Cableone made me mad and I have had enough. If you are like me, you’ve heard about the television cord-cutting trend but are not sure how it works, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve found out.
The biggest change when you cut the cable cord is that you have to decide what to watch. There’s nothing playing on the TV until you decide what to put on. As near as I can tell, DVRs don’t work with an internet only setup but that’s OK with me. I quickly realized that the shows I was recording can be found online if you are willing to subscribe to a few services (Netflix, Hulu, etc.)
There is a huge amount of content online and it is really easy to find something to watch. I can already tell that I am never going to run out of interesting shows. I like being able to watch a season of shows at whatever pace feels good.
For this to work, you need to be able to connect the internet to your TV. I have an Apple TV device connected to the TV in the living room. Apple TV can connect to the internet via wifi or with an ethernet cable. I use the cable because I think it might be a better/faster connection, and because I had the cable already in place.
The TV in the kitchen has a wireless Roku stick. This is a little thing that looks a lot like a flash drive that plugs into an HDMI port on the TV. It has a cord that plugs into a power outlet. Neither of these devices was that hard to set up. It took a little time to enter passwords and set up channels (Netflix, etc.) on each device, but it was easy to do.
Both of these devices work well and allow you to watch a variety of things. I am currently watching subscription services like Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access, but there and I’ve found a variety of free channels as well. Additionally, you can connect both Apple TV and the Roku to your computer or other smart device and stream from them.
My cable bill is about 1/3 of what it was before. The combined monthly Netflix/Hulu/CBS/HBO fees will be a little more than what I was paying Tivo (my DVR provider). I’m saving money—that hardly ever happens!
The one downside is that we don’t get local/live news. I solved that problem with the WFAA app on my ipad. (WFAA is the ABC channel in Dallas that we watched until Cableone took it away.) We usually watch evening news and this app works for us. I suspect I’ll be able to get more news using other apps… in fact, Nowhere TV might work very well.
I hope this has answered questions for those of you who might have been thinking about doing this yourself.
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