Transplanted Tiger Fan
"Let's Roll" - Todd Beamer, 9/11/01
Re: Cord cutting - what service to buy after the cable co goes away
We fired Spectrum in May, lived off-the-grid for around 30-days, then signed-up with a “new Customer” discount for Internet only cutting roughly $140 off the monthly bill. Funny thing is, when we signed back up our intention was to go Internet only, but they offered Internet and Cable for the same price. Two months later we continue to get promotional material advertising adding Cable for the same monthly rate.
I flat-out refuse to get cable even if it is “free”, but there are costs... need to “rent” the box/equipment. Admittedly it is a minor expense, but I must say eliminating cable has been quite liberating. Gone are the days of surfing the seemingly-endless selection of crap on-display only to stumble-across something in the “yeah, that’ll do” level of interest until the program ends, only to repeat the process 30min-1hr later. Pink Floyd said it best - “I’ve got 13 Channels of sh!+ on the TV to choose from”. That was in 1979... today it is more like 300 channels of sh!+!
If I want/need to waste some time growing hair in the recliner, there is always PlutoTV [free] to pass that time. Some interesting programming on there! And then there is the over-the-air broadcast “stuff”.
As for live sports, I have an NHL.TV subscription to get me through the hockey season, and the Elmira area rarely has games blacked-out. I will miss a good chunk of football games though, as we only have CBS. The FOX signal is far too weak. Although I am considering some of the options being posted here to get more sports (Hulu Live, YouTube Red, PS Vue, Fire, Roku, etc), but really my only interests are NHL (almost any game), Saints & Bills, Rugby (Union, NOT League!... Premiership, World Cup, Six Nations, etc), and a smattering of College Hockey & Football.
Having said that, there is a skill set that I must perfect. I believe that free live streams are available for a vast majority of live events... you just have to find them. A guy I work with claims he gets Penguins games all the time via this route, although he also stated that sometimes the games are called in a foreign language.
My Mother, an avid Tennis fan, was visiting recently and she wanted to watch Tennis. After disappointing her with the news that we jettisoned cable and no longer had the Tennis Channel, I could not allow her disappointment to persist. So through an extensive Reddit & Internet search, I found the match she was interested in streaming live “somewhere”. I brought it up on an old [“disposable”] iPhone and proceeded to cast the match to the TV so she could watch it live. Mama was happy, mission accomplished.
If I can become efficient in this search-and-cast process, I should be able to watch almost everything I want to see. Not bad for an old geezer.
Cheers!!!
~TTF
We fired Spectrum in May, lived off-the-grid for around 30-days, then signed-up with a “new Customer” discount for Internet only cutting roughly $140 off the monthly bill. Funny thing is, when we signed back up our intention was to go Internet only, but they offered Internet and Cable for the same price. Two months later we continue to get promotional material advertising adding Cable for the same monthly rate.
I flat-out refuse to get cable even if it is “free”, but there are costs... need to “rent” the box/equipment. Admittedly it is a minor expense, but I must say eliminating cable has been quite liberating. Gone are the days of surfing the seemingly-endless selection of crap on-display only to stumble-across something in the “yeah, that’ll do” level of interest until the program ends, only to repeat the process 30min-1hr later. Pink Floyd said it best - “I’ve got 13 Channels of sh!+ on the TV to choose from”. That was in 1979... today it is more like 300 channels of sh!+!
If I want/need to waste some time growing hair in the recliner, there is always PlutoTV [free] to pass that time. Some interesting programming on there! And then there is the over-the-air broadcast “stuff”.
As for live sports, I have an NHL.TV subscription to get me through the hockey season, and the Elmira area rarely has games blacked-out. I will miss a good chunk of football games though, as we only have CBS. The FOX signal is far too weak. Although I am considering some of the options being posted here to get more sports (Hulu Live, YouTube Red, PS Vue, Fire, Roku, etc), but really my only interests are NHL (almost any game), Saints & Bills, Rugby (Union, NOT League!... Premiership, World Cup, Six Nations, etc), and a smattering of College Hockey & Football.
Having said that, there is a skill set that I must perfect. I believe that free live streams are available for a vast majority of live events... you just have to find them. A guy I work with claims he gets Penguins games all the time via this route, although he also stated that sometimes the games are called in a foreign language.
My Mother, an avid Tennis fan, was visiting recently and she wanted to watch Tennis. After disappointing her with the news that we jettisoned cable and no longer had the Tennis Channel, I could not allow her disappointment to persist. So through an extensive Reddit & Internet search, I found the match she was interested in streaming live “somewhere”. I brought it up on an old [“disposable”] iPhone and proceeded to cast the match to the TV so she could watch it live. Mama was happy, mission accomplished.
If I can become efficient in this search-and-cast process, I should be able to watch almost everything I want to see. Not bad for an old geezer.
Cheers!!!
~TTF
