Why Are You Still Paying for Cable TV?

March 09, 2011, By 154 comments

Why Are You Still Paying for Cable TV?

Ah, cord cutting. Take a deep breath—I’m not referring to a visit to “Dr. Snippet” because you can’t afford any more accidents, err, kids. I’m talking about the kind of cord cutting that delivers, freedom. From cable and—if you are anything like me—a $170 a month bill. Ditching cable is all the rage right now, and it’s expected to gain even more popularity in 2012. Why? Because it is 2011 and with so many online options, why not? However, before you kick your cable company to the curb, you’ll need to consider a few things:

You Really Need High-Speed Internet

By getting rid of cable, you will come to depend on the Internet for most of your TV/Video content. This means you’ll need to have a fast and reliable Internet service provider to push content to your TV or other device equipped with apps like Netflix, Hulu and Video on Demand (VoD). Without a broadband or high-speed Internet connection, your TV watching will often stall, like a YouTube video that still needs to load. This is called buffering—and it sucks. It is painful.

You Still Need to “Pay” for TV

That’s right. You do. While you don’t need to pay for cable television, you’ll still need to sign up for a Hulu Plus and Netflix account. Combine these two monthly subscriptions and you’re almost golden. Between these two subscriptions, you will be able to get (most) all of your favorite TV shows for a fraction of the cost of cable. Hulu Plus and Netflix are each $7.99 a month for streaming only. Netflix will run you two more dollars a month if you wish to have DVD or Blu-ray discs sent to your house.

Consider Compatible Devices for Convenience

You can stream video content through a number of devices these days: Sony PlayStation, Xbox, Roku, Tivo, various Blu-ray players and more. My wife and I love our Blu-ray player (that I wrote about here), which we use to stream Netflix and Hulu through our TV. One thing to consider is buying one with Wi-Fi capabilities. It just makes everything so much easier.

NEXT: What about Sports?

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Comments (154):

Curt H. Sports can be watched through ESPN3.com. I have been doing this, cable free, for a year. And it is AWESOME. - 11/18/2011
Carriann A. I pay almost $200.00 a month for cabel, land line and internet. I all ready have a play station three. Now if I cancel cabel where would I get my internet from? I would really like to cut that bill in half. The only extra channels I get is HBO. - 11/17/2011
Andy G. Nice article, but there are two things to be mindful of: 1) As we all know, big corporations have lots of money because they know how to make and keep lots of money. Companies such as ComCast and TimeWarner offer both services. Recently both companies have implemented (or attempted to implement) pricing structures similar to that of cell phones which limit the amount of data you can transfer per month. For example, your data cap may be 2GB per month - after you stream 2GB worth of data, a per MB charge will be applied to your monthly bill. This change will help to offset the large drops in revenue that they see, and make sure you're still paying premium dollar for your entertainment. Now, that said, there's no need to panic - Time Warner attempted to implement this rate structure in Rochester, NY and customers by the hundreds lined up to cancel their service. I know it's already being done by some providers in some markets, I'm just not sure which. 2) You don't necessarily have to cancel your cable either. I, as well as some of my friends, have also had tremendous savings from the cable companies by calling up and simply mentioning that you can no longer afford the service. In my case, Time Warner cut $30/month off of the bill, AND I got a free second box and free DVR. Not too shabby for a 10 minute phone call. This "arrangement" is good for the next two years (no contract). One other twist to this, is if you have friends that don't currently have cable, then surely they are bombarded with cable tv offers that are ridiculously inexpensive. Ask them for a couple of the mailed offers and then ask the cable company why after having been a loyal customer for so long you are not afforded the same savings. Works like a charm every time. Good luck! - 10/23/2011
Kevin S. Cord cutters-check out Veetle which I just started using recently and offers low bit-rate streams of movies over a hundred channels or so (all for FREE) I have 21mbps dsl in Maine and love all the free content out there. - 10/14/2011

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