I think I got my MM membership card this week.

[aspentosh]

OMG jealous!! I so wish H would let me do this.

Do you watch a lot of sports? That is where I lose him...

[MamaMaui24]

DH said we could cancel cable after Sunday's Walking Dead finale.

[justjen]

Haha. How much were those maternity jeans?? ;-)

[aspentosh]

Yeah, we'll watch the Skins play but we also watch the Nats and he needs to see the Braves and golf. I don't think there is any way around that

[winnied]

Way to go!

My H used to watch a lot of sports but now that we don't have cable, he doesn't. I think it's frequently one of those things were you watch it because it's there but it's not super important to you.

[womet]

Welcoem to the club! We cut cable earlier this year and haven't missed it. We mostly watch shows on network channels (NBC, ABC, CBS) and get those great without an antenna. And we watch shows via Amazon Prime and also streaming online.

[ssmjlm]

Unless football streaming happens, we can't cancel cable.

Although now that we have prime, I really need to look into streaming it on DH's tablet.

[cjeanette]

I am 2 1/2 years in and haven't looked back! I prefer laying in bed with my kindle watching tv at this point.

[chessie]

Mar 28, 2013 10:41:27 GMT -5 aspentosh said:

OMG jealous!! I so wish H would let me do this.

Do you watch a lot of sports? That is where I lose him...

pretty much this, no way we could do this. Lots of the sports stuff is not online.  No way around it, need cable.

[cinco]

We are only a couple weeks in and don't miss it. We also have a Roku.

[savan]

Mar 28, 2013 10:45:01 GMT -5 swizz said:

Mar 28, 2013 10:41:27 GMT -5 aspentosh said:

OMG jealous!! I so wish H would let me do this.

Do you watch a lot of sports? That is where I lose him...

DH used to, but honestly doesn't much anymore.

He'll watch the Redskins when they play, which comes on the local channels, and then the football that's on CBS/FOX or whatever.

He's a little nervous about March Madness games for this weekend, but was planning to go to Radio Shack today to get a cable to hook his computer to the TV since those games are online.

The only other sports he used to watch are VT football/basketball, but both seem disappointing to him lately, lol, and then just random games that might come on if he's not busy but he said he could easily find other things to do instead.

We don't have cable.  DH got his dad's dish network log in and uses it to stream all the games on his ipad.  He bought a cable to hook the ipad up to the tv and we didn't miss a game last weekend.

[biogirl21]

We canceled cable a year ago. I don't miss it. I there's a big game I want to watch I just go to BDubs. The major games are usually on network TV anyway. We bought an antenna when the Olympics were on and we do Hulu and Netflix with our PS3.
I will say that I do miss HGTV.

[shadyblue42]

I'm intrigued by the possibility of not having to pay for expensive cable. Can you explain how this works in dumbed down terms for the non-tech savvy user? Would you need a Roku for every tv? Do you have to pay for extra channels?

[niq]

Mar 28, 2013 11:55:20 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Unless football streaming happens, we can't cancel cable.

Although now that we have prime, I really need to look into streaming it on DH's tablet.

Would you be okay with watching the games a day late? NFL Game Rewind is $35 for one team, $70 for all games. You also get the "All-22 cam" which is great for serious football nerds.

[niq]

Mar 28, 2013 13:16:29 GMT -5 shadyblue42 said:

I'm intrigued by the possibility of not having to pay for expensive cable. Can you explain how this works in dumbed down terms for the non-tech savvy user? Would you need a Roku for every tv? Do you have to pay for extra channels?

There's a nice long post that explains how it works. You need one Roku per TV. You probably need to pay for Hulu Plus ($8/month?), but not once per TV. You also have to pay for each sport. There are free channels and pay channels, depending on what you want to watch.

There are ways to avoid "one Roku per TV" but I would not recommend them to people who describe themselves as "non-tech savvy" .

pandce.proboards.com/thread/152639/cable-internet-phone-bill-thread

I will add answers to some of your questions to the thread .

[iheartvino]

Mar 28, 2013 13:34:42 GMT -5 swizz said:

Mar 28, 2013 13:33:10 GMT -5 niq said:

There are ways to avoid "one Roku per TV" but I would not recommend them to people who describe themselves as "non-tech savvy" .

What about moderately tech-savvy with directions?

We already had a playstation that we can get all of the internet tv through. If you have one (or probably another gaming system) you could use that. We did buy a roku box for the other tv.

I love that we got rid of cable. Our Verizon bill is so much more manageable. We didn't get an antennae for about 4 months, and I'm glad we finally broke down and got one, because I missed having free local tv.

[hbomdiggity]

Mar 28, 2013 10:45:01 GMT -5 swizz said:

The only other sports he used to watch are VT football/basketball, but both seem disappointing to him lately, lol, and then just random games that might come on if he's not busy but he said he could easily find other things to do instead.

You may have earned your MM card but your DH lost his hokie card.

I'm pretty sure we can already do what roku does directly through our tv. And we never use it. Addicted to cable.

[isabel]

Mar 28, 2013 10:41:27 GMT -5 aspentosh said:

OMG jealous!! I so wish H would let me do this.

Do you watch a lot of sports? That is where I lose him...

This is our issue as well. He won't budge. Harumph.

[niq]

Mar 28, 2013 13:34:42 GMT -5 swizz said:

Mar 28, 2013 13:33:10 GMT -5 niq said:

There are ways to avoid "one Roku per TV" but I would not recommend them to people who describe themselves as "non-tech savvy" .

What about moderately tech-savvy with directions?  

I dug into this some more and I can't in good conscious recommend it. But if you want to try ...

The Netgear Push2TV 3000 ($60) will let you take video sent over wifi in a special format and output it to a television. But, you need some way to get the Roku (or your laptop or whatever) to produce video in that special wifi format. And there's no way to do that for cheap. If you have a very new laptop, it might work without buying anything new, but it's a lot of pain for maybe $200 in savings if you have 5 TVs in the house.

All of this stuff is sort of too new and just barely works. Maybe in a couple of years things will be better.

[niq]

Mar 28, 2013 13:38:40 GMT -5 iheartvino said:

Mar 28, 2013 13:34:42 GMT -5 swizz said:

What about moderately tech-savvy with directions?

We already had a playstation that we can get all of the internet tv through. If you have one (or probably another gaming system) you could use that. We did buy a roku box for the other tv.

Right, this is the other way to go. If you have a Roku, PS3, and Xbox all plugged into the same TV, just put them on different TVs. There will be a few things that are Roku only, but Netflix, Hulu, all the pro sports, and (I think) Amazon Video are on everything.

[shadyblue42]

Mar 28, 2013 13:33:10 GMT -5 niq said:

Mar 28, 2013 13:16:29 GMT -5 shadyblue42 said:

I'm intrigued by the possibility of not having to pay for expensive cable. Can you explain how this works in dumbed down terms for the non-tech savvy user? Would you need a Roku for every tv? Do you have to pay for extra channels?

There's a nice long post that explains how it works. You need one Roku per TV. You probably need to pay for Hulu Plus ($8/month?), but not once per TV. You also have to pay for each sport. There are free channels and pay channels, depending on what you want to watch.

There are ways to avoid "one Roku per TV" but I would not recommend them to people who describe themselves as "non-tech savvy" .

pandce.proboards.com/thread/152639/cable-internet-phone-bill-thread

I will add answers to some of your questions to the thread .

Yay! My cable bill is ridiculous because the only other option in my town is Dish so they don't offer any good specials. Now I will probably spend the rest of the day plotting my escape from Time Warner Cable. lol Thank you!

[cjeanette]

Mar 28, 2013 14:17:01 GMT -5 swizz said:

Mar 28, 2013 14:10:45 GMT -5 niq said:

I dug into this some more and I can't in good conscious recommend it. But if you want to try ...

The Netgear Push2TV 3000 ($60) will let you take video sent over wifi in a special format and output it to a television. But, you need some way to get the Roku (or your laptop or whatever) to produce video in that special wifi format. And there's no way to do that for cheap. If you have a very new laptop, it might work without buying anything new, but it's a lot of pain for maybe $200 in savings if you have 5 TVs in the house.

All of this stuff is sort of too new and just barely works. Maybe in a couple of years things will be better.

Yeah, that's totally not worth it since we only have one other TV.

I think we're going to try just shuffling the one we have back and forth and see if that gets really annoying or not. I gather we'll break down and buy the second box soon. (DH only has an Xbox 360 and I don't think he's touched it other than to play DVDs in a couple years).

xbox 360 streams tv?

[cjeanette]

Mar 28, 2013 14:49:02 GMT -5 swizz said:

Mar 28, 2013 14:39:37 GMT -5 cjeanette said:

xbox 360 streams tv?

Oh, I didn't think it did? Maybe that would work!

Netflix, hulu, and amazon!

[rootbeerfloat]

We can stream from our Wii, but prefer the Roku. We got a second one eventually. Considering we're almost at 2 years of no cable bill, the expense of an additional box was worth it,

Admittedly, it was an adjustment to watch less sports, but we get football through the regular networks, and we've been watching March Madness both through CBS and on our laptop and tablet.

[jloww]

Mar 28, 2013 14:56:55 GMT -5 cjeanette said:

Mar 28, 2013 14:49:02 GMT -5 swizz said:

Oh, I didn't think it did? Maybe that would work!

Netflix, hulu, and amazon!

Yep - that's what we use instead of a Roku.  I wanted to make sure I didn't miss cable first so used what we already have.

Glad it's finally proving to be useful.

[audette]

For those considering getting a new TV soon, it might be worth it to just get the new TV, instead of paying for a Roku box or gaming station to connect up to Huluplus, Netflix, etc.


We finally replaced our ancient TV after this last move, and the new TV is a "smart TV", and can stream netflix, huluplus, and other things without anything more than a basic router. We have a VPN router, so we can stream content from the US.

I'll admit the new TV wasn't cheap, but it was not crazy-expensive, either...