Cable TV Next

[raygard]

BG: Out where I am, is the end of the world when it comes to wireless. The neighbors kid had it and said it was no better or maybe worse then satellite. Plus the bandwidth cap is much less than satellite.
I work from home and use the internet a great deal when sending reports etc. I cannot do what I need to do with the lower bandwidth caps that wireless providers allow.

Mayhem: There is negotiations with the satellite internet providers. They know they have us over a barrel, and the only other game in town id Dial up, NO WAY, or wireless, no improvement.
At the end of my road is cable, but they will not run the line back here for one or two customers. I have petitioned Verizon for DSL and had a few neighbors also petition Verizon. I sent them all in in a package. Have not hear back from them yet. Not real hopeful. I do have the Freedom plan which is $49.99 + $7.95 inside wire maintenance plan(used that 2x already) + tax, x2 lines. Need 2 for business, office/home line & fax line. The only thing I can really trim out or down is the Direct TV. I don't watch tons of tv, but do like my football and the FX channel shows.
This is why I am envious of cable users(which I used to have and love before I moved). I would simply get basic cable and their internet. For phone I would simply get Magic Jack or even Vonage. WOuld be about 1/3 of my bill I pay now. I would love to pay $165.00 per month for all 3, that is cheap!

Instead of contacting verizon, talk to the State Obudsmans office there in PA. It's kinda like having a big brother sometimes. Let them talk to Verizon. You may be surprised.

http://www.locate-a-ombudsman.com/PennsylvaniaOmbudsman.html

Ray

 

[silverfox103]

I tried doing that with a Time Warner all in one bundle that was costing me $163/month and they were taking NEW customers only at $99/month at the time. I tried getting the same deal and they told me NO WAY ! I told them to slow my internet and drop some channel and it saved my $40/month. Actually see no difference in net speed.
I'm considering separating the landline and going remote call forwarding which is around $20 and then setting up the iPhone for internet on the laptop, and maybe Direct TV . I think you get $10 off/month for AAA membership.
Has anyone tethered there iPhone to a laptop??

I have the same plan as you. I called up last Friday and pleaded my case. There response was, "Oh we can do something for you". So he transferred me to another person and they did--$7! Big deal. I think I will call up again today.

Tom C.

 

[Weird tolkienish figure]

I have been a pellet user for four years, we are nice and toasty. Took a while, to get everything smoothed out; but this year the oil man hasn't come nor will he be coming.

Now for the next thing thing that is in the crosshairs: Cable TV. The bill has just got out of hand, I think it is $165 with phone and internet, $73 is for TV. I'm sure you all know the story. I am sick of shopping channels, food channels, CSPAN, MTV and all the other crap that they dish out and we pay. Probably like most of us, I watch maybe 6 channels, my wife and youngest daughter have their few channels also. Wife is sick of it also. Ever say this "200 stationsn and nothing on".

I went to the cable company and talked to them. Right off the bat, I can save $50 by going to basic, which is just 20 stations. They also have 4 flavors of internet speed, I am the second down. I will probably leave that alone. We also have 2 lan lines and 2 cell phones. That will be changing, one is a business phone, but probably only for another year.

Anyways, I keep hearing about alternatives to cable. If anyone knows of any, please share. We are in the mountains, so if you don't have cable, you have 1 station. The only thing I will really miss is NESN which carries the Red Sox, but I have satellite radio, so I can listen.

thanks

Tom C.

It's a huge amount of money to spend for something so non-essential. I'm psyched we got Verizon fios, about $110 a month.

I'd like to give Hollywood as little money as possible, personally.

 

[begreen]

It's a huge amount of money to spend for something so non-essential. I'm psyched we got Verizon fios, about $110 a month.

I'd like to give Hollywood as little money as possible, personally.

Not sure that I follow. Why? Is giving money to Verizon better?

 

[Weird tolkienish figure]

Not sure that I follow. Why? Is giving money to Verizon better?

Well it's *less* money, which I can live with.

 

[mayhem]

BG: Out where I am, is the end of the world when it comes to wireless. The neighbors kid had it and said it was no better or maybe worse then satellite. Plus the bandwidth cap is much less than satellite.
I work from home and use the internet a great deal when sending reports etc. I cannot do what I need to do with the lower bandwidth caps that wireless providers allow.

Mayhem: There is negotiations with the satellite internet providers. They know they have us over a barrel, and the only other game in town id Dial up, NO WAY, or wireless, no improvement.
At the end of my road is cable, but they will not run the line back here for one or two customers. I have petitioned Verizon for DSL and had a few neighbors also petition Verizon. I sent them all in in a package. Have not hear back from them yet. Not real hopeful. I do have the Freedom plan which is $49.99 + $7.95 inside wire maintenance plan(used that 2x already) + tax, x2 lines. Need 2 for business, office/home line & fax line. The only thing I can really trim out or down is the Direct TV. I don't watch tons of tv, but do like my football and the FX channel shows.
This is why I am envious of cable users(which I used to have and love before I moved). I would simply get basic cable and their internet. For phone I would simply get Magic Jack or even Vonage. WOuld be about 1/3 of my bill I pay now. I would love to pay $165.00 per month for all 3, that is cheap!

Instead of contacting verizon, talk to the State Obudsmans office there in PA. It's kinda like having a big brother sometimes. Let them talk to Verizon. You may be surprised.

http://www.locate-a-ombudsman.com/PennsylvaniaOmbudsman.html

Ray

Bingo. I live in the middle of nowhere too. Only options for the longest time were dialup or satelite, but satellite sucks for latency and (at the time) was a $500 bill out my pocket for the equipment and $100 a month for the service. In MA the Gov signed into legistlation a number of years ago that all public libraries MUST be hooked to high speed internet. Verizon complied and was good enough to extend their demarc from the hut down in the nearby town about 4-5 miles away up to the green box thats smack in the middle between my house and the library. It took 6 months of persistent phone calls on my part to finally convince Verizon that I now lived in an area that qualified for DSL service, but eventually the public utility install records caught up with residential provisioning and I was the first resident in town to get DSL...now about 70% of the houses in town are hooked up.

Get the state on your side. You're near a nuclear power plant so there is infrastructure nearby your home to support residential provisioning. Make your officials work for you for a change.

 

[Mainely Saws]

I put up an outside antenna , got the local channels & more in a better quality HD & at the same time bought a Netflix / YouTube / Pandora ready bluRay DVD player for $120, ( now you can get them on sale from Best Buy for around $85 ) & after mild withdrawal symptoms , I am very happy !! Netflix streaming is $8 per month , the local library not only has up to 4 DVD's at a time free for a week , BUT you can request & receive specific DVD's from around the country at no charge . I miss some sports but Fox carries a lot . Add to all of this , more & more free internet TV & satellite TV becomes very expensive . At $65 per month , I'm saving a little under $800 per year & not missing it .

 

[Mainely Saws]

I might add one other thought able Direct TV . Customers can put their service on "hold " for up to 6 months without any monthly charges or fee's & without any disconnect/install costs involved . This might be a good idea to see how you like being without satellite service & see if you like the results of your outside antenna reception .

 

[silverfox103]

Update!

Six years later, I finally cut the cable. Big step, but once I did it, I haven't looked back (only been a week). I was a Spectrum customer, one night a couple of weeks I spun up and down the channels........Nothing. For $153 a month for the bundle, I had, had it. Sick of being force fed programs like the My 600 Pound Life and H oarders.

So, bought an Apple TV box and signed up for YouTubeTV, which has most of the stations that I watch and plenty more between the two. We are also hung onto my daughter's Netflix account. YouTube gives you 50 stations for $40. It has many live stations: all the national networks, all sport stations including NESN and some decent cable stations. I can watch the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, Bruins and Nascar.....live. I miss the Velocity channel but can watch on the computer.

I also cut the land phone. So my bill went from $153 down to $63. Not bad. I have to pay $40 for YouTube TV so, I save $50 every month. I live that!! I made a spreadsheet of all the TV options and YouTube was the best for needs.

I'm glad I did it.

Tom

Littleton NH

 

[lml999]

Ooma is a pretty cool phone setup

We've been on Ooma for a long time. Love the ability to block telemarketers.

 

[peakbagger]

I was going to cut the cable at one point but switched to the basic cable service that most cable providers are loathe to admit exists. Our cable company doesn't require a cable box to get basic service. They have a band filter up on the pole that blocks the upper channels. I got my basic cable in a business bundle and had some quality issues with my internet and phone. The business tech came by and tested my equipment and said "I know what it is", he went to the pole, removed the filter and my problems went way and my cable channels expanded substantially. The residential side of the business audits the services on occasion but the business side doesn't and has a bright red tag on my service to tell the residential folks to leave it alone. If the price ever goes up from $21 a month I will probably go your route.

I programmed out all the channels I don't watch on my remote and its amazing how many are gone. Reportedly half the cost of standard cable is the cost for the sports channels. I have them programmed out.

 

[begreen]

Our issue with going with cable is there is only one act in town, Comcast. In the event of a outage, they are often the last ones up and running. The telephone wires are mostly underground and much more reliable.

 

[zrock]

i was toying with the idea of loosing my cable. But i hate searching through netflix and other sources even more..

 

[begreen]

We said no years ago. Our library system is fantastic so we get most movies and series from there. We may be 6 months to a year behind but that is no big deal to us. More current stuff we get via Netflix DVDs or at the theater or on air from PBS and MHZ network.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Plenty of internet based systems for $20 a month or less. We have had these for at least 10 yrs now. An even better deal is freeintertv.com. Absolutely free. I get the travel channel here that i dont even get on the pay service. I use this while on the computer or exercising, often watching 3 separate shows at once,2 news and the Travel channel . I just key the sound in on the one i want to view. I could buy a Brand New 75 in LED TV every year for what some of my friends pay for programming. I do the same with my cell phone ,I pay less for the service AND a NEW samsung Note 8 cell phone than my wife pays for AT&T service alone. Update: She is canning AT&T as she needs a new phone too.

 

[begreen]

I have the original Apple TV if we want to use it, but my wife is not happy with it because the brightness is lower, the sound is weaker and no closed captioning. Not sure if Apple has fixed this or not.

I had a Windows PC linked to the TV, but it was a bit of a PITA to maintain, the dvr in particular was pretty bad and upgrading it to Windows 10 was a big mistake.

Netflix costs us $8.99/month, the library is free. I will look into freeinternetv.com. Most of the others don't interest me. Like cable they have a ton of stuff we're not interested in or just don't have the time to watch.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Netflix costs us $8.99/month, the library is free. I will look into freeintertv.com. Most of the others don't interest me. Like cable they have a ton of stuff we're not interested in or just don't have the time to watch.

I could access freeintertv.com ,not freeinternetv.com from the TV without a computer but its a PIA to get to that way. So i use that while im working on my computer which spend many hours working from, for my profession. I have a 34IN LED and a 23 screen going on the same computer so makes it easy. The TV programming i get thru an android box which has its own remote same as the TV. The freeintertv works so well im contemplating cancelling my pay service.I would assume a new smart tv has easier access to the internet,but my visio is getting pretty old. I have netflix too cuz the kids use it and i like the programming ,movies and series and the closed caption as my hearing is shot.

 

[begreen]

Our tv is not that old. I should update the channels and see if that is now listed.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

http://www.freeintertv.com/view/id-2716

 

[moey]

$55 Internet
$2 ( landline basically 911 for my kids in a emergency )
$9 Netflix
$10-20 for some form of cable tv ( I alternate between sling, directvgo, hulu ) They continually let you sign up for their promotions if you drop service for a couple months. So its pretty cheap.

About $85 a month.

I have an old T-mobile plan that is pay as you go. But it has free web access so I can browse the web on it. No apps work that use internet though. Clearly a plan that was made for a flip phone years ago but works on a smart phone somewhat.

 

[sportbikerider78]

I have a DSL from my home and work from a wifi hotspot (work pays for), that gets 4G LTE. I do bounce back and forth between connections. I also have the ability to hotspot my phone if needed, but never have needed to.

I have a long driveway, but the cable company would not let me hook up. They are getting sued for lack of providing advertised bandwith and will not add any more new customers till they add new lines.

I'm hoping they do FIOS. The next few years will tell. I would love to have broadband of some kind.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Cellphone plans have come way down (unless your still with the top companies) Unlimited talk and test can be had for $15-$20(plus tax) for awhile now from several competitors.
I swore off AT&T about a year ago and actually get broader coverage now and the same unlimited service for less than half the price. Up until that my cell phone bill was as much as our electric bill for 2 lines.

 

[zrock]

Cellphone plans have come way down (unless your still with the top companies) Unlimited talk and test can be had for $15-$20(plus tax) for awhile now from several competitors.
I swore off AT&T about a year ago and actually get broader coverage now nad the same unlimited service for less than half the price. Up until that my cell phone bill was as much as out electric bill for 2 lines.

Cell phone plans are not that cheap everyware. Especially in canada in places that are not in a major city

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Cell phone plans are not that cheap everyware. Especially in canada in places that are not in a major city

Internet access is one area where we still have only a few expensive choices and poor service. cant seem tpo find anything any good for less than $60 to $70 a month.

 

[sportbikerider78]

Cellphone plans have come way down (unless your still with the top companies) Unlimited talk and test can be had for $15-$20(plus tax) for awhile now from several competitors.
I swore off AT&T about a year ago and actually get broader coverage now and the same unlimited service for less than half the price. Up until that my cell phone bill was as much as our electric bill for 2 lines.

I have 15gb shared, data rollover, with 4 phones, (2 I am still paying on) and the bill is $220/month.
ATT coverage is really good in this area.