Cutting the cable, looking for some advice.
 

The Mrs and I have decided to take the leap and cut off cable TV and start streaming. Along with vudu, prime video, Pluto tv and a couple other free streaming apps, I want to get an outdoor HD antenna for local channels.

My main questions for anyone who has done this are, what should I look for in an HD antenna (brand, range etc.) and of Hulu, sling, which one would give me the most similar channels to cable.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

We have Hulu TV. Love it. Had Sling and that’s fine but like Hulu a bit more. Get a family member or friend’s(who is in college)email address and get the Sunday Ticket App for $100. Profit.

Oh and not sure if it’s the same for all states/areas but we get our locals through Hulu TV

Hulu + Live TV is <50 a month you get all the Hulu stuff plus live locals. You won't need an antenna.
Disney+ I got free for being a Verizon customer.
HBO GO I got free because my GF is an ATT customer.
Netflix ~14 a month because I'm the one in the family that pays for it and my siblings all use mine.
Everything else, I just stream free off of Reddit or Download Torrents of.

I always laugh when people say I cut cable then talk about Hulu TV and whatever. It's basically cable still lol

I've been looking at the $12 Hulu package. Mainly we're tired of spectrum. By doing this we can save $80 a month which I'm all for. Our savings would be cut in half if we go with Hulu live

But a lot cheaper

Kinda. But it sure as hell ain’t the same price. We save about $100 a month by using streaming services over satellite.

This.

Huge cord cutting thread in MC. FWIW, we have YouTube TV and love it.

We cut cable about a year and a half ago and got an OTA antenna. Get about 40 stations with just that.
We dropped internet to the house and strictly stream from phones or ipad thru unlimited data.
Beamed to the TV. Looks better than using firestick for us.

I bought my antenna for (I think) around $30 and it works fine. As long as you are in or near a city, don't stress about it or spend too much.

If you want OTA in multiple rooms, I'd recommend AirTV, which broadcasts 1 antenna to multiple devices. Cost $100, no monthly cost.

(I also don't think there is such thing as an "HD" antenna, since that is how everything is broadcast. Just wanted to mention that in case it saves a couple bucks)

Here's my advice as someone who has been out from cable for roughly 7 years.

Number 1, find out if your ISP has a data cap, if it does and you are going to stream and especially game/download things you are going to have to pay to be uncapped, this made my internet bill go from 80 which I found reasonable for the 285 down I get to 130 which I think is a bit high but unfortunately I'm stuck with that.

You're likely going to have 2 options, mine are AT&T and Comcast..both have data caps, I've had both Comcast speeds are much better for what I need. Just make sure you go with what you need to have. If you have teens gaming and you go with a package that is like 40 down you are going to get some extreme lag. Other good ISP advice, if it is a company like the ones I mentioned, a lot of times they'll offer you to add super basic cable for almost nothing. I believe they offered it to me for 5 bucks, so know your options.

Now for the sign up services that you are going to need to have...
Netflix obviously
The hulu/disney/espn + bundle is about as good of a deal as you'll find in streaming.
Amazon prime is worth it if you are going to use it to shop also.

But in reality you can sidestep all of these if you know how to use KODI, that is something every single cord cutter should have. I won't explain it since there is a thread on it in the MC and it's easy to look up on google.

Another thing that I've done that is going to be an option for younger people if you're parents or a family member etc are swell...I know my parents cable login and pass..which means I can sign up for the streaming service for all of the channels they get. This means I can watch fox,nbc,abc, fox sports, espn etc etc this has been extremely helpful over the years.

With all of this my budget for all this stuff is still is like 180 dollars, unfortunately until my teenage kids go off to college and take their net usage with them I'm stuck paying to be uncapped as I go over that limit constantly. Also I could get away not paying for any stream service using things like torrents and flash drives or my home network but once again the kids are far to lazy to understand how to use it.

I learned having kids makes cord cutting more expensive if its just say you or you and a wife it's far easier.

OTA looks so much better than any streaming. I love national game days. My antenna isn’t even outside. It’s just a black square I shove in the window when I have a game to watch. If you are in a city take advantage. It’s free and better. I spent about 30 bucks I think at the most at my local hardware store. Probably available for less from a source that carries a volume of that kind of thing.

Lots of information there, thanks.

It's just the Mrs and I for the most part and other than our phones tablets and tv we don't use that much data ( no Xbox etc). I'll do some research on KODI

Also if you are going to use KODI or use sites to download torrents so you can watch things. For example say you don't wanna pay for Netflix and you wanna watch the witcher. You log into the pirate bay and download the season put it on a flash drive plug it into your tv and watch it...

Shit like this is very simple and something I still do for some things....make sure YOU HAVE A VPN. If you do not your ISP will go ****ing bonkers and send you emails about how you are a thief, they will also block some kodi streams without having it turned on.

I have an indoor antenna that I hooked up to 1 of my tv's just to see. I got 47 channels, but I wanted an outdoor antenna so I can hook up all 4 tv's without the extra wires showing. I've been looking at the 200 mile range ones so I can get Jacksonville, Gainesville and Tampa since a few times a year, we're just south of the cutoff for Chiefs games

Sling is free for a couple weeks right now. Id check them out if you never have. I don't have any live TV and haven't for several years but I've done free trials in the past and sling seemed pretty good.

I actually ended up with YoutubeTV. It is not bad, and has all of my locals as well.

I'll do that. Hulu is offering 1 month free too, so I'll try them too before I make a decision. I've been trying to convince the Mrs to do this for a few months now, but she's been hesitant, so I have to be careful here and make sure she's happy too.

Usually the biggest downside to cutting the cord is sports, shows can be found with a few clicks.

I mean there are tons of options through your PC though so if you want to plug a laptop up to your computer that's another way to get around it.

Use an antenna for ota. The only things I miss about cutting the cord is loss of Royals games and no DVR. I have Prime, Netflix and the cheapest ad supported Hulu plan you can get. I'd cut Netflix and Hulu tomorrow if it was just me, but my wife and kids watch enough on the other services that we keep them.

I do want to get Disney + though.

The black square antennas work great for us.

I bought a cheap outdoor antenna (RCA I think) at Wal-Mart for about 40 bucks. I removed my DirecTV dish and put the Antenna in the same place as the dish...I was able to utilize the existing coax going into the house. Works just fine.

I use Prime and Netflix primarily.

Don't miss Cable/Dish AT ALL.

Antennae advise - to get the most channels, etc.

Here's a decent one that you can put in an attic or outside. I did a lot of research and this is one of the better options. Personally I'd recommend attic mounting to protect it but I'm always a bit extra cautious. I have it mounted in my Attic and get I think 42 channels at this point.
https://amzn.to/2QgIMzR

Here's an amplifier that I used to help boost my signal. Helped me fix some static I had on a couple channels and gave me a couple more.
https://amzn.to/2QBcuhW

I use an HD Homerun quatro to broadcast the antennae signal wirelessly to every room in the house. I have firesticks so just installed the app on them and I get a guide with listings, etc. Supposedly your supposed to need to pay for the guide, but I never had to.
https://amzn.to/2MRsyuZ

Now, with that said, I'd probably prefer to use the firetv recast because the dvr and integration with the firesticks is pretty nice. That's extra money I haven't spent yet since the Quatro works fine but I think it would have nicer DVR features, etc. I heard that it only records in like 720p though so waiting for a new version to come out before I consider moving to it instead.
https://amzn.to/35ld5tg

I got the Quatro when it was on a deal, so $100. Firesticks you can find for $35 normally, $25 occasionally. Antennae and amplifier ran around $85-$90 combined when I got them. I have a bunch of extra cable and connections from when I finished the basement of my house so I didn't have any cost there.

I already had the firesticks in most places so really I spent close to $200 to get the antennae, etc. all up and running and broadcasting to the whole house. You can hook the antennae directly into your cable to spread it through the house but it can weaken the signal so that's up to you on how you want to mess with it. I prefer having the app with guide on all the tvs so it's a pretty decent setup that is totally free once you set it up.

Here's what we have for paid apps with two teenagers in the house.

Netflix
Hulu
AT&T TV with HBO (formerly DirectTV Now)
Disney+

If you are a Sprint customer you can get basic Hulu with ads for free.

Disney+ I will probably cancel now that Mandelorian is over and there doesn't seem to be any good original content coming out for another year.

Netflix and Hulu are probably the most used. Only keeping AT&T around because I was an early adopter so getting their big package with HBO for 60 bucks and I share it with my in-laws who use it all the time. I use it more for the sign in credentials for other TV apps like ESPN/Fox for live sports and HBO Go than the App itself.

Total cost is still way less than when I had satellite. Honestly there is so much good content on Netflix and Hulu you could flip flop cancelling and re adding between the two to save money. The live TV streaming apps are where the cost is.

They're pushing up their WandaVision and Winter Soldier/Falcon shows to release sometime this year.

I cut the cord from DTV..130.00 bucks a month for 2 TV's and recievers. Went to Hulu with Hulu live and get all my local channels plus a ton of sports channels. ( Like 70.00 a month) All the ESPNS alot of Fox sports networks Big Ten and SEC channels. Along with CBSSN. More sports channels than I had with choice and Ultra packages with DTV. You also have 200 hours of cloud recording storage. The only sports channel it doesn't have is NFL Network..which you can get if your ISP provider is on their list. Unfortunately mine isn't. The only drawback that I've found. Like it was mentioned before make sure you match your iSP data plan with your streaming needs. If anyone knows a way to stream the NFL Network I would like to know.

if you put broadband with that pricing you may save $20-$40. I need broadband and work from home. 100meg at least with seriously reliable Wi-Fi. I pay $140 a month for that and every channel that’s on FIOS, including all the pay channels. For $40 a month all this Roku, YouTube, Hulu etc. can’t touch that price.

Saving about $130 per month with YouTube TV compared to my old cable bill. Currently pay $59 for Internet and $54 for YouTube TV. Previously was paying about $245 for a bundle of Internet & very basic TV with no movie channels or anything.

Not where I live. I have Dish with the sports package/Redzone for just about the price of hi-speed Internet. So it's about the same price BEFORE you start paying for programming with the internet.

The average consumer already has high speed internet.

:eek: where do you live?

At my house, it wasn't an either/or on the internet/dish network. We had both. So cutting out Dish Network save us the extra 100+ per month.

The problem I've always had is finding the right sports bundles, where I'm not ending up paying cable/satellite prices. I currently pay ~$85/month for Dish, including one of their sports packages..... and the real bitch is that my data is capped for internet, so streaming live sports would cost more per month. :cuss:

I believe the sports packages have gotten better recently though.

One day, when every provider has their own $10/month streaming service, some smart person is going to say..... hey, how about we create a service that bundles all of this into one relatively inexpensive payment?!

Yeah I hear ya. Hulu gives you a bunch of good sports options but as some mentioned, no NFL Network. But honestly I can just stream any game that would be on NFL Network via Yahoo and all I care about is getting the games anyway.

If you don’t care about not having sports or news channels, Philo is a great way to go. 50 or so channels for $20 a month.

The nice thing about streaming services is that you don't need a technician to come out and install it. And if you don't like the service or find a better one, you can simply cancel.

I just checked out their channel lineup. I like what I'm seeing, especially Hallmark which is my wife's favorite channel. I'm definitely going to take a close look at that tomorrow. Thanks

I haven't had cable for at least 5 years now, I'm not talking shit just think it's funny. I just got tired of calling and threatening to cancel my cable to get better deals. I never paid more then130 a month for cable and internet but now I'm about to pay Google fiber 55$ a month for 500 up and down without caps

Yeah, Philo has about everything that we want, except sports. Does anyone know of an easy way to stream Fox Sports Midwest? I don't know why they don't offer a pay to stream program. I'd buy it.

West Texas. My TV/Internet bundle was a good price years ago, maybe around $110-120. But they kept increasing it every year. Got out of hand and eventually I got fed up with it.

I need to read this more thoroughly later.

That's where we're at. $175 for tv/internet last month after raising it the last 3 months in a row was the final straw.

Once spectrum bought out brighthouse, the service went to shit and the price keeps going up.

Get you an android tv box and try out kosmoiptv

Most of these $10/month services are losing money to get market share.

Very limited services might be available for $10. But I would be very surprised to see the big content providers like Disney be under $30 in a few years.

Same with the ESPN/live sports.

I have this box called the beast and I pay $15 a month for an app called wired has movies,ppv,sports, tv, all kinds of different shows.

We cut the cord a few years ago.

1. I have 1 Gig fiber at the house.
2. We have an HD antenna with an over the air lifetime TIVO (nice to be able to record live TV and have a guide.
3. We run Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus
4. I've run through a bunch of cable providers - YouTube TV was the lastest. Have used Playstation Vue and Sling.

Personally Sling blows. Great for cheap cable but not much I really was into.

with TWC/Spectrum I was at $230 for basically the same thing except for 75meg of bandwidth. FIOS came in and I switched. Got down to $175 with the switch and then after a year threatened to leave and got down to the $140.

it also depends if your region has data caps. Once those get implemented all over (its gonna happen), then its about the same as keeping cable becuase you have to pay for unlimited dat a.

Same. I really only watch tv on the weekends (football). I stream MLB.tv too.

Man, that's a great deal. Wish I could get something like that but they don't serve my city.

Yeah, I got sick and tired of having to call Directv every year and threatening to leave if they didn't give me a better price. Same thing with Dish when I had them many years ago.

I have Cox internet and the deal I got was 3 years for $45/month for 150 down and 10 up. It is capped at 1024 GBs/month but I cut the cord back in February and I haven't run over yet. Don't take Mecca's experience to mean that is going to be everyone's experience. I have a teenage daughter that games on Xbox all the time. The wife and I watch TV and movies and I occasionally game online. That has not been a problem. I admit that I was a bit concerned about it going into this but we haven't gone over the limit once in the 10 months we have been all streaming.

We already had Amazon Prime and Netflix. And my son let me use his Hulu. I got Youtube TV because it has most of every channel that we wanted plus unlimited DVR. That unlimited DVR was the big thing for me. Try it out for free. Most of these services you can try for free for 7 or 14 days.

Spent a lot of time talking to my friends about this over the holidays as I'm thinking about cutting the cord with Spectrum. All of them have gone to YouTube TV and swear by it.

The problem with cutting the cord and going to streaming is any data cap your IP might hit you with. If you can work around that, groovy, go for it. We here in the boonies don't have nice things like cable/DSL/fiber internet, just satellite.
As far as local stations, why go to all the hassle with an outdoor antenna? When Dish and one of our local channels were feuding, I just bought one of these. We're about 45 miles from the nearest tower, but it works fine, plus when we have a storm and Dish is knocked out, we can still get local weather. We have last year's model (2019), but here's the latest: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XQLW1H7/ref=dp_cerb_3

Looks like I'm probably joining as well.

Google fiber is going up $15, my bill is going to be close to $200. Spectrum has their triple play for like $94, then you start adding crap like HD boxes, then DVR. It's upwards of $140.

I've been checking out tv streaming services and initially liked FuboTV. Then they literally dropped a bunch of channels on the 1st, plus they don't have ESPN. Then it seemed like each streaming option is missing some channel that we watch. YoutubeTV doesn't have A&E, MTV, History, etc

So it's looking like I'm going to possibly do Youtube TV + Philo. Philo is pretty cheap and covers a bunch of channels that we'd be missing and has some overlap. I'll split the Youtube TV with my mom since she's cutting the cord too. So $70 for internet, $25 youtube tv and $20 for Philo.

Overall i'll save a bit more money than going Spectrum. But I don't have to deal with installation, crappy equipment, and can keep my fiber. Then hopefully YoutubeTV can catch up on those missing channels and I can drop Philo.

Sucks Google Fiber dropped their 100mbps plan though

I'm tired of Google Fiber... is Spectrum any better? Why do you hate it?

I've got one of those types of antennas on my TV in my basement. It seems to work pretty well.

Here's my situation - I'm hoping that someone can give me some direction.

The only live TV anyone in the house watches is sports - KU & Chiefs. With all the gaming & streaming we do, I have to pay for unlimited data with Cox. We have several of the Amazon Fire TV box, a Cube, and a Stick which is what we use to watch everything. There is no reason for us to have cable.

I've been reluctant to cut cable 100% because I don't want to have to worry about being able to watch my sports. I don't want to have to go to a bar to watch, or try to find a stream that will work efficiently, etc.

I haven't looked at Youtube TV until today, but it appears that it would have all the channels that would carry 90% of the games I want to watch. Has anyone with Youtube TV had issues being able to watch the games? Or are there cheaper alternatives that would work better for sports?

In the 10 months that I have had Youtube TV, I have not had any problem watching a Chiefs or KU game. This doesn't include the KU games that are on ESPN+, of course.

Also, Firestick just recently added the Youtube TV app.

When I lived in KC or down here in Florida, I've never even been offered a cheaper version but capped. Any device gets the speed you pay for. Maybe there is a cap but I use a shit ton on bandwith with Skype calls and videos. Son's a big gamer with flashy graphics, wife uses a lot to. We use Disney+, Netflix and Prime to stream content too. Seems that if there was a cap, we would have hit it at some point?
When I threatened to leave last year they gave me a DVR with 120 hours of storage and record 6 shows at the same time. When I was in KC I remember it as recording 2 shows and watching 1 and only 30 hours of storage. Unlimited storage sounds fantastic, Jealous.;)

Some people do need uncapped internet. I understand that. For me, it wasn't necessary. I just looked at my internet usage and we're at just under 600Gbs for the month with the billing cycle ending in 3 days. And that's with my daughter being home for Christmas break and gaming all day long. My advice to anyone would be to estimate how much you use and then choose from there. Heck, you could go with the lower-priced capped internet initially and then change it if you end up going over every month.

That's great. I've got ESPN+ as well so those are covered. Just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be struggling to find the games to watch.

I was curious to see what we were using in comparison to you. We're currently at 1,301GB for the month. LMAO

Thank God I pay for unlimited.

If you're planning on getting an OTA antenna, go to antennaweb.org, enter your zip, and it will tell you what channels you can get and even what type of antenna to get.

You might want to look at the FireTV Recast device. It's a FireTV device with an OTA DVR. You plug your OTA antenna into the box, and set your DVR to record your local OTA channels. Your other Fire devices in the house can then communicate with that DVR to play recorded stuff so you can share the DVR.

Regarding YoutubeTV, the only reason I got it was for local sports. And for that, it kicks ass. Unlimited DVR is very cool too. You can simply tell it to record all NCAAM/NFL/MLB/NBA/etc games, and watch the entire weekend of sports whenever you want.

Only for 2nd gen devices and newer. But it's the best YoutubeTV interface by far.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

My provider is Grande Communications. My Internet was 200 megs and the TV service was fairly basic stuff (maybe 100 channels). At one point it was $120 or so after tax for the TV/Internet bundle. Pretty good price. But over time it just kept going up. My billing history on Grande website only goes back to December 2018, but this gives you idea of how it went:

Dec. 2018 - $190 (too much)
Jan. 2019 - $215 (ridiculous)
May 2019 - $245 (INSANE)

So now I'm paying $59 for 300 Meg Internet, plus $54 for YouTube TV. I'm back in the price range that I had many years ago with my Grande bundle around $120. I could understand $245 if I had all the movie channels, but I had NONE of them.

Do you have to mount an OTA antenna on the roof or are there internal ones that work well?

I should have read the thread first.

Teenagers, am I right? ROFL

Thanks Fish! I'll check it out.

I only wish I could blame it all on them. :D

1. There is no more wall to tv basic cable, so add $8 per box + $13 for DVR service in my living room. I have 4 tv's.

2. I've had to replace 4 of the " new and improved" boxes and my DVR in the past 6 months.

3. Keeps freezing

4. Voice is not synced with the picture

5. They've raised my bill by $8 per month over the last 3 months for no apparent reason other than they know they can.

6. Customer service? LMAO

7. I watch a lot of the science/discovery/home improvement channels. They've split them up to where if I want them all, it'll cost me $60 more than it used to

So, I've signed up for Philo since they appear to have most everything we want, and ordered a 200 mile range antenna from Amazon. I'm cutting loose on Tuesday. I'm sure I'll have some growing pains figuring out what works best, but I'm actually excited. Thanks for all of your input

Here are my numbers for the last 6 months...2 teens all the time, one comes home from college at times and friends come over etc etc...

July 15046
August 1281
September 1290
October 1681
November 3816
December 4117

My cap is 1024 so suffice to say yea....

Did you really pull 15k in July?:eek:

Yea.....that happened because that is the month before my oldest goes back to college. He signed up for the Xbox game pass and proceeded to download everything he wanted before he left because his wifi at college is very slow.

He did the same with every device he had...and then you factor in the kids being home for summer vacation...

I tried to pull my numbers from the past several months but since I just moved on Thanksgiving, it won't show me anything other than my new house usage. But I'm sure it's the same now as it was. I did keep an eye on it for that first month or two.