are going to divorce comcast while knowing it’s a lie!
how else to get good isp service at home if not comcast? does anyone know of a sneakernet or drone service to deliver a few 6250 bpi magtapes to my house each morning with the exact data i’ll need for that day?
I am 20 months into my new TV entertainment adventure. But I do not consider my self a cord-cutter, merely a bargain shopper.
I could never go without cable channels due to sports. But once I learned about PSVue (with cloud based DVR functionality) & Tablo, I knew I had to try it. Now with my cable channels from PSVue, my local OTA’s with Tablo, Amazon Prime & Netflix - I actually have more content in a better whole-home entertainment system than ever before for about $85/month less. Yes I had an initial upfront investment, but it has already paid for itself & been paying me back for 7 months now.
My Ex’s (Dish and DirectTV) still send me pleading letters to come back to them.
It’ll be different this time. Here, let me buy you something real nice if you let me come back ($200 gift card for returning). We promise you won’t have to pay much (for an introductory time). We won’t hit you again (with fees).
It was August of 2013 when we journeyed back in time to a simpler day when we were not “tethered” to over priced video entertainment. Yes OTA, where old is new again. I already had my house wired for it from earlier years so all I had to do was go up on the roof and install new antennas. Like other people said we do not miss Cable for even one micro second. The savings paid for the antennas in only a few months, after that it’s all gravy.
Added Tablo March of 2015. I had a one TB hard drive laying around unused so I used it for Tablo and worried it would be too small. But no. You can only watch so much TV. Every once and a while I go in and start deleting episodes because we just don’t get around to watching them. We usually run about 75% full.
Ironically I just got a letter in the mail today from our local Cable supplier with a special on my pick of 10 cable channels as well as our local channels for a special 2 year price. Sorry but, too little too late.
nicholb, I have almost the same setup as you. Only made the mistake of going with TIVO instead of TABLO. Had to have PSvue for sports and added NFL game pass. Still save about 50 a month after a 50 upgrade for internet. Internet is pricey out here. I have 12MGB unlimited, for additional 20 could get 24 but so far 12 is plenty. Now to get rid ofTIVO then I can get TABLO!
I was leaning toward Tivo myself. Buying a Roamio & (3) Mini’s verses Tablo-4 & (4) streaming devices was about a wash. But since Tivo doesn’t support PSVue, it meant I would still have to purchase the streaming devices anyway. I also liked the versatility of the Tablo, i.e the wireless capabilities & multiple end viewing devices. I didn’t think I would ever take advantage of the remote viewing, but alas I have done this once & though I won’t use it much it is nice to have that option.
I have had a few hiccups, but overall Tablo has served my needs well.
then I realized I made the right decision…