Learn me: Getting the cable company's foot off my neck

^^ brighthouse (no tv) + sony streaming box + netflix & youtube

I still haven't found the answer to this question for my uses. This means I get buttberkeleyed to the tune of $170/month for cable/internet and $150 a month for phones.

Hope you have better luck.

Swank Force One wrote: I still haven't found the answer to this question for my uses. This means I get buttberkeleyed to the tune of $170/month for cable/internet and $150 a month for phones. Hope you have better luck.

Holy balls!

For the phones at least you should look into Net10 or similar!

I don't even own a TV. If there's a football game I'm interested in, I go to a bar or a Sports Book.

GameboyRMH wrote: Maybe get Comcast for the basic cable (they suck at Internet, even by US ISP standards).

I wish I could lose Comcrap for my internet. 75/month and my only alternative is DSL

Osterkraut wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: I still haven't found the answer to this question for my uses. This means I get buttberkeleyed to the tune of $170/month for cable/internet and $150 a month for phones. Hope you have better luck.

Holy balls! For the phones at least you should look into Net10 or similar!

What kind of speeds? I pay $155 a month for two iPhone 5's.

Used to have Sprint, but having no cell coverage outside of major cities isn't something I'm willing to deal with anymore to save a few bucks. Last year when we went to Montana, AT&T had coverage 95% of our drive, vs Sprint which was less than 30%.

Also my HTC EVO 4G avg'd 1mb down here in Tulsa vs iPhone 5 at 20-30mb down depending on where I am in town.

Saving $50 a month wouldn't be worth poor coverage and/or slow speeds.

z31maniac wrote:

Osterkraut wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: I still haven't found the answer to this question for my uses. This means I get buttberkeleyed to the tune of $170/month for cable/internet and $150 a month for phones. Hope you have better luck.

Holy balls! For the phones at least you should look into Net10 or similar!

What kind of speeds? I pay $155 a month for two iPhone 5's. Used to have Sprint, but having no cell coverage outside of major cities isn't something I'm willing to deal with anymore to save a few bucks. Last year when we went to Montana, AT&T had coverage 95% of our drive, vs Sprint which was less than 30%. Also my HTC EVO 4G avg'd 1mb down here in Tulsa vs iPhone 5 at 20-30mb down depending on where I am in town. Saving $50 a month wouldn't be worth poor coverage and/or slow speeds.

My version used AT&T's network, and I haven't noticed anything too slow. $50 a phone unlimited everything.

Damn. Good news. For the hell of it, I switched the TV to "antenna" last night. 22 Channels, including 2 CBS's, and at least 1 Fox. WORKS FOR ME! Looks like I'll be saving $100/month. I might try that indoor antenna deal and see if I can get a few more channels.

poopshovel wrote: Damn. Good news. For the hell of it, I switched the TV to "antenna" last night. 22 Channels, including 2 CBS's, and at least 1 Fox. WORKS FOR ME! Looks like I'll be saving $100/month. I might try that indoor antenna deal and see if I can get a few more channels.

Good man. You will find better uses for that money

I've had people ask how I can afford to build a car. I point out that not having cable tv during this build means $100/mo. x six years = $7200.

JoeyM wrote:

poopshovel wrote: Damn. Good news. For the hell of it, I switched the TV to "antenna" last night. 22 Channels, including 2 CBS's, and at least 1 Fox. WORKS FOR ME! Looks like I'll be saving $100/month. I might try that indoor antenna deal and see if I can get a few more channels.

Good man. You will find better uses for that money I've had people ask how I can afford to build a car. I point out that not having cable tv during this build means $100/mo. x six years = $7200.

Great point!

Even with cable tv (I have a mid level package through Comcast) I have forgotten how many times the wife and I have told ourselves that we pay all this money each month and there still isn't much on we like.

The wife has free satellite radio in her new C-Max for a year and a half (dealer appeasement for earlier battery issues when she first got the car). I'm really thinking of ditching any kind of cable tv, just keeping a basic internet connection, getting a satellite radio monitor for the house and call it good. There seems to be more variety of music and talk on radio than any tv I've seen.

JoeyM wrote:

poopshovel wrote: Damn. Good news. For the hell of it, I switched the TV to "antenna" last night. 22 Channels, including 2 CBS's, and at least 1 Fox. WORKS FOR ME! Looks like I'll be saving $100/month. I might try that indoor antenna deal and see if I can get a few more channels.

Good man. You will find better uses for that money I've had people ask how I can afford to build a car. I point out that not having cable tv during this build means $100/mo. x six years = $7200.

berkeley yeah man. Makes up for double the difference in the payment between the Fit and the 5. More money for retirement!!!

In reply to poopshovel:

Just FYI, unless you live in an outdated plant, if you are capable of getting Comcast digital cable, you can get their internet. Don't trust what the website says, call and ask them to send a tech out to confirm you can or cannot get service. They do that free of charge.

I work for them, and reading most of the replies in this thread, that's all I will post for now.

I have Time Warner, the Internet and digital cable (no premium channels) is $91 a month. The only reason I have digital cable is SPEED is on 512 here, can't get it with basic. Everybody I know with DISH say it goes out when it rains, that's a PITA since that's actually the only time I really want to watch TV so cable is best for me. The two Verizon cells are $119 a month, and I have been looking REAL hard at the basic talk plans at Wal Mart etc, I can probably knock that down $20 and get smart phones.

I cut the cord years ago. Never looking back.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: In reply to poopshovel: Just FYI, unless you live in an outdated plant, if you are capable of getting Comcast digital cable, you can get their internet. Don't trust what the website says, call and ask them to send a tech out to confirm you can or cannot get service. They do that free of charge. I work for them, and reading most of the replies in this thread, that's all I will post for now.

At least I hope you get a nice big employee discount.

drainoil wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: In reply to poopshovel: Just FYI, unless you live in an outdated plant, if you are capable of getting Comcast digital cable, you can get their internet. Don't trust what the website says, call and ask them to send a tech out to confirm you can or cannot get service. They do that free of charge. I work for them, and reading most of the replies in this thread, that's all I will post for now.

At least I hope you get a nice big employee discount.

I do.

drainoil wrote: The wife has free satellite radio in her new C-Max for a year and a half (dealer appeasement for earlier battery issues when she first got the car). I'm really thinking of ditching any kind of cable tv, just keeping a basic internet connection, getting a satellite radio monitor for the house and call it good. There seems to be more variety of music and talk on radio than any tv I've seen.

If you've got an internet connection, look into streaming radio. You'll find quite a few options. You can also stream the satellite feed if you're a subscriber, but I think it costs extra. Still, it means you wouldn't need a new piece of hardware.

A tip about Sirius radio. Their usual prices are really high, and your free service will turn into monthly billing at the end. But it's expensive to get new customers. So just before your promotional period expires, call up to cancel. They'll go into used car salesman mode and offer you better and better deals. I think $25 for five months was the best they offered on the phone last time, then followed that up with several phone calls and mailings for $25 for six months. Take one of those, and give them a call a week before the 6 month period ends. The cycle begins anew...

About internet service - in our town, you can actually get a microwave setup. We've got it at Flyin' Miata because we're out in the boondocks and the cable company wants us to pay to lay the new cable to our neighborhood. The only other option was DSL. We went to this microwave and our speeds are fantastic - better download speeds than my "premium" cable setup at home (internet and VOIP only, no TV) and symmetrical upload speeds. Really impressive, and it allowed us to go to VOIP for the business and still have a fast connection. Might be worth looking at.

Osterkraut wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: I still haven't found the answer to this question for my uses. This means I get buttberkeleyed to the tune of $170/month for cable/internet and $150 a month for phones. Hope you have better luck.

Holy balls! For the phones at least you should look into Net10 or similar!

I will... Sprint has been a nightmare, and there's no way i'm NOT jumping ship at this point when my contract is up in March.

I spent over 50% of the last 3 weeks roaming.

we went about 2 years with no cable... had uverse internet and was happy with it and then netflix and hulu plus and a roku box and xbox live... add torrents or projectfreetv.com for those things we couldn't get on hulu or netflix gave us plenty of things to watch...

unfortunately my in-laws and my family all moved into one big house where they must have normal TV... we pay killed the hulu and netflix and are paying for our set top boxes as we'd just assume not have it... as I recall from a few years ago, hundreds of things on tv and nothing worth watching :-/...

I'm a little late to the party, but I went cable-less a couple years back and love it, btu I'm not a sports fan. Live sporting events are the only remaining stumbling block I see to a cable-free life for most folks.

If you are doing air-broadcast HDTV, do yourself a favor and build a single bay gray-hoverman antenna. http://www.diytvantennas.com/sbgh.php

It took me 10 minutes to build and I stuck it up inside the attic of my single floor house. The reception is phenomenal and I built it from scrap I had, so zero cost. It outperforms every purchased antenna I've ever seen. The air broadcast reception is higher image quality than the 'digital cable' tv I'd been paying for. In Macon I get six or eight usable channels, in Atlanta metro you should be awash in good signals.

EDIT: I just re-read the linked instructions. All I did was make the wire part screwed to the board and connected with the coak adapter. I never bothered with the wood fram, spacers, or tinfoil crap. I just screwed the antenna to a stud in the attic and connected it via coax cable. I went from one crappy station to six great ones.

Just for a data point, we have two phones with basic no frills everything and it's $57/mo including all taxes. We have Amazon Prime (ditched Netflix) for $40/year, and ATT DSL at $40/month.

Anybody know if OTA HD signals are line of sight like older style OTA signals? I assume they are, but it's worth asking. We live in a hole/crater behind a ridge line that is at least 40 ft higher than the roof of our house. When we moved in, many moons ago, we tried several different antennas in the attic and could only get 1 really poor channel. I checked some contour maps and confirmed the elevations and gave up on OTA.

Digital OTA is line of sight. www.antennaweb.org is a good source for antenna sizing and pointing.

If OTA is line of sight, what are your options if you have alot of 30+ foot trees surrounding your house?