Is cable still worth it?
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Emily Smith, 28, a writer in Gainesville, Florida, canceled her cable subscription in favor of Internet-only streaming two years ago. “I was hooked on a ton of TV, so it was a big change,” she says. An even bigger one was the $70 fall in monthly bills.
With this week’s announcement that Warner Bros is to offer movies through Facebook, it is clear watching online is no longer the time-consuming, jittery method it once was. Here’s how you could be saving.
What’s out there
Let’s start with the free options. You can stream current TV shows on Hulu or TV networks’ own websites, available from hours to a few days after they air on television. Both also offer a sizable back catalog of older shows.
Next, low cost. Netflix used to be known primarily for DVDs that would arrive through your door -– now its service is just as geared toward watching online. It currently offers unlimited online viewing for $7.99 a month, with a free month’s trial. Less of an up-to-the-minute episode player, it’s great for watching movies and mostly previous seasons of TV shows you missed first-time round.
Then there’s Amazon Instant Video, which offers a catalog of more than 90,000 movies and TV shows. A single rental 
typically costs between 99 cents and $3.99. You can also rent TV shows by season. If you’ve joined Amazon Prime, 5,000 videos in their catalog are already included with your $79 annual membership.
Apple’s iTunes has also been getting in on the act. For 99 cents per episode, you can stream episodes of current TV shows as early as a day after they air. Like Amazon, most new movies are available to stream the same day they are released on DVD.
Clicker.com is one useful search engine for finding where your favorite show is streaming.
But beware. “The cost of buying one piece at a time can get expensive,” says Schwark Satyavolu, CEO and Founder of money-saving website BillShrink, who has reduced his family’s own cable usage at home in Fremont, California.
More than just saving money
If your children are more used to watching online than you are, you may think Internet streaming means hunching over laptops and peering into your smartphone screen. Not so. Now you don’t even have to lose the TV.
The best way to stream onto your TV is to use a digital media receiver box, which offers a more stable platform and more user-friendly interface than just plugging in your laptop.
There are plenty on the market. Frontrunners include Roku ($60), which plays Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus among others, and Boxee ($199), which streams a number of major programming providers. There’s also Google TV devices ($250 for the current cheapest option, Logitech Revue), and Apple TV ($99).
Computer consoles — including the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 — also double up as streaming devices, as do some internet-connected Blu-ray disc players. For example, Netflix can be watched through all of the above, as well as TiVo, the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Britt Sondreal, 31, a radio DJ who lives in Brooklyn, New York, has ditched
cable and she and her boyfriend Tim now regularly use Hulu, Netflix and Megavideo.
A self-confessed TV addict given half a chance, online streaming has prompted her to focus on quality rather than quantity. “It’s almost a good thing to have that limitation. I’m grateful for it,” she says. Sondreal can still watch all her favorite shows including 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and guilty pleasure Glee.
Streaming offers the benefit of choosing what she wants to watch when she wants to, and fewer commercials for the most part. There are other unexpected bonuses too. “It’s definitely broadened my horizons,” Sondreal says. She’s currently watching BBC drama Downton Abbey on Netflix she says she would not have otherwise come across.
What you can’t replace
Unfortunately, there are those programs you miss watching in real time, especially sports. And if there’s one thing cable is known for, it’s non-stop sports coverage.
For Smith, it’s been her biggest adjustment. “My thing on a Saturday if I were just lying on the couch was watching ESPN for hours,” she says.
While access to the most popular games remains limited, since last year Smith has been able to watch some college basketball through her Xbox Live subscription, which costs $50 annually.
Other live streaming options include MLB.tv for baseball and NBA League One Pass for basketball, with the caveat that they currently only offer live games to out-of-market customers. The good news is Apple TV has just signed a deal with both providers for discounted game packages, according to today’s Financial Times, and YouTube is reportedly in talks on airing some NBA basketball games.
Not being able to watch TV shows in real time can also put you at risk of overhearing spoilers. “That’s happened to me a few times, particularly with reality shows,” says Smith. “I’ll be at the grocery store and they’ll say, ‘I can’t believe they kicked him off…’ and I’ll be like, noooo!”
Assess your own needs
The bottom line is there’s no one right way to go. Assess your own consuming pattern and find the solution that’s best for you. As Satyavolu points out, if you have multiple TVs at home, online streaming could end up costing more than cable. “Right now it’s all by device, not by account,” he says.
On the flip, switching to streaming can herald a whole new future. “I watch much less junk,” Smith says. “It was a bit of an adjustment, but I wouldn’t go back. I’m saving a ton of money.”
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This is exactly how I cut the cable bill out of my budget. You don’t need cable TV. Almost everything is already available online. I use a service from the TVDevo website that consolidates all the streaming and on-demand TV content into one place so you can find it easily.
For movies, I use Netflix. Between these 2 services, I have no Cable TV bill and I don’t miss it.
Would love to stream but my Verizon Broadband charges by data used and is very expensive when it goes over the limit. So, the deal is if you got unlimited data – great.
Well for starters the Reporter is right who needs Cable TV these days when they keep raising the bill and adding all these additional channels that doesn’t offer much. I once had Time Warner Cable and my monthly was $90.00 a month for 4 years then one day they decided to raise to every year and I got feed up when the most recent bill was $119.00 so I called in cancelled it and turn back the Cable BOx and switch to Verizon Fios Internet (Only) and my monthly bill is $39.00 a month and every show I want to watch I watch online at: http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/?tv
I also pay a very small fee for streaming from two sites that streams all of my favorite shows via Megaupload for Megavideo to stream and Novamov as well and the month fee is $9.99 each now tell me can Cable TV top that, I don’t think so. I will never go back using Cable TV, if I miss a show I can always watch it an hour after if was aired at or the next day at: letmewatchthis
Furthermore there are more sites online that also does the same by showing tv shows and movies that is better than hulu with no commercials check out:
tv.blinkx.com, tubeplus, & casttv.
We ditched cable tv, got a faster internet connection, got an internet connected tv (we were due for a new one anyway), and also use an HD antenna for OTA channels that look better than they did through cable. No need for cable tv, wouldn’t ever go back.
Yup, same here. I can always find free tv to watch online. Provided that your internet connection is reliable enough to buffer and stream videos with good quality.
That’s just great, but they’ll compensate by limiting your bandwidth and charging higher prices sooner or later, actually they already started.
I gave up cable years ago – went back to the aerial that I had installed 20 years ago because cable hadn’t been introduced into the area yet. I then went to cable and found that after a few years I was being charged more for the basic service and even had basic service programs – almost anything I tended to watch frequently – being upgraded to premium services. At one point the cable company asked me what service I was getting and I refused to tell them. I told them – you should know that – I have no control over what I get – only what you provide.
I hate the way the cable and Internet companies do business. There is no consumer protection. You don’t sign a contract stipulation the services you get or the price paid. It is a come-on that once you become comfortable with the services – just wait – you will be billed higher. I am convinced that the economy is run largely on scams, come-ons and fraud.
Just don’t get too comfortable with online services either. There is no consumer protection for anything on the Internet or the use of the computer. The Internet is so far over the heads of most of its users that you are nearly a captive audience that the managers of the services can manipulate to their liking. They almost have the self-serving and perverse ethics of the mafia. I have no idea what frequent updates are doing to my PC and find that I sometimes have to revert to prior settings. One upgrade actually disabled that ability and the Indian rep I talked to came right out and told me it was time to buy a new one. There was nothing wrong with the old one. The restore function now works again. The system can impose obsolescence when they feel like doing so.
I used to be an avid reader but found that TV was a nice background to other activities. It would take watching a single movie several times just for me to understand what was going on. I’d memorize the sound track before I understood the rest of the movie.
But the Internet movie services will start the same process of trying to milk the consumer for every dollar for no real improvement of product.
I am trying to wean myself from the Internet movies and go back to old VHS tapes for entertainment. The next default position will be back to radio and a substantial personal library that I have collected for almost 45 years. But I can’t work at other tasks and read at the same time.
Any mass media can be an organ of propaganda. But isn’t it ironic that all the news channels are so desperate for viewers they have specialized in political and even emotional “attitude” for things one would think should be more sober – like the events of world or national importance. Far from being a service that unites people it is becoming one that tends to balkanize them. It is possible now to customize reality on one’s own private machine. That seems to me to be very dangerous and rather like living in a mad house – or likely to lead to one.
Facts are like language. If there are few common facts than they are useless.
Did you know you can get FREE HD programming with a roof antenna?
Most of the time you don’t even need it on your roof, just put it in your attic, point it at the transmitters, and depending on your location, you can get 10 to even 100 channels for FREE.
Take advantage of it before the greedy corporations and their poodles in the government conspire to take it away from you.